Executive producer and showrunner Beau Willimon reveals the meaning behind this season’s most talked-about moments. Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS for Season 3!
1. Why did Season 3 open with Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) literally pissing on his father's grave?
Netflix
Season 3, Episode 1: "Chapter 27"
"First of all, one of the big questions at the end of Season 2 was: Is Doug [Matthew Kelly] alive? And for some viewers, not everyone had this reaction, but you see Frank arriving at a graveyard and the assumption is that he's visiting Doug's grave ... So it prolongs the suspense in a way for some viewers. And then we have the revelation that it's not Doug at all. We still don't know at that point if Doug's alive, but we know that at least this grave isn't his.
Second of all, legacy was going to be an important thing for Frank as he navigates his way through the presidency. And while we don't use the word 'legacy' there, he definitely touches upon a theme by saying, 'When they show up at my funeral, they'll have to wait in line, unlike your funeral, my failure of a father, where no one showed up but me.'
And also, it was some irreverent fun with Frank. I knew that this season was going to take a different tonal and stylistic approach, that we were really going to get into the emotional journey and drama of the characters, and right off the bat, I wanted to give people a little bit of comedy, a little bit of fun before we got into some pretty bleak story with Doug Stamper for the next 25 minutes. I knew that we weren't going to see Francis, except on TV, for 25 minutes, and I wanted to make sure they got a taste of Frank so they felt secure they were going to see him again in that episode, if not for a little while."
2. Was Doug always going to live?
Netflix
Season 3, Episode 1: "Chapter 27"
"For a moment at the beginning of breaking Season 2, we flirted with him actually being dead. We were talking about Doug's arc for Season 2 and we knew that Rachel Posner [Rachel Brosnahan] was a problem. We were really interested in this bizarre relationship that formed between them, which is difficult to pin down: Is it more sexual? More fatherly? Is it about loneliness? Is it a mix of all three? But at the end of the day, she was a loose end — and we know how the Underwoods, and Doug Stamper by association, deal with loose ends.
So naturally, the first place we went at the end of Season 2, as we began to break it, was that Doug had to kill Rachel. And when we have a strong dramatic idea like that, my first impulse is to say, 'What is the opposite of that idea? Is the opposite idea truly awful or is it actually even better?' The opposite of that was Rachel killed Doug. We didn't know how or why, but the moment I said that — because it was sacrilegious to say that about a character we loved so much — everyone's jaw dropped and we all went silent for a few seconds. It was such a provocative thought that I said, 'You know what that means, guys? She's gotta die. We've gotta do that. If it is affecting us this way, just talking about it, imagine seeing it on-screen?'
So we start talking about that for about half the day. Could we really do this? Could we live with ourselves? Is this right for the story? It's a provocative idea, but we didn't want to do it just for that fake. Then we realized that we could actually do both. We developed a story where it seemed like Doug was going to kill Rachel and then she turned the tables on him. It could seem like he might have been left for dead, but we could write it in such a way that he would actually be alive when we came into Season 3. When we finally arrived at that, we realized that was the best possible option because we got to do all of the above."
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