Warning: there are spoilers ahead for House of Cards Season 4 Episodes 4-6. One of the most enjoyable parts about House of Cards is watching plans unfold slowly, but one of the twists in Season 4 seemed to be a happy coincidence. Who is Danny on House of Cards ? The teenager whose liver donation saved Frank Underwood's life is a bit of a mystery.
By now you know that Frank Underwood is shot and needed a liver transplant. Doug Stamper bullies the Secretary of Health into moving Frank to the top of the donor list. Next thing we know, we see a scene in which a teenager named Danny goes downstairs, breaks a gun out of a cabinet, and shoots himself in the head. Soon after that, Frank's surgery is underway — leading us to believe that the child's liver was transplanted into Frank. He needed a full liver, not a partial donation, so an unfortunate case like this is one of the only ways. Frank Underwood survived the surgery, and the Secretary of Health emailed Doug a photo of the man who they let die in order to make this happen — a photo of him with his wife and two children.
Is Danny the donor significant? Knowing how everything is connected on House of Cards, he has to be. My initial theory was that Danny is the son of the man who got bumped from the donor list in favor of the President. I don't think that Doug Stamper had enough time to find a teenager and drive him to suicide. I thought that Danny killed himself in order to save his father's life, but the organ ended up going to someone else. That definitely fit the Shakespearean and/or Greek tragedy that is House of Cards. However, we later meet both Danny's mother Karen and the donor's wife Laura Moretti, and the two do not seem to be connected — though Doug is visibly shaken by Karen's presence.
Hopefully this mystery will be revealed as House of Cards Season 4 continues. This is a tragic suicide no matter what, and I shudder to think how it could be connected to the larger picture on House of Cards.
Images: David Giesbrecht/Netflix; Netflix (2)
