What happens when you lose your most trusted ally? That's a serious question Frank Underwood is going to have to face throughout House of Cards Season 4 now that he and Claire are no longer a united front. Not that he deserves her allegiance, of course. If you recall, last season ended with Claire quite literally walking out on Frank (and their marriage) after he said that she'd be nothing without him. I mean, who wouldn't have left him after a comment like that? But it's left many viewers wondering if Frank and Claire will ever get back together and make amends at some point throughout the season. And to that, I would just say, don't hold your breath.
Now, of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that an actual divorce will be in the cards. These two are power hungry individuals after all, and know that it would be in both of their best interests to keep up appearances of marital bliss. But behind closed doors, that's a whole different story. If the promos alone aren't enough to convince you that tensions (and tempers) are running extremely high between the Underwood First Family, then perhaps a Season 4 preview will help shed some further light on the matter.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Netflix shared that "Frank and Claire continue their pursuit for power," throughout Season 4, which involves "battling everyone in their way, including each other." That doesn't sound like a reconciliation to me. In fact, it sounds more like a high-stakes cat and mouse game than anything else. The only question is which one's the cat and which one's the mouse? Maybe they're even a little bit of both.
Even executive producer Beau Willimon doesn't seem to hold out much hope for Frank and Claire's future together, at least in the "happy couple" sort of sense. "This union is not making [Claire] the person she wants to be," he explained to The Huffington Post. "And maybe this man is no longer the man that she needs in order to fully be her complete realized self." Of course, trying to pry spoilers out of any of the cast or crew is pretty much an impossible task, so it's hard to say for sure which direction their relationship will go. But based on everything we've seen and heard so far, I'd say that their marriage exists purely on the outside only.
Frank said some extremely hurtful things to Claire in the Season 3 finale, some of which she won't be able to forget easily, if at all. And while I do think she would stay with him if it meant advancing her own career ambitions (we all suspect she wants to eventually be President, right?), I think that beyond political gain, their marriage might be DOA. And honestly, that might be for the best. Let Frank pound his own knuckles into the ground and see how high he can climb (and fall) without Claire's help.
Images: Netflix (3); seriestvquotes/Tumblr
