3 Reasons the Next Season of Orange Is the New Black Might Be Piper's Last

Updated on 6/6/2016 at 7:10 PM

Though Piper Chapman — portrayed by Taylor Schilling — serves as our initial access point to Orange Is the New Black's Litchfield Penitentiary and the many inmates who inhabit it, her personal storyline has taken a back seat to some of the other, more compelling characters. After three seasons that have gradually shifted the focus away from Piper and onto other inmates — like Suzanne, Nicky, Daya, and Cindy — we've begun to wonder about Piper's role as our Litchfield liaison and the declining utility of that.

When POPSUGAR Beauty spoke with Schilling, she seemed to confirm some of our suspicions that Piper might slowly be phased out . . . or killed off. Below is a telling excerpt from that interview.

POPSUGAR: You can stop me if I'm looking too deeply into this, but I've been thinking a lot about the evolution of Piper's hair. In flashbacks preprison, she's shown with really long locks, then when she arrives at the prison she wears her shoulder-length hair down usually, and then in the previews for this season it's frequently pulled back. I wonder if there's some sort of symbolic meaning behind that gradual change.
Taylor Schilling: Oh, yeah. I don't think that's reading into anything. That's so spot on. Piper's outsides are becoming less and less important. She's kind of moving further and further away from the idea of what she thought she was. She's becoming more practical. She's becoming a creature of the prison, and there's no space for excess. Her only need is for survival, and brushing her hair doesn't really factor into the equation.

PS: In the last season we do see her spiral into becoming a total gangster with her whole underwear operation. For this next season, I'm honestly a little concerned for Piper. It doesn't look too good for her from what I've seen.
TS: Yeah, this is a tough year for Piper.

PS: In one of the photos for the upcoming season, it seems as though she's about to get her hand smashed?
TS: No — you'll see.

PS: Does she make it out OK?
TS: I don't know . . . I don't know.

Though we fully realize that she could just be Jon Snow-ing us, we have some details to back up this theory.

She's Pissed Off a Lot of People

With the success of her prison panty operation last season, Piper becomes increasingly power-hungry and manipulative. Led by Flaca, Piper's "employees" — or the inmates responsible for wearing the underwear Piper sells on the outside — attempt to unionize so that they can receive their due compensation. While Piper agrees to pay them, she fires Flaca to set an example, a move that could prove to be detrimental for her.

Then there's also the way she royally screws over Stella. While Stella does empty out Piper's business profits, Piper retaliates by hiding contraband in Stella's bunk, which results in her getting sent to a maximum-security prison. To quote Boo, "Damn, Chapman. That is some stone cold sh*t."

She's Already Served Most of Her Sentence

Piper doesn't really have that much time left in Litchfield. Originally sentenced to 15 months, she's already served nine. While we did follow her life on the outside with Larry (remember him?) in the first season, I can't imagine the show would follow her storyline when/if she's finished her sentence. So either we bid Piper adieu when she's released or she meets an untimely fate on the inside.

Alex Could Cross Her . . . Again

As Piper's tattoo states, "Trust no b*tch." Alex has proven herself to be pretty shady time and again — although Piper's antics have rivaled hers as of late. At the end of the season, it's implied that Alex is about to be killed when she finds herself face to face with one of Kubra's henchmen who's snuck his way in as a prison guard. Another theory, however, posits that Kubra actually plans to help break Alex out of prison since she holds more value to him as a criminal associate than as . . . well, dead. Since Piper somehow always finds a way to enmesh herself in Alex's life, she could simply come to know too much — and since Kubra and his accomplices are actually insane, her involvement could also lead to her death.