Does Fig Have a Future on 'OITNB'?

For a show with such a satisfying season finale, Orange is the New Black still left a whole lot of plotlines up in the air: is Vee really dead? Is Alex going back to jail? And, now that she's no longer the warden, is Fig actually gone for good? The first two questions likely won't be resolved until the start of season 3 next year, but as for the final one, the answer is right here, as told from the one person who'd know the best.

"I am in season 3," Alysia Reiner, who plays Orange's hated ex-warden, tells Bustle. "I don't know how much, but I have shot one episode of season 3."

For fans of the show, this is great news — who didn't love watching Fig boss around Caputo and make life hell for the inmates? — but pretty surprising, considering how the character's storyline left off at the end of season 2. As Orange viewers will recall, the last time we saw Fig, she was realizing she was about to lose her job after being found out for embezzlement — not exactly an ending that bodes well for her future on the show. When the episode was filmed, Reiner says she truly had no idea if she'd be returning for season 3, and apparently, neither did Jenji Kohan, the series' creator.

"I got a beautiful letter from Jenji saying she didn't know," recalls Reiner. "It really helped soften the blow. I didn't get like, 'oh my god, did I do something wrong?' It was a beautiful letter that helped me know I was all right, it was just where the characters were taking themselves."

Now, though, that Fig is coming back to the show, Reiner has a few ideas for where her story could go next.

"I know fans would love to see Fig in orange," she says. "Once I heard that idea, I wondered what that would be like. I think that would be a really fun, juicy storyline. I’m game, if that’s where they want to go with it."

Going from boss to inmate would be torture for the power-hungry warden, so here's hoping Reiner's theory is correct; one can only imagine what kind of incredible storylines the Orange writers would manage to dig up if they got to place Fig on equal ground with her former victims. Still, as anyone who's seen the show's many twists and turns can attest, making guesses about an Orange plotline this early is pointless.

"That's what's so special about the show," says Reiner. "Just when you think they’re going to go one direction, they go the opposite direction."

And besides, she says, "we have the best writers on the planet, and they have much better ideas than I do."

Still, Fig as an inmate?! May the show's fans prevail, because nothing would be better than seeing the woman with all the power find herself behind bars for abusing it — and getting a taste of her own, mean medicine.

Image: Netflix (2)