Orange Is the New Black is saying goodbye to Litchfield.
Netflix released a first look at the upcoming season of Jenji Kohan’s prison dramedy on Tuesday. Signifying “a whole new world,” as spoken by leading inmate Piper (Taylor Schilling), the premiere teaser says “bye-bye” to Litchfield Penitentiary and that the new season is headed “to the Max.” Max is the name for the maximum security facility also on the female prison’s property. The sixth season releases July 27.
The video (below) shows Litchfield, the longtime prison home to the Orange inmates, uninhabitable. The fifth season’s cliffhanger ending saw the prisoners losing their season-long standoff, with potentially devastating repercussions.
As riot police blew up a bunker holding 10 prisoners, the rest of the inmates were bussed off to undisclosed locations, signaling the move away from Litchfield. The fate of those 10 characters — Frieda (Dale Soules), Suzanne (Uzo Aduba), Cindy (Adrienne C. Moore), Taystee (Danielle Brooks), Red (Kate Mulgrew), Piper (Schilling), Alex (Laura Prepon), Nicky (Natasha Lyonne), Gloria (Selenis Leyva) and Blanca (Laura Gomez) — was left up in the air. Riots tend to not end well for inmates — especially for those who step up to lead or, in this case, take guards hostage — and Orange has long been committed to shining a light on the reality of the injustice in America’s prison systems.
Bye bye, Litch. pic.twitter.com/Y9tWQtIO37
— Orange Is the New… (@OITNB) June 5, 2018
Netflix later released four photos of the inmates’ new home — and the maximum security facility is a far cry from Litchfield. Brief images of Max have also been added to the series’ opening sequence, giving the Orange intro its first update since the show launched. The phone booths have been replaced with shackles and the new sleeping quarters are far more secure.
Litch is no more! Check out the new prison #OITNB S6 takes place in pic.twitter.com/2VleFPUwP0
— See What’s Next (@seewhatsnext) June 13, 2018
“Orange Is the New Black” gets an updated credit sequence for Season 6 — WATCH NOW: pic.twitter.com/t0PB0p0K3d
— See What’s Next (@seewhatsnext) June 13, 2018
Orange, produced by Lionsgate Television, has already been renewed through season seven. Series creator Kohan has not ruled out the seventh season being the Emmy-winning series’ last.
The fifth season, which charted the 13-episode riot incited by the pivotal death of Poussey Washington (Samira Wiley), was received with mixed reviews. The entire season takes place over the course of three days. After its release, Kohan acknowledged that some of the plot points were “fan fiction,” due to having a nearly all-new writers room.
“We had lost a bunch of the original writers,” Kohan’s co-producer on Orange, Tara Herrmann, told The New Yorker. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was just a new dynamic — people were attached to the characters as viewers, not as creators.” The sixth season also saw the exit of longtime writer Lauren Morelli, now showrunner for Netflix’s limited series Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City.
Co-star Moore had told THR that the series would be getting a “facelift” with season six. “Toward the end of season five, there were some people that were agreeing to stick together, and there were some people that were looking out for themselves,” said the actress who plays Black Cindy of the schism the riot created within the prison. “We’ll see the repercussions of those decisions in this next season.”
Kohan also told THR that the Orange timeline had prevented her from infusing any of the current political climate into the last season, but that she would be looking for ways to take on President Trump with season six. Orange‘s world is only 10 months into Piper’s 18-month sentence, setting the show in the past and before Trump’s election. “Do we just throw the timeline out the window?” Kohan asked. “Season five is season five, but for six, I don’t think anyone can help but incorporate some of the feelings associated with what’s going on and the divisions and all that stuff.”
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June 15, 6 a.m. Updated with first look pictures, new credit sequence.
