Recently House of Cards showrunner Beau Willimon posted an image of him and Michael Kelly, who plays Doug Stamper, celebrating Kevin Spacey's, who portrays Frank Underwood, win at the SAG awards.

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Willimon put up the picture on Twitter on January 25 with the following caption:

"Fuck yeah @KevinSpacey for winning #SAGaward for best actor in drama series! @HouseofCards @netflix @michaeljkellyjr"

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Kelly has always shown a lot of support for the show, and been present at most events related to it, even after his assumed death in season 3. He also went for the Golden Globes with Willimon and the crew, and featured in a spoof preceding the award ceremony. It seems like the actor is still very much involved with the series, which feeds fuel to the speculation that he might be returning in the next chapter, and may still well be alive.

In fact he has been the main face of the recent spoofs with Ricky Gervais and also showed up for the Emmys with show creator Willimon, despite the fact that he hadn't been nominated.

In June last year, Willimon spoke to the Washington Post about the story arc of Doug and Rachel. Speaking about Rachel's character he suggested that the way her arc eventually panned out was pleasantly surprising for him and the writers too, as she was initially meant to be shortlived, just a prop in the background.

"Rachel Posner was never intended to be a big character. She was listed as "call girl" in her first two episodes," he said. "But Corey Stoll was doing such a fantastic job as Peter Russo, I wanted to expand his story. As part of that process, the call girl came back into the story, got a name and became a fully-fledged character. And as a result, this very complex dynamic between her and Doug Stamper started to form."

After all that went down in the finale between Rachel and Doug, leaving him severely injured, the question about Doug's future on the show did come up. But Willmon was tight-lipped, simply stating, "There's only one way to find out."

Watch a trailer for Season 3 of House of Cards: