'Orange is the New Black' season 5 rumors, spoilers: Upcoming season to be Piper Chapman's last?

"Orange is the New Black" is in for a more tension-filled fifth season.

After just coming out of a slew of cancellation rumors, the hit Netflix original series has once again become the subject of a brand new set of viewer speculations, centering on the main protagonist, Piper Chapman.

It seems that Poussey Washington's unexpected death in the previous season has prompted fans of the show to wonder about the fate of the rest of Litchfield Penitentiary's inmates, and talks about Piper's death in the upcoming season has been creating the most buzz.

Speaking to Pop Sugar, Taylor Schilling, who plays Piper, hinted that the fifth season will not be an easy one for her character. And when asked if her character would survive the tough challenges headed her way, Schilling expressed her uncertainty in a few, foreboding words, "I don't know."

The hit prison-oriented drama-comedy was based on the memoir, "Orange is the New Black: My year in a Women's Prison," written by Piper Kerman on whom Schilling's character was roughly based. The first season found Piper Chapman, a 30-year-old New Yorker, being sentenced to a 15-month imprisonment for unwittingly transporting drug money for her partner, Alex Vause, played by Laura Prepon. The series has since then expanded to involve the storylines of the ragtag inmates in Litchfield Penitentiary, gradually moving the spotlight away from Piper.

Jenji Kohan has once told Variety that "Orange is the New Black" has always been meant to feature an ensemble, depicting the lives of a variety of characters. That even though Piper introduced the viewers to how life was like in a women's federal prison, it did not necessarily mean that Piper would have to be around for the entire run.

Another possibility is that she could get released, although Bustle did also speculate that with Piper's involvement in one shady in-prison deal after the next, her sentence could also get extended to another year or so.

Questions about Piper's fate will be answered when "Orange is the New Black" season 5 streams in Netflix in the summer of 2017.