It feels like we've been waiting forever [1] to find out what happens to our favourite Orange Is the New Black [2] characters, but the seventh and final season [3] is finally streaming on Netflix [4]. Some old favourites return [5] for final cameos, while the current cast of series regulars gets one more season to wrap up their storylines. It's a bittersweet final season [6], with happy endings for some and sad — or downright tragic — finales for others. If you're ready to see how all of the current characters' stories conclude, read on.
This pretty much goes without saying, but major spoilers for Orange Is the New Black [7] final season ahead!
What Happens to Piper in Orange Is the New Black Season 7?
Piper, whose incarceration started the whole series, comes full circle by the end, released and readjusting to life out of prison. She reconciles with her father, who helps her get a job at his accounting firm, and despite Alex believing she'd be better without her, she sticks by her wife's side and is last seen taking some classes and heading off to visit Alex in her new facility.
What Happens to Alex in Orange Is the New Black Season 7?
Alex goes through some major blackmail during the final season, forced to smuggle and deal contraband by corrupt officers. When one of them falls in unrequited love with Alex, Alex pays the price and is forced to transfer to another prison. She tries to let Piper go and let her see other people, but by the end, Piper is awaiting Alex's release and visiting her.
What Happens to Taystee in Orange Is the New Black Season 7?
Faced with a bleak future and a life sentence, Taystee falls into a deep depression and comes close to attempting suicide. However, she's able to turn things around and decides to start teaching finance classes and helping inmates prepare to adjust to life outside of prison. Most movingly, she secures an investor and starts the Poussey Washington Fund, a fund to provide micro-loans to recently released convicts to help them get their new lives started.
What Happens to Pennsatucky in Orange Is the New Black Season 7?
At first, it seems like Pennsatucky is getting her life together. She decides to take the GED exam, discovering she's dyslexic but working hard to prepare herself for the exam. Tragically, one of the guards, Luschek, forgets to file the disability paperwork so that Pennsatucky can get the necessary extra time, so she answers all the questions at random and, distraught, relapses and ODs. At her memorial, her GED diploma arrives in the mail.
What Happens to Red in Orange Is the New Black Season 7?
Red's ending is a decidedly sad one as well. Towards the end of the series, she's diagnosed with dementia and slowly begins to lose her grip on reality. She and Lorna gravitate towards each other, since they're both suffering from slow mental declines, and she seems to find some comfort in caring for Lorna.
What Happens to Lorna in Orange Is the New Black Season 7?
Lorna has one of the more tragic endings on the show. After finding out that her baby son has died from pneumonia, Lorna begins suffering from frequent psychotic episodes. She continues to regress and bonds with Red, but is last seen being sung to sleep by Red as if she were a child.
What Happens to Gloria in Orange Is the New Black Season 7?
Gloria nearly gets time added onto her sentence when she's caught with a smuggled cell phone. Luckily for her, a guard decides to do the right thing this time. Luschek admits to being behind the smuggling scheme, and Gloria is released and reunited with her kids at last.
What Happens to Cindy in Orange Is the New Black Season 7?
Cindy is able to get out on early release, but it comes at a high cost: testimony that lands her friend Taystee a life sentence. Her life out of prison isn't all sunshine and roses, though. She and her family suffer another rift, and she's briefly left homeless before they reconcile.
What Happens to Nicky in Orange Is the New Black Season 7?
Nicky finally gets to put her skills to good use. By the end of the series, she's got a new gig as the head chef at the detention centre's kitchen.
What Happens to Blanca in Orange Is the New Black Season 7?
Blanca finally gets her happy ending. With some help from Freedom For Immigrants — which is a real-life organisation providing bond to free immigrants from ICE detention — she's released. Her boyfriend Diablo was deported to Honduras, so she flies there so they can start a life together.
What Happens to Flaca in Orange Is the New Black Season 7?
Flaca ends the series by deciding to start taking a stand and helping wrongfully detained immigrants. She's placed on lunch duty and uses lunch trays as cover to collect information from the women who need help.
What Happens to Hellman in Orange Is the New Black Season 7?
In a happy ending for him, though not for future inmates, the sociopathic Hellman is promoted to warden.
What Happens to Daya in Orange Is the New Black Season 7?
Daya's come a long way since we first met her, but in her case, that's not necessarily a good thing. She's the ruthless driving force behind the drug smuggling ring at the prison, alienating everyone, even her mother. We don't get much closure with Daya: her mother punches her in hopes of shaking her out of her current situation, but we don't see or hear about her again.
What Happens to Suzanne in Orange Is the New Black Season 7?
In one of the season's quirkier plots, Suzanne spends a good chunk of her time with a new program raising chickens in a coop, before it's shut down at the end of the season. She's last seen at Pennsatucky's memorial, leading everyone in a strangely touching chorus of the Mountain Dew theme song in Pennsatucky's honour.
What Happens to Maritza in Orange Is the New Black Season 7?
What Happens to Caputo in Orange Is the New Black Season 7?
For the most part, Caputo's got a good thing going: he and Fig are living together and trying to have a baby. Professionally, though, he's starting over: after being accused of past inappropriate behaviour, he realises he did behave badly in the past and resigns from his teaching gig at the prison, moving on to find something new.