So you finally finished Orange Is the New Black season five (this is your one spoiler warning). You've processed those awful torture scenes, taken a beat to collect yourselves after the riot ended and had enough time to rectify your feelings with the death of you know who. What now? Now you need to know what's going to happen in Orange Is the New Black season six. It's going to be about another year until you return to Litchfield (or wherever the inmates are going after that cliffhanger ending), so we've got you covered. Here's what we know.
Orange Is the New Black season six is for sure happening, and so is season seven. The Emmy-winning series was renewed through season seven following season four.
"Three more years! Not quite a political term, but still plenty of time to do some interesting things. In some cultures, 'May you lead an interesting life,' is a curse, but I don't live in those cultures," Jenji Kohan, the show's creator who will remain on board as showrunner for the entire run, said in a statement when it was announced. "Here's to keeping it interesting. Thanks Netflix! Both thanks and you're welcome Lionsgate! And kudos and gratitude to the stellar cast and crew and writers and producers and editors and musicians and mixers and shleppers...with whom I have the pride and honor of crafting this show. Three more years! Three more years!"
But what about after? Danielle Brooks, Taystee on OITNB, played coy with EW about the future of the show after season seven.
"Who knows? We have until seven for sure," she said when asked if seven would be the end. "To be honest, I don't know if I want to play an inmate past that. I don't know if I want to do that because I have a lot in me and a lot that I want to share with the world and different characters I want to be able to bring to life. After seven, I think it might be time for me to spread my wings, but I don't want to speak too fast on that."
Kohan told The New York Times she hasn't decided about when the series will conclude. "I haven't made a final decision yet, but I'm leaning toward ending it after seven—although the nature of the show is one that can go on and on because you can bring in new people," she said.
But she does have an ending in mind, which shill not share.
"We've talked about endgames since season one, actually," writer and co-executive producer Lauren Morelli told The Hollywood Reporter. "With this show, from the beginning, the one question you always get is: ‘What are you going to do about Piper's sentence, since [the real Piper] was only in there for 13 months?' So it's been hanging in the air from the beginning, which I think has sort of required us to have a sense of: What will that look like? When will we get there? And, how will we get there? That isn't to say that plan is set in stone at all, but I think Jenji definitely has ideas as to what the shape of that is."
OK, so the ending is up in the air, but we will see more Frieda next year. Dale Soules has been upped to series regular for the next installment, Deadline reported. That makes sense since Frieda was one of the last standing inmates as the show faded out on season five. She stood with Suzanne (Uzo Aduba), Black Cindy (Adrienne C. Moore), Red (Kate Mulgrew), Taystee (Brooks), Piper (Taylor Schilling), Alex (Laura Prepon), Nicky (Natasha Lyonne), Gloria (Selenis Leyva) and Blanca (Laura Gomez) as the guards found their way into the old swimming hole.
"We don't have the next script, so we genuinely don't know," Lyonne told THR. "We don't know if all of our characters die. If some of us die. We don't know if we kill everybody that walks through that door."
"There is no going back," Leyva, told USA Today. "As an actress, I was mortified the entire time. Because I was like, ‘What does this mean for Gloria? Does she die in the next episode?'...I always think, is season six going to start with limbs everywhere? It's scary, the aftermath of it all."
While they may be in the dark about their fates, that hasn't stopped the actors from dreaming of what's ahead.
"I'm interested to see how Suzanne survives in the new world. It almost feels like we're setting sail," Aduba told THR.
As for the inmates already in custody, viewers saw Flaca (Jackie Cruz) and Maritza (Diane Guerrero) get split up, Maria (Jessica Pimentel) release the guards, Lorna (Yael Stone) surrender herself and tell the guards she was pregnant, and Daya (Dascha Polanco) turn herself in for shooting the guard. Daya was in custody before the riot ended.
"Daya's on her own; she just committed a crime (and) obviously that will be punished," Polanco told USA Today. "You might not see her ever again."
Regardless of what happens to the characters in jeopardy, one thing we do know is the aftermath of the riot will be felt.
"I can't speak to season six, but I can tell you in terms of what we were doing and talking about and planning all season is that we felt like there needed to be a big shift. We felt like we really had to follow this through," Morelli told THR.
Orange Is the New Black will likely return to Netflix in the summer of 2018.