The timing of the trailer for House of Cards season 3 couldn't be more perfect — in more ways than one. Just after Kevin Spacey collected his Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Drama, and on a victorious night for streaming TV, Netflix aired the sneak peek. The clip features skillful editing that makes this whole upcoming season seem like a deadly, choreographed dance.
Set to the driving beat of "Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums" by A Perfect Circle, the trailer begins with President Frank Underwood at his Oval Office desk. "You want to know what takes real courage?" he asks in voiceover (while his image remains creepily close-mouthed). "Holding it all together when the stakes are this high."
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We're then treated to a series of images showing how Underwood's administration doesn't run quite as smoothly as he'd hoped — but is just as twisted and scary as fans of House of Cards would expect. There's a military funeral, a congressional hearing, protests, a rejected handshake with a man who looks a lot like Vladimir Putin, and a very dark hallway.
"We're murderers, Francis," Robin Wright's Claire Underwood says.
"We're survivors!" he replies.
Season 3, which premieres on Netflix on February 27, will feature appearances by Pussy Riot's Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, a villain by the name of Anto Ivanovich, which certainly points to some kind of Russia plot. Other new recurring characters will be an ambassador to the U.N. played by Jenna Stern and a still-unspecified character played by Kim Dickens.