When news broke last year that Kevin Spacey had committed a number of historical acts of abuse on young men and boys, his fans were left with a number of questions. How had this been allowed to happen for so long? Why had he ever thought it was okay for him to assault and harass so many people? Was this the end of his career? And, while those first two still remain conundrums today, the answer to the final question seems almost undoubtedly to be "yes".
Mere weeks after the story broke, Spacey was edited out of Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World after it had finished filming, and it didn't take long for Netflix to drop the actor from their books, either.
"Netflix will not be involved with any further production of House of Cards that includes Kevin Spacey," a Netflix spokesperson said in a statement at the time. "We will continue to work with MRC during this hiatus time to evaluate our path forward as it relates to the show. We have also decided we will not be moving forward with the release of the film Gore, which was in post-production, starring and produced by Kevin Spacey."
By that point, however, production was already underway on the hit series, and so many wondered what would become of the show.
Eventually, it was revealed that the show would go on without him - but only now do we know exactly how Frank Underwood gets written out. Unfortunately, it isn't all that creative, as you can see from this teaser trailer shared on Twitter:
Given the circumstances, it was probably for the best that Spacey's character was axed from the production. However, given recent comments from the now-leading actress, Robin Wright, people aren't sure about her taking over the main character role, either.
In an interview earlier this week, Spacey's former co-star said that the actor should be given another chance.
"I believe every human being has the ability to reform … In that sense, second chances, or whatever you are going to call it – absolutely, I believe in that. It’s called growth," she said.
She then went on to say that she felt pity for her former co-star, and, indeed, anyone else who has been in a similar position.
"I feel sorry for anybody whose life is in the public arena. It’s a nightmare, can you imagine? We do a job, we share [a performance] with viewers. Why does our private life have to be public? I hate that part of this industry. It’s so invasive.
"I believe everyone’s personal life should be personal. Positive, negative, neutral, whatever – I don’t believe it should be anybody’s business. But I’m not talking about [the #MeToo] movement – I’m talking about media. The exposure. It’s an awful feeling. A stranger deciding they know who you are … I mean, it’s criminal, it really is."
Meanwhile, a lot of fans are just downright angry that Spacey's character has been killed off - meaning, presumably, that they think a TV show is more important than keeping vulnerable people safe and setting a precedent of punishing abusers.
Whether the show will actually manage to attain the levels of success it had in its previous five seasons remains to be seen - but it looks like we'll find out very soon.
