The latest Orange Is The New Black trailer is out, and make sure you’re sitting down when you watch it, because it is intense.
Warning: the remainder of this article contains open spoilers for the last season of Orange Is The New Black as well as the next season. So if you’re not up to speed on what’s been happening… why the heck are you reading this article?
The new trailer, released today by Netflix, isn’t a trailer in the traditional sense. That is, it’s not several scenes from several episodes cut together into a package. Rather, it’s merely the first 60 seconds of the first episode of the next season. And in order to understand the trailer, you need to understand what happened during the last episode of last season (“Toast Can Never Be Bread Again”).
As the OITNB Wiki explains : thanks to budget cuts, corporate chicanery, and under-trained guards, a cafeteria protest got out of control, leading to popular inmate Poussey Washington (Samira Wiley) being accidentally killed by a guard who was trying to restrain her.
“Ain’t nothing she did that could’ve called for that!”
As Litchfield Penitentiary’s corporate bosses try to spin the situation, the inmates, fed up, start to riot. As the groups of inmates, separated by their cliques (black inmates, white inmates, Latino inmates) gather in a hall, the situation devolves further out of control. Eventually, a guard produces a gun – a gun that then winds up in the hands of inmate Daya (Dascha Polanco). In the final frames of that particular scene (the episode ends with a flashback showing an alive-and-well Poussey about to embark on the next stage of her life’s journey). Daya calls the guard from whom she took the gun a “piece of s**I” and points it at him. End scene.
Watch the first minute of Orange is the New Black Season 5 now https://t.co/wh7iLk7MrA pic.twitter.com/gDNQNzW7sX
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) April 11, 2017
The trailer, which you can watch below, shows the first minute of the aftermath of that chaotic penultimate scene.
For those who can’t watch the video above, here’s what happens: as Daya points his gun at him, the terrified guard, Humphrey, stares at Daya, seemingly waiting to die. As the inmates scream and egg her on, Daya calls for quiet. Meanwhile, Piper and Alex (Taylor Schilling and Laura Prepon, respectively), talk about how they’re going to avoid trouble from now on, just as they walk into a riot. Thinking better of it, they turn around and run while more inmates join the fray. Then, as the screen goes black, you hear a gunshot and everything goes quiet.
Netflix muestra un impactante primer minuto de ‘Orange Is The New Black’ https://t.co/tUslPXa2CU pic.twitter.com/NSvN2GCbGO
— Vertele (@Vertele) April 11, 2017
USA Today writer Kelly Lawler speculates that that gunshot could mean everything , or it could mean nothing.
“Hear that gunshot at the end of the clip? Does that mean Daya shot the guard? Or someone else? Or maybe the ceiling?”
Either way, it’s not going to end well for Daya. Prison inmates who take weapons from correctional officers, point them at them, and then fire them (at the ceiling or otherwise) are not going to be looked upon favorably by their captors.
Meanwhile, it seems that Orange Is The New Black is shifting gears next season, as far as storytelling is concerned. Lawler notes that the entire season will take place over the course of just three days (although it seems likely that the show will continue with its storytelling technique of given snippets about the past lives of the inmates before they came to Litchfield).
Are you excited about the upcoming season of Orange Is The New Black ? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
[Featured Image by by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images]