The Affair season 5 casts new Helen love interest; is Vik dead?
Related The Affair video – Check out our take on some of the other departures coming up for this show in the video below. For some additional insight, remember to subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube and checking out our full The Affair playlist.
According to a new report from Variety, Danish actor Claes Bang has been cast in a recurring role on the fifth and final season, where he will take on the character of Sasha Mann (does this sound like “such a man” to anyone else? Perfect love interest name). Anyhow, the description labels the character as a “charismatic, A-list movie star who will play an influential role in both Helen (Maura Tierney) and Noah’s (Dominic West) lives in Season 5. As Helen’s love interest this year, Sasha’s minimalistic lifestyle and objectivist way of thinking will influence how she lives her own life in the wake of a personal loss.”
Basically, all of this seems to confirm that Vik will be gone from this world, which makes some sense given the pancreatic cancer that was slowly starting to overtake him. He closed out the season in a hospital bed, not too long after the series also lost the character of Alison (Ruth Wilson, whose exit has already been covered rather extensively).
What’s rather-fascinating about the Bang casting here is that he and Dominic West (who plays Noah) already have a history working together in the film The Square. He’s also appeared in The Girl in the Spider’s Web alongside The Bay of Silence. This is an actor with a lot going on and with that, it’s kind of impressive The Affair was able to get him at all.
Yet, this casting doesn’t do a lot for us in the sense of actually starting to understand precisely how season 5 of The Affair is actually going to work in the first place. How do you do a show without half your main cast and still have it be engaging? West and Maura Tierney are great, but so were Joshua Jackson and Wilson. To be fair, Jackson may appear in an episode or two to wrap up the story of Cole … with some extra emphasis on the word “may” since nothing is even remotely confirmed at the moment. This is a show that at one point was TV’s best relationship drama — we’d even argue that season 4 was some of the best television out there! (We won’t mention season 3; nobody really should.) It deserves to have the best ending possible and despite whatever trepidation there may be in our heart over it, we’ll do our best to cross our fingers and hope that showrunner Sarah Treem has some awesome ideas to wrap this all up in a way that is satisfying for us all.
Based on the timing of this casting alone, it’s pretty clear that The Affair season 5 will be coming at some point in 2019.
What do you think about this casting for The Affair, and are you going to officially miss Vik if this is, in fact, the end for him? Share now in the comments! (Photo: Showtime.)