Fans Are Panicking About Alex's Fate In 'OITNB' Season 6, Here's The Low-Down

In classic Orange Is the New Black fashion, the prison drama's new season has viewers immediately worried about the fate of one of its longtime stars right off the bat. After moving from Litchfield Penitentiary to a maximum security prison, only a handful of the inmates we have come to know and love actually show up at the beginning of Orange Is the New Black Season 6, and the most alarming missing person is Alex Vause. So, is Alex in Orange Is the New Black Season 6 at all, or did we say goodbye to Alex for good? Let's go over what we know.

Spoiler alert: This post will discuss plot details from the first three episodes of Orange Is the New Black Season 6. At the very beginning of the newly released season, we actually only see 10 members of the main cast as they struggle to acclimate to the much stricter and more dangerous life in maximum security. Season 5 ended with Piper, Alex, Red, Nicky, Frieda, Suzanne, Taystee, Cindy, Daya, Gloria, and Blanca hiding out in a secret underground bunker as members of an under-trained, trigger-happy Community Emergency Response Team descended on them, assuming that the final holdouts from the prison riot may be planning an attack on them. Luckily, the first episode of Season 6 confirms that pretty much all of the women are alive and imprisoned yet again, except Alex is notably absent from the new holdings.

Obviously, this is incredibly troubling for Piper. Before the CERT team rushed the bunker at the very end of last season, Piper and Alex actually got engaged, and things finally seemed to be going well in their relationship. Now locked up in Administrative Segregation (Ad Seg) away from the general population of the maximum security prison, Piper has no clue whether Alex survived the CERT team's armed arrests or could have possibly been sent miles away to a separate prison. Piper spends all of her time in Ad Seg trying to find out what happened to Alex... but that proves exceptionally difficult given that the guards are hyper-violent and uncaring, and communicating with her fellow Litchfieldians involves complex secret messages and charades.

As time goes on, it seems to become more and more clear that Alex may have died down in that bunker. Piper even gets herself sent to the medical center in order to check for Alex there, but has no luck. And just as she is about to speak with the investigators working to indict the Litchfield inmates on inciting the riot, she gets a confusing coded message from Red that she thinks confirms Alex was killed. But really, Red was trying to tell Piper that former CO Desi Piscatella was killed (by a member of the CERT team, although Red does not know that part), and that the investigators were looking to pin that murder on the inmates.

Just as Piper seemed to give up all hope, she finally sees Alex alive and well when she leaves Ad Seg and enters the general population at max. But although the reunion is heartwarming, something tells me there is more drama to come between Piper and Alex this season.