Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Diplomat Season 3.
After its successful second season, which earned The Diplomat a surprise Emmy nomination for Outstanding Drama Series (and a less surprising, second consecutive nomination for lead Keri Russell), the Netflix series returned for its third season on Oct. 16. And it’s got some twists and turns that richly reward viewers’ dedication to the political thriller.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Still, Debora Cahn, the creator of the standout Netflix series, jokes that the fiction of the show remains an escape from reality: “Compared to what’s going on in the real world, we’re sort of like a quiet nature documentary.”
She’s exaggerating somewhat. Season 3 concludes with the series’ most shocking finale yet—which is saying something, considering the previous two seasons ended with a car bomb explosion and a dead POTUS, respectively. Here, Cahn helps break down the biggest, well, bombs of The Diplomat’s third installment.
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A new vice president
Much of The Diplomat has followed Russell’s Kate Wyler, U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, as she’s groomed to be the next Vice President of the United States. But in the Season 2 finale, there’s a shocking reveal that President William Rayburn (Michael McKean) has died of a heart attack, meaning VP Grace Penn (Allison Janney)—who Kate discovered was responsible for an attack on a British aircraft that cost the lives of 41 British sailors (an event that happens in the series’ first episode)—is now president.
At the end of Season 3, Episode 1, President Penn chooses a new vice president. Though it’s expected to be Kate, her choice is actually Kate’s husband, Hal (Rufus Sewell). “From the get-go, the idea was, if anybody was going to end up being VP, it should be Hal,” says Cahn. “There’s certainly a wish-fulfillment element to having an Allison Janney presidency, but having two women in the White House, at this point, feels like science fiction. The idea that Kate gets that close and then it doesn’t happen just felt very true. We want the show to be an optimistic vision of working in the government, but we need to be dealing on some level with the world that we live in.”
When asked if Kate may have been made VP had Kamala Harris won the 2024 presidential election, Cahn replies, “No, because this show is really about Kate Wyler and diplomacy. The title isn’t The Candidate. It was important to me to keep the bulk of our story rooted in the embassy and in the world of the Foreign Service—what it’s like to be working for this country, negotiating this country’s relationship with the rest of the world.”
The Diplomat thrives on a constant flurry of dialogue—not unlike The West Wing, where Cahn began her writing career and Janney also featured prominently—with the pacing moving at a rapid clip. But at the start of Episode 2, when Kate processes her dream job going not only to someone else but to her husband, things slow down, and there are long stretches of silence, allowing the viewer to really feel Kate’s anguish as she considers what to do next.
“We were really excited to make that tonal shift,” says Cahn. “Recently, I face-planted on the sidewalk, and as I fell toward the pavement, time slowed down. We wanted it to have that feeling, like she’s fallen off a cliff, and she’s just falling so slowly. The world just blurs out.” Kate accepts her husband’s new position and gains the title of Second Lady, though behind the scenes, they’ve agreed to separate. In public, they’ll appear as a loving couple working tirelessly for the American people, but in reality, they’re unofficially done with their marriage.
A betrayal in Amagansett
Kate, now in a dual role as Second Lady and ambassador, is facing yet another crisis. Someone with access to credible Russian intelligence has threatened to leak the closely guarded secret that America played a role in the aircraft strike, which would threaten not only the relationship between the U.S. and the U.K., but the world at large. In Episode 6, at Penn’s home in Amagansett, NY, Kate, Hal, Penn, and Chief of Staff Billie Appiah (Nana Mensah) gather for an emergency meeting to choose the best course of action. Kate has a bold idea that just might work: place the blame on President Rayburn, who not only had no involvement whatsoever, but is dead and not able to deny the accusation.
When Prime Minister Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) and U.K. Foreign Secretary Austin Dennison (David Gyasi) arrive at Amagansett, that’s the plan Penn follows, revealing the attack was at the request of Rayburn. Trowbridge, though furious, agrees to a joint press conference where he won’t reveal the truth about the attack, and in exchange, the U.S. will agree to a hugely beneficial trade agreement that the U.K. sorely needs post-Brexit. But when the moment comes, he reneges on his promise, declaring Rayburn and the United States were responsible for the attack that cost dozens of British lives on live television.
“One of the big questions that we spend a lot of time thinking about,” says Cahn, “is what does it mean to have an impulsive head of state? This move that Trowbridge chooses to make is not the first time we’ve seen him do something that’s possibly animated more by emotion than reason. It is creating more devastation in its own wake than he anticipates it will.”
Before the press conference, Kate and Dennison argue about what this revelation means for the U.K.-U.S. relationship. Dennison pushes the idea that the U.S. will be in the U.K.’s pocket after this betrayal: “It earns us an enthusiastic ‘yes’ to every request we make in the humanly foreseeable future.” Kate succinctly rejects this, telling him, “I am doing everything I can, but there’s a limit.”
