House Of Cards: Original Ending Explained

Kevin Spacey’s departure from House Of Cards was big news and rightly so, however, after being fired from the show, the creative team behind it were forced to drastically change it’s ending in order to deal with his absence.

Throughout this article, I will be discussing the original ending that the producers had planned for President Frank Underwood.

There are potentially huge spoilers for the actual ending of the show so if you haven’t watched that then I suggest you turn off now.

For everyone else, I’m Deffinition and let’s get into the Original House Of Cards Ending.

Ending Explained

At the end of Season 5 of House Of Cards, Claire Underwood, Frank’s Wife, appeared to cut all ties with her husband. After Frank was killed under suspicious circumstances, Claire became instated as the President and the main character of the show.

Franks absence didn’t mean that he was forgotten however and his ghost loomed heavily over the show with the main mystery being that of who killed him.

Eventually, we learned that his close aide, Doug, was responsible for Frank’s downfall after he gave the President an overdose on medication but the original ending was meant to be much different.

Vulture recently reported that the final season of the show was supposed to centre around Frank and Claire’s bitter divorce battle. Something this scandalous in Politics would add a lot of weight to the drama and give fans a side to choose between the two.

Frank would go to help from the Shepards whilst Claire would go her own way as the infamous family held no sway over her.

The writers confirmed that Frank would have died either way with the original plans being that Claire would snuff Frank out with a pillow and make it appear to be a death of Natural Causes. The poisoning idea too originally popped up and this is the only aspect that remains from the original shows planned ending. Claire would still become The President and the show would come to the same conclusion, just the journey would be different.