During the E! Red Carpet event prior to the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday night, Orange is the New Black’s Danielle Brooks, who plays Tasha “Taystee” Jefferson, revealed a big nugget of information about the upcoming fifth season — the whole thing will take place over the course of just three days.
Note: Spoilers ahead, so if you haven’t yet binged season four of the Netflix original series, get on that ASAP before reading any further!
When we left the group of female inmates at Litchfield prison last summer, things had gone dark – really dark. Prison guard Piscatella (Brad William Henke) had been hired to put fear into the hearts of the ladies, and that he did. But things went awfully wrong, leading to the death of Poussey (Samira Wiley). In the final moments, a riot is about to break out, with the usually level-headed Daya (Dasha Polanco) picking up a fallen firearm and pointing it squarely at crooked guard Thomas “Humps” Humphrey (Michael Torpey). It’s a standoff. And the events that follow (or perhaps occur during) will take up much of season five.
We’ll bet that season five focuses a lot on Taystee, who was the closest friend to Poussey; Suzanne “Crazy Eyes,” Warren (Uzo Abuda), who finally seems to have become unhinged and shown the true depths of her mental instability; and Daya – the decision she makes with that gun could result in her character doing a complete 180. But we also wonder: What will happen to Baxter “Gerber” Bayley (Alan Aisenberg), the naive young prison guard who is to blame for Poussey’s accidental death? Race relations and conflict will likely continue to be central to the upcoming season.
However the approach, every episode of season 5, which is likely to feature 13 episodes, promises to be intense. Does Daya pull the trigger? Does someone else die? And how might Litchfield, and the women and guards within it, change for good?
Netflix has already renewed Orange is the New Black through its seventh season. While there’s no official premiere date for season five, if history repeats itself, we’ll see it some time this summer.
