They’re back! For those of us who have been patiently waiting to see when we’d get to get to visit the Litchfield prison at the center of Netflix’s award-winning show, Orange Is the New Black, we don’t have to wait no more. Pencil it in: June 17. But brace yourselves. If the trailer for season four is anything to go by, we’re in for a bumpy ride.
After a season where the inmates’ story lines revolved mostly around issues of motherhood, it looks like we’re headed for a darker, more intense season, one which might finally give Jessica Pimentel’s character, Maria, a meaty storyline. In the trailer we see her angrily going up to Piper (Taylor Schilling) and telling her, “I am going to bury you!” It explains why we hear that Piper has “started to feel unsafe lately.” We’re hoping we’ll finally get a backstory episode for Maria who, you’ll remember, was pregnant for most of the first season and has dealt with the pain of not being there for her daughter — an issue which became even more pronounced when her boyfriend Yadriel informed her last season that he’d no longer be bringing the baby in for visits, not wanting to expose their daughter to her mother’s prison life.
To further complicate things for Piper, a recent photo from the set teases a plot point the trailer left out. In the shocking picture, Blanca (Laura Gomez) is forcefully holding down Piper’s head near a not-yet-lit stovetop. With tears in her eyes and a gag covering her mouth, we can only imagine what’s to come for the protagonist. Things don’t look good for the usually bubbly Piper.
Much of the drama of the new season promises to focus on the fact that the prison has become a for-profit enterprise. Already struggling to maintain order, we last saw the women at Litchfield making room for a big influx of inmates. As Aleida (Elizabeth Rodriguez) puts it, “It’s sardines time, bitches!”
Can the petty rivalries and increasingly fractured personal relationships in the prison survive this overcrowding as well as what looks to be an army of inept or outright cruel COs that are now in charge? “Some Will Fight. Others Will Fall” the trailer’s tagline tells us and from the looks of it, neither possibility looks particularly preferable, but boy does it look like it’ll make great TV.
Season four of Orange Is the New Black drops on Netflix June 17, 2016 at 12:01 a.m. PT.