Veep Will Conclude With a Surprise Ending That Is Just What America Deserves

Veep is ending this year, and you better believe its legacy is not lost on its creators and star Julia Louis-Dreyfus: The show will always be known for portraying a female president fighting the patriarchy, for brilliantly being just as batsh-- crazy as real political events and also somehow predicting them too. At the Television Critics Association press tour on Thursday, Louis-Dreyfus, speaking to reporters via satellite from Austria, reflected on Veep's legacy as it preps to air its final season beginning March 31, and she was equal parts humble and poignant about playing Selina Meyer -- a female president who made a huge impact on culture just by existing, even if Selina herself wasn't always a role model. "The fact that I played a female president was boundary pushing," Louis-Dreyfus said. Selina has become known for her bad behavior and acidic tongue, and Veep concludes, fans shouldn't expect any of that to change. "I'm not going to say Selina evolves. She's truer to herself but that's for you to determine whether or not that's a good thing," the actress explained.

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Veep's seventh and final season will be seven episodes instead of its usual 10, which showrunner David Mandel said was just happenstance rather than a pre-planned choice. "I don't know if it was a big decision," he said. "We reached a natural point story-wise and we looked at each other and said, 'I think that's the end.' I think you'll find there's 10 episodes worth of stuff in them."

While they were of course mum on exactly how things play out, they did tease an unpredictable ending that Dreyfus said she was happy with. "I am emotional person to begin with," Dreyfus said, "but it really caught me by surprise." Could this mean Selina becomes president once more? Seeing Selina running for president in the final episodes may make fans happy, but as we learned in Season 6, Selina's decision to run again was actually a sad moment because it meant she couldn't be happy not running for president; not even finishing her memoir or getting a presidential library at Yale could fill the void. However the show wraps, Mandel said it will continue the great Veep tradition of being just a few paces ahead of the insane real-world political circus. "I think it's the right ending for America," he quipped.

Veep's final season premieres Sunday, March 31 at 10:30/9:30c on HBO.