This ‘House of Cards’ Season 2 Storyline Has A Chilling Connection To Today

Since the news of allegations against Harvey Weinstein broke nearly a month ago, we’ve seen something of a floodgate effect in Hollywood. Hundreds of individuals have come forward with stories of sexual abuse and harassment about big names, and Netflix found themselves sucked into the drama when Kevin Spacey was accused of sexual assault by actor Anthony Rapp (and multiple House of Cards crew members shortly afterwards). While they’ve since announced that Spacey has been fired from the show and it will end after its sixth season, this new information about the actor now paints a certain House of Cards Season 2 storyline in a chilling light.

In Season 2, Episode 2, “Chapter 15”, Frank is due to pin General Dalton McGinnis with his four-star general rank when Claire reveals that he was the man who raped her freshman year of college. While Frank is initially infuriated and doesn’t want to honor him, Claire urges him to go forward with the ceremony. She has other plans in mind. Two episodes later, in “Chapter 17”, Claire is interviewed on CNN and reveals to the nation that it was McGinnis who assaulted her. While she lies that he got her pregnant and she had an abortion as a result, the story of the assault is true – and ends up sparking a national conversation.

In the episodes that follow, multiple women begin to come forward detailing their brutal rapes at the hands of McGinnis during their time in the military. Private Megan Hennessey is the most vocal, initially terrified of pressing forward with her own story but evidently given the courage by Claire to continue on and eventually ensure that McGinnis is no longer allowed to continue abusing women in the Marine Corps. In the end, Megan may be a pawn in the Underwoods game to help pass legislation to reform military sexual assault, but the message here is powerful. At least three other women come forward (and it is implied that there are many others) with accusations against McGinnis, and he is eventually taken down and sentenced to forty years in prison. We rarely see this kind of justice occur in real life, but what Claire’s story (and the stories of the women that follow) accomplish is a national conversation about sexual assault in the military – one that bears a striking resemblance to the international conversation about sexual abuse in Hollywood currently taking place.

Since The New York Times published their damning Harvey Weinstein exposé a little over a month ago, a floodgate of sorts has broken open in the industry and hundreds of people have come forward with their own stories of abuse at the hands of industry bigwigs. Today, it’s unsettling to watch Kevin Spacey play a role in this resonant storyline on House of Cards after having read harrowing allegations against him. This all began with Anthony Rapp’s story of Spacey having made an advance towards him when he was just fourteen years old, and because of Rapp’s courage, a slew of men have now come forward with their own stories about the actor’s pattern of abuse. Now Spacey, like McGinnis, is experiencing a dramatic fall from grace – one that may very well see him blacklisted from the industry forever.