This Is What Happens At The End Of House Of Cards [MAJOR SPOILERS]

This Is What Happens At The End Of House Of Cards [MAJOR SPOILERS]

I just watched the last five minutes of the last episode of House of Cards, season 4. In the interest of keeping you current with pop culture (nay, ahead of your friends, family, and coworkers), I’m about to explain what happens in the last five minutes.

We no longer have to wait (remember waiting?) for the season finale of a TV series to see how it ends. Netflix has unleashed the entire season at once, as is the custom in our new era of media gluttony.

Needless to say, I’ve got major spoilers ahead. Some of it is pure speculation on my part, since I don’t have the context one can only get by watching the rest of the season. But this is honestly how the fourth season of House of Cards ends, as far as I can tell.

This is your last chance to abandon this post and watch the show like a normal human being. By which I mean spending the entire weekend binge-watching 13 hours of television. The New Normal™, as we’ll call it.

Last chance…

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This Is What Happens At The End Of House Of Cards [MAJOR SPOILERS]
Someone peeling a potato in a rather unsettling manner (GIF by Andrew LIszewski)

Someone peeling a potato in a rather unsettling manner (GIF by Andrew LIszewski)

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Seriously, this isn’t a joke. I’m about to spoil the end of the season for you.

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This Is What Happens At The End Of House Of Cards [MAJOR SPOILERS]
TV test pattern from June 8, 1989 (GIF by Matt Novak)

TV test pattern from 8 June 1989 (GIF by Matt Novak)

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If you’ve made it this far, I can only assume you want to know how the last five minutes of House of Cards ends.

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I assure you that this is not a game of chicken. If you don’t want this season of House of Cards spoiled for you, do not continue reading.

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Well, you asked for it.

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This Is What Happens At The End Of House Of Cards [MAJOR SPOILERS]

“They just posted on Twitter.”

Those were the first words spoken after I scrolled my Apple TV remote to the end of the last episode and worked my way backward by five minutes. There’s discussion amongst Underwood’s staff about blocking a website.

Underwood insists that they shouldn’t block it.

“The whole world should watch this, and we should too,” he says in a group that includes his wife Claire before they all walk into the war room.

“When you find them, you will kill them,” Underwood says in a hushed tone to a man holding a packet with the word SECRET marked in big letters. It’s safe to assume that he’s talking to somebody who might be able to kill people. People on TV with giant binders marked SECRET can usually get away with that kind of thing.

I get the distinct impression that some terrorist organisation is going to execute an American and broadcast the whole thing on social media. I just hope that if it’s on Twitter it gets reported for abuse.

Underwood and his most loyal aide have a discussion on the sidelines, but it seems clear that his aide has another dirty task perhaps not unlike the one that closes season three.

We cut to a shot of Underwood’s aide in a car outside a woman’s home. She gets in the car and it quickly becomes clear that she’s related to whatever horrible terrorist-oriented thing is about to be shown on social media.

“All these people in these houses,” the unnamed woman says while scanning the neighbourhood from the car. “About to see this awful thing that they will never be able to erase.”

The aide asks her if she was there when her husband died. Oh shit, was this a pre-taped social media terror snuff movie saved for primetime? Those terrorist shitbags sure know how to play the media.

The woman glances at the aide asking, “Have you ever watched someone die?”

Awkward. (He totally killed someone last season.)

He doesn’t respond and she kisses his hand, more or less confirming my suspicion that these two may have rubbed their genitals together at some point. But given the weird tension about husbands and terrorists and social media, I wasn’t sure. But they totally boned. It looks like it might even be love.

We cut back to the war room and see a big screen. The president and his advisers sit at a long table. A man is on his knees on the video screen while two Nordic hipster looking dudes with American accents emerge from each side saying that what they’re doing this in the name of “the Islamic caliphate”. One of the guys has a big knife and is a dead ringer for the racist Norwegian man who killed 77 people back in 2011.

We see the knife at the hostage’s throat and get a gross sound effect just before the camera cuts to Underwood’s advisers at the table. Claire doesn’t break eye contact with the video while Frank looks around the table, almost briefly delighted at the disgust.

“Turn off the sound,” Claire says as the camera continues to push down the table on Claire and Frank sitting stoically.

Frank looks directly at camera and delivers the line, “That’s right, we don’t submit to terror…”

Claire looks on at Frank as he talks to camera and Frank slowly turns his head to her. Gazing into each others eyes as if they had just gone on a multi-state killing spree, they both look back directly at the camera.

“We make the terror,” Frank says.

[FADE TO BLACK]

This Is What Happens At The End Of House Of Cards [MAJOR SPOILERS]

Did you ever skip ahead to the end of a book because you couldn’t wait to know how everything turned out? I was kind of at that point with House of Cards after the last season. I enjoyed the first season, thought the second season was good, and I guess the third season had its moments. But frankly, I just kind of want it to be over.

Once Frank Underwood became president it didn’t seem like the character could strive for much more. He’s the president of the United States. The fun of a character like Underwood was his backroom deals and underhanded tricks to get what he wanted. Once you’re president, everything is pretty much on the table. Throwing someone in front of a train is practically legal. Or at least it should be, if you apply the same logic to drone strikes on American citizens abroad.

As President Nixon once said, “When the President does it that means that it is not illegal.” Sure, that didn’t work out so well for Nixon, but you get my drift.

Yes, I’m going to go back and watch the entire season in order now. If you saw the spoiler alerts and are somehow still mad at me for ruining the show for you, rest assured that it’s your own fault. If nothing else, we all learned that self-control is a myth. We’re all just dumb animals acting on the whims of chemicals sloshing around in our disgusting bodies and synapses rapidly firing in our primitive brains — all of which, it should be noted, we have hilariously little understanding of to begin with.

House of Cards has been renewed for a fifth season, so this isn’t the last we’ll be seeing of President Underwood or whatever. So I guess you can take solace in that.

This Is What Happens At The End Of House Of Cards [MAJOR SPOILERS]


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