“That situation is designed to create a Kate and Dennison struggle, which is, I know what my head of state’s gonna do, and I know you really don’t want that. Dennison knows what’s coming,” says Cahn. “And so Dennison is trying so, so hard to warn the U.S. and to steer us off a path that’s going to trigger this kind of reaction from Trowbridge. But the U.S. position is this is where we stand, and we’re not prepared to move. That’s the conflict that we’re looking for. What happens on every level down the chain when that kind of decision is coming?”
The astonishing nuclear finale
In the Season 3 finale, written by Cahn, there’s barely enough time to process the fallout of Trowbridge’s betrayal (a response to an American betrayal), as there’s a whole new issue to deal with. A disabled Russian submarine has been found on the northeast coast of the United Kingdom. There are no survivors in the sub, but there is something called the Poseidon, which is, as the President puts it rather verbosely, an “underwater drone powered by a small nuclear reactor armed with a nuclear warhead and designed to contaminate an unusually large area with a radioactive fallout.”
In the finale, Penn heads to the U.K. to try and make amends with Trowbridge. He wants China to help in removing the sub, but as Penn says, allowing China to assist means “handing them a doomsday weapon.” Instead, Penn suggests Trowbridge let the U.S. retrieve Poseidon, as they have the technology Trowbridge lacks to save the U.K. from a possible nuclear disaster. Instead of saying anything, Trowbridge walks out of the meeting, stunning Penn.
This leads us to a tense dinner party with Kate and Hal Wyler, President Penn and her husband Todd (Bradley Whitford), PM Trowbridge and his wife, and Dennison and his wife. It’s Cahn’s favorite scene in the finale. “It was one of the great joys of my career, writing that scene,” says Cahn. “Having that many couples at the table, all of them struggling to control each other and the fate of their countries in a very beautiful space with a lot of history and cordiality, and so much intention on every axis at the table was so exciting.” In a show like The Diplomat, which is all about control—who has it, how to shift it, and to control your best interests—the dinner comically yet tensely shows off multiple struggles for power converging on one another.
In a later meeting, Trowbridge rejects the help of the Americans, as he no longer trusts them. Why would he give them control of yet another nuclear weapon, especially one as advanced as Poseidon? But Hal gives Kate a suggestion to bring to Trowbridge that could rescue the negotiations. Kate tells Trowbridge that they can bury the submarine at the bottom of the water in cement, so no country can access it, or more crucially the nuclear weapon inside of it. Trowbridge agrees, and there’s a sense that their fraught relationship may be starting to heal. After the meeting, Kate gets vulnerable with Hal, hoping to rekindle their marriage, and the two kiss passionately. Everything is going so well!
If only it were so easy. Kate receives disturbing news from a valued source that the nuclear readings of the submarine site have dropped drastically, meaning that unless there’s an error, someone or something has removed the nuclear warhead from the submarine. In the jaw-dropping final scene, Todd approaches Kate as they watch President Penn and Hal posing for a photoshoot with Dennison and PM Trowbridge. He’s concerned that their relationship is a little too intimate and that they’re hiding something. Kate starts to laugh it off, but then her face becomes flushed with concern.
That’s because Kate has come to a major realization: the President and her husband acted on a plan she wasn’t privy to. They’ve already taken the Poseidon for themselves, unbeknownst to Trowbridge. The move has enormous global implications: “When the Brits find out, they will consider this an act of war,” Kate warns Hal. This one secret could have the world teetering on the brink of nuclear war, with the U.K. playing the fall guy for America’s move, as, according to Kate, Russia will assume that the U.K. stole their weapon.
Just when Hal and Kate seem to have repaired their relationship, it’s already falling apart at the seams: “You used me to sell a lie to the Prime Minister,” she tells Hal, furiously. “One of the central problems in Kate and Hal’s marriage is that the highs are really high, and the lows are really low—and this moment is just about the lowest. We really wanted to end on the idea that Kate’s watching Hal turn into a different person. So whether or not that’s what’s happening, or that’s just her perception of it, we don’t know. But that’s the question we’re dealing with: is he different than she believed he was, or is that something she brings to the table herself?”
She continues: “We’re very much in Kate’s point of view at the end of the season, experiencing it through her eyes as she discovers a decision that she was very pointedly kept out of.” The final shot is of Kate staring on in horror, and Cahn tells us what the character is thinking: “This guy is gonna get the U.K. attacked by the Russians, and a lot of innocent people are going to get killed—again.” More than enough to chew on when the show returns for a fourth season.
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