SPOILER ALERT! This post contains important plot details from Netflix Season 2 The diplomat.

Foreign tensions escalate even further in season 2 of The diplomat as Kate Wyler (Keri Russell) continues to investigate the bombing of a British aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.

The breakneck six-episode season picks up where it left off in Season 1, plunging viewers into the panic that erupted after a car bomb exploded in the heart of London, killing MP Merritt Grove and leaving Kate’s husband Hal (Rufus Sewell). as well as her Deputy Head of Mission Stuart Hayford (Ato Essandoh) seriously injured.

Kate and British Foreign Secretary Austin Dennison (David Gyasi) began to suspect that Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) was behind both attacks, the first in an attempt to suppress the Scottish independence movement and the second to silence Grove lay. But as they dig deeper, it turns out to be much more complicated than they ever imagined.

It turns out that Trowbridge’s former advisor Margaret Roylin (Celia Imrie) was behind the directive for both bombings… at the direction of US Vice President Grace Penn (Allison Janney). Trowbridge didn’t know, and neither did the President of the United States. Talk about a plot twist!

To make matters worse, the season ends on a huge cliffhanger, after Hal takes it upon himself to inform the President of VP Penn’s discretion. The shock is so great that it kills him, leaving Penn as the new commander-in-chief.

Luckily for audiences, the series has already been renewed for season 3.

Creator Debora Cahn broke down the season with Deadline in the interview below. She also discussed season 2 more broadly in an earlier Q&A with Deadline, which also featured a conversation between the stars of the Netflix series and Irish Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason, which took place ahead of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in April.

DEADLINE: You picked up with Season 2 where you left off in Season 1. Is that the plan for the rest of the series?

DEBORA CAHN: I like to remain open to the idea that, who knows, we might skip a year or two at some point, but I always find myself wanting to get into the story just 30 seconds after we leave it. I’ve never told stories like this before, and I think part of it comes from wanting to pay attention to the fact that people are watching over a longer period of time. They watch two or three episodes in a row, and we want to feel like it’s continuing to be propulsive. It seems like one long story. They watch one long movie. But once you get into the habit of doing that, it’s just fun to write that way.

DEADLINE: This season’s story feels incredibly progressive considering it was written a while ago. Not only do you have a female vice president having to outbid an older president whose abilities are being questioned, you then end up with this huge cliffhanger where she becomes the president. How does it feel now to release this less than a week before the presidential election?

CAHN: It’s a little scary, because we didn’t really want to do a “take it from the headlines” thing. The idea is always to find a way into the headspace of the country and the public, and what are we all thinking about now, especially the world of foreign policy. What are our ideas that we’re struggling with as a country that we can then have these characters struggle with? But we don’t want it to be the same story from minute to minute. I think we skated a little close to the wind – I think I’m mixing up my metaphors there – and ended up getting a lot closer to what happened. We had already filmed it in our world. It was already done up to and including: There’s a moment where Kate comes down in a light blue suit, and Kamala Harris wore the same suit to this big meeting. It seems like we’re stealing from the headlines, but…

DEADLINE: So as we elect our first female president next week, how will you think about this season?

CAHN: In some ways it was really exciting. I write wish fulfillment, and it’s nice that the wish also comes true in real life. She’s a great character and she’s such a great actor. We want to create a situation that is as rich and messy as possible for that character. But yeah, it’s intimidating to talk about something that’s happening. We don’t want to put ourselves in a corner that makes us look outdated and sad.

DEADLINE: I think this season raises a lot of questions about how we view the competency of our leaders, especially women. Once we know that Grace Penn has instructed Roylin, we think she is not suitable, but then she explains herself, and the situation becomes much more complicated. Is she right? Does it even matter if we completely agree with her? How did you think about that as you wrote it?

CAHN: The idea from the very beginning was to create a situation where something bad happens, and we know who did it, our enemy did it, and we accuse that enemy, and then it becomes clear that they are not actually involved were involved. And then we know that it’s, ‘Oh, it’s the other enemy.’ And then we learn that that’s not really true either. Then we learn it was our friend, and then we find out it was us. So ultimately what I want to do is take a situation that feels like a global conflict, a heinous crime and a tragedy, and watch how something like that unfolds. For me, it’s much more interesting and challenging to see how good people, who I think are very smart, can ultimately make a decision that has terrible, terrible consequences.

I think we often give ourselves a way out when we look at something that’s happened in the world and we say, “Well, that’s because the bad people did it.” The bad people in our country, or the bad people in another country. It’s no coincidence that it’s Allison. She is so sweet and admirable. So to take a character like that and allow her to take us through every step of this decision that we find deplorable and that we call evil, and then get to a point of, ‘Wow, this is really complicated , and it’s really hard to do it right…” There was no good option on the table. The situation is bad, the decision maker is not.

DEADLINE: What does this mean for Kate’s VP aspirations? Are they dead in the water?

CAHN: Welcome to season 3.

DEADLINE: I thought it was so interesting that Kate is confronted with the idea that her attraction to Hal is tied to his tendency to make spontaneous, often irresponsible decisions. What impact will that have on them?

CAHN: We are attracted to charismatic people. We are attracted to thinking outside the box. We are drawn to big, magical moments and grand gestures. The question then is: what are the consequences of this? The consequences are often disastrous. So when you’ve been through both sides of that rollercoaster ride, do you walk away saying, “I’m not looking for that anymore”? Or do you do what I think a lot of people do, and I’ve certainly done that for a lot of my life, which is, ‘Well, now that’s what I’m looking for – the peak, the highs, great moments, without the downside, and I’m sure it exists’? Unfortunately, that is not the case in my research. So Kate struggles with that herself, and reaches the point where she realizes that the magical side of Hal and the disastrous side of Hal are all the same, and that if you get one, you have to have the other. That’s something she’s trying to learn, and she learns rationally, but never emotionally.

DEADLINE: So, is his culpability in the president’s death and Grace Penn’s ascension her final straw?

CAHN: These are season 3 spoilers! Can the union survive under these circumstances? Don’t know.

DEADLINE: I also want to talk about Dennison. He’s kind of forced to abandon the dry morals he operates with in Season 1 as this situation becomes more complicated. How does he deal with these new developments?

CAHN: I think Dennison still manages to live in a bipolar universe of good and evil, in a way that I think Kate wishes Hal would do, and she wishes she would do too. The solutions he finds to problems are quite dramatic. He is willing to be loyal to a certain extent, and if he is not loyal, then he is Real not loyal. I think it’s difficult for him to work with half measures at all. I think he either has to take a stand and defend a position or give that up and take a different stand and defend that position, which in many ways makes him admirable, and in many ways makes him not such a strong player on this game board. the way he wants to be.

DEADLINE: Is there a path forward for his and Kate’s alliance? At the end of the season he really doesn’t trust her anymore.

CAHN: The Kate-Dennison relationship plays many roles narratively… these are two diplomats. They come from different places. They are dealing with different agendas given to them by the government at home, but they are like-minded individuals. They largely see the world in a similar way. They have similar goals. They like each other, they get along well, they get things done. The idealism of the show is that if you can create those kinds of relationships around the world, in linking moments, it can really help. Things can really go off track. So the hope is that the experiences they’ve had together don’t negate that.

It’s a kind of fragile, wonderful, powerful thing. I think it’s something that people go through a lot when they do this kind of work. We can share our ideas with our friends, but when we represent a country, ultimately the country will make a decision and we will implement it. So how do you bounce back from that? How can you trust people after that happens? Don’t know. I don’t know if you can rebuild after something like that, but it’s certainly the question that diplomats face time and time again.