One of the main speculations about House of Cards Season 5 that refuses to die down is the death of Frank Underwood, the character played by Kevin Spacey.
But would the show really kill off its lead character?
Michael Kelly weighed in on the rumors in an interview with Deadline.
"You lose characters that you love. We almost lost Frank, and I always have faith in the writers that no matter what road we go down, we're going to come back to what the show is," he said.
Kelly plays the role of Frank's right hand man Doug Stamper, who has also not been exempt from rumors of being killed off in the show.
Still, if ever Frank would be killed, many are speculating that it would be at the hands of Stamper himself. But Kelly highly doubts that his character would ever betray Frank.
"Those two men trust each other to the ends of the Earth. They're the only two people that each of them could count on. You've never seen Doug turn on Frank. We've never seen Frank turn on Doug. And they trust each other to the ends of the Earth so that's where Doug belongs. That's where he is. That's where he thrives in life," he said to CNN.
Rumors of Frank's death spawned from the implication from Season 4 of Claire planning to take down her husband.
Adding fuel to this theory is the idea of a House of Cards spinoff that was posed by EP Michael Dobbs, whose statement hints that they may be closing out the storyline of Frank Underwood in Season 5 and moving on to a spinoff that does not include Kevin Spacey.
"That is a very interesting question and one that we are putting our minds to actively because every show comes to a natural end. There are plenty of people from other parts of the world who want to make their version of House of Cards, which we're talking with. We'll see what happens with those," he said.
When the highly successful Netflix show returns for its fifth season, showrunner Beau Willimon will hand over the reins to senior writers Frank Pugliese and Melissa James Gibson. The show is expected to release its fifth season in 2017.
