The ending of The Diplomat’s second season explained by showrunner Keri Russell

Warning: The following story contains spoilers from the season two finale of “The Diplomat.”

When Keri Russell’s Kate Wyler was ready to sound the alarm about corruption in the UK, a conspiring politician “Diplomat” Season 2 took a sharp turn.

In the Netflix series, Kate and her team gather incriminating evidence against British Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) to prove that he was behind the attack on the British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous. However, their investigation takes a turn when Trowbridge’s former advisor, Margaret Roylin (Celia Imrie), tells Kate that Trowbridge was not involved in the attack and that she had hired Russian mercenary Roman Lenkov to stage an attack that would cause outrage, not harm. As we know, this did not go according to plan and led to the death of 40 Royal Navy personnel.

When Vice President Grace Penn (Allison Janney) – whom Kate is supposed to replace in the wake of the scandal involving Grace’s husband – arrives in the UK to help contain the growing mess, Kate learns that it was Grace who suggested the idea to Roylin. lead America’s diplomatic aid plan. So Kate was right that the call was coming from inside the house, but she didn’t realize it was inside her house.

In the season two finale, as Kate considers becoming vice president for the first time, Grace’s plans to step away from her role as vice president are pushed to the back burner when Grace is thrust into the role of nuclear czar as part of her duties as vice president, which puts Kate – and what consequently, Hala is in a difficult situation due to their newly acquired knowledge. They confront Grace, who tries to explain to Kate that she did what she did for the greater good. But Kate is now in Grace’s crosshairs, and Grace is worried that Kate might reveal her big secret.

Kate and Hal agree to tell the Secretary of Defense about their discovery, but in Hal fashion, he approaches Kate and instead decides to deliver the news to the US President (played by Michael McKean) in person. The president does not take this news well – he has a heart attack and after hearing this news, he dies during a telephone conversation.

In the final moments of season two, Grace threatens Kate for not revealing her secret as secret security rushes to Grace, who has suddenly become the President of the United States. Boom. Cutting on loans.

TheWrap spoke with showrunner Deborah Cahn and stars Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell about the shocking ending to season two of “The Diplomat.” And don’t worry, “The Diplomat” has already been renewed for season 3 by Netflix.

In the finale, we see Kate finally accept and show her desire to become vice president. Why does he bother with this after all?

Deborah Cahn: He gets to the point where he feels he has to – he has an obligation to step into a role that needs to be filled by someone other than the person who fills it. And what’s interesting about Kate about Grace Penn is that she had a terrible impression of her, and then she kind of fell in love with her at work, and all of a sudden she’s fantastic, she’s been vilified, and then the relationship goes through crazy changes and changes in her opinion. about who Grace is, as well as her idea of ​​whether she should take Grace’s job or try to take Grace’s job, changes as her opinion of Grace changes.

Keri Russell: (It’s) random. I think her love and loyalty is for her country – she believes in it. It really is. And someone will take it out – an evil person who shouldn’t be in charge, who manipulated things that shouldn’t have been manipulated, who put us in a bad situation, who didn’t make the best choices, will go away to take control and I think she thinks that’s inappropriate. Even though it’s a job she doesn’t want, she thinks it would be better than the person who has the stain on her and who was involved in some shady shit. This is a moral point of view.

Kate says in the finale that Hal wants her to become vice president so he can be closer to power. What do you think, Rufus?

Rufus Sewell: I think he wants to influence change. He wants her to be in power. He wants to be in the best position to be able to do what he wants. But he really wants this for her. He’s very, very excited because he thinks she’s fantastic. He believes that he is truly the best person for this because they have things in them that they think are important, not only love for the country, but also for the world. They care about Afghanistan not only for the good of America, but… they are humanitarians. They have very strong beliefs and want to do whatever it takes to affect the change in the world they have always believed in. He feels very strongly that she should do it. He has his own personal ambitions, but it’s not a Machiavellian secret to his own game. I keep coming back to this, but if events unfolded in such a way that his best bet was to be vice president, they would both work to make that happen. But this is a door that has opened.

The finale ends with the President’s death after Hal delivers the news to him. Why did you want to abandon this plot twist?

Cahn: We always want to start from a place where we ask a lot of questions that are worth answering in the next season. It’s about people in leadership positions who are new to them and uncomfortable, so once someone gets established in their position, we want to kind of shake the snowball and see what happens if more appears on the plate, because otherwise it will be worse.

Why Hal hits Kate in the head Again?

Sewell: He has that flair, what you might call brilliance (or) courage, when it works, because he can see several steps ahead and has the kind of bravado that will make him take huge leaps and do something astonishing. The downside to this is that it doesn’t work. From an operational perspective, this was the right choice. The only thing he couldn’t predict was what happened, because it was God’s work, which made this thing terrible, terrible. But if it did succeed, which you would think given the situation it would most likely, the reasons he gives are quite compelling. You just couldn’t predict… that’s bad luck. But at the same time, that doesn’t mean it could have been predicted. So I think one of the disadvantages of having this character that can produce great results is that when something goes wrong, and that’s part of his reputation, there are casualties.

Seasons 1 and 2 of The Diplomat are now available on Netflix.