If Season 1 ends with a bang — quite literally — Season 2 ends with a gasp. Or, in Essandoh’s case, a “Holy shit, then what?” Over the course of six episodes, Kate Wyler (Russell), the US ambassador to the UK, goes from thinking Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) hired Russian mercenary Roman Lenkov to carry out an attack on his own nation’s warship, to discovering Trowbridge’s former adviser Margaret “Meg” Roylin (Celia Imrie) was the Brit involved. In the very last minutes of Episode 5, Kate — and the audience along with her — learns that Vice President Grace Penn (Janney) is actually the one who came up with the idea to attack the British warship. 

“We spent all of this season trying to figure out which Brits are involved, and then we find out that the root of the problem is actually us; it’s an American thing,” Cahn tells Tudum. “We have a very easy time looking at other countries as enemies, and we tend to not look at the role that we play in creating a situation that could unfold in this way. So, once we knew that the buck was going to start back with us, it was then about how to make that the biggest possible problem.”

Yes, that reveal is just the beginning. So why did the vice president hire a mercenary to shoot at a British ship? And what happens in those redacted final scenes that had the cast reeling at the read-through? Let’s dive into The Diplomat Season 2 finale and find out which plot point Sewell says “ups the game and fucks the game right up.” 

OK, so what happens when Kate finds out that Grace Penn was behind the British warship attack?

Her immediate response is, “What the fuck?” She wants to do something about it, but Hal (Sewell) says the truth can’t come out, it’d be bad for democracy. They know that Grace took those steps to put a stop to the Scottish independence movement, but for now they don’t know why.

Cahn says that once the show’s creative team knew Janney was going to be playing the vice president, story editor and writer Anna Hagen said, “We should put her right at the center of everything that has gone down here.” The team thought through scenarios in which perhaps Grace just knew about the attack, or had heard about it and could have stopped it. “Then Anna came in with this really great idea: ‘No, make her the root of the problem.’ ” 

It certainly presents a whole host of problems for Kate. With this new information, she realizes Penn cannot possibly stay in office, which means Kate has to become vice president of the United States. And when it comes to Grace Penn, Russell tells Tudum that Kate goes on the same roller coaster ride as the audience does: “She goes through all of those exact same feelings: She’s nervous about her, intimidated by her, then wowed by her, then defends her, and then hates her.”

The next morning, Kate and Hal let Stuart know Kate is now serious about being the next VP and that it’s time to “soup her up” in case she’s asked to serve. Stuart can barely contain his excitement. In an effort to appear more presidential, Kate begrudgingly dons a light blue pantsuit and ties her hair up in a neat bun. 

Keri Russell on Playing Kate Wyler, All of the Twists in Season 2, and More

So does Kate actually want to be vice president now?

“The dynamic that we’re playing with Kate, is that she doesn’t see herself as being able to cross the gulf between who she is and what that job is, and doesn’t want to be so presumptuous as to grab for a position of that much power,” says Cahn. “Hopefully, over time, we see her ability to move past that insecurity in herself. As she gets closer to the world of the job, she’s getting a better sense that nobody’s doing it perfectly. It’s humans who do these jobs. The lady who’s in there right now has her own flaws. We don’t find some superhero to go and be president. You find somebody who is good in some ways, and terrible in some, and does their best in the moment, for the most part.”

There’s also the fact that “power is seductive,” says Russell. “But I still don’t think it’s super comfortable for Kate — I don’t think that’s where she shines the most, but she believes in the good of the country, and she believes in democracy and all those things. She’s a good soldier.”

What’s the significance of Kate’s bun? 

Basically, as Janney explains, “Grace tries to educate Kate on the importance of looking good in addition to doing your job well. Her appearance is important because her face will be in the media an average of 12,000 times a day, and her picture will be in every classroom and embassy.”

In the finale, when Grace and Kate eat breakfast together, Grace lets Kate know that she’s thinking about trying to stay in her job. (You’ll recall that Grace is being removed from her position because her husband is embroiled in a financial scandal.) She then comments on Kate’s updo and suggests she uses bobby pins to help secure the look. 

“There’s different versions of the bun,” says head of hair and makeup Roo Maurice. “There’s the scruffy bun, and there’s the really elite bun. Then there’s the finished bun and there’s the bit in between.” Kate’s attempts to getting the look right has many iterations.

At this point, Grace thinks that Kate is still only planning on reluctantly stepping up as VP if she has to, so she isn’t worried that Kate is taking hair-based steps to look the part. Later, however, the bun will serve as an indicator that Kate is, in fact, really out for her job. “In a word, Kate is a threat to Grace,” says Janney. 

What’s going on with Eidra and Stuart? Are they back together?

Newly off crutches, Stuart goes to see his ex-girlfriend and CIA station chief Eidra Park (Ali Ahn) at work. He tells her that Kate has actively embraced the notion of becoming VP and that if the opportunity arises, he’ll likely be going with her to DC. He wants to involve Eidra in his plans and thinks it was a mistake splitting up. She lets him know that he can’t show up at her workplace and share maybe-scenarios that right now amount to nothing, but still cause her to lose her composure. “Eidra certainly is not in control the way she likes to be,” says Ahn about her character’s arc in Season 2. “Everyone is kind of popping off and acting out this season.” 

The next time they chat, Stuart tells Eidra he understands they’re not getting back together. But he lets her know that they broke up because she’s commitment-averse, not because he did something wrong. He tells her she needs to deal with her issues or she’ll be alone for the rest of her life. Ouch. Once again, Eidra is left looking upset around her work colleagues. 

So who’s really to blame for the demise of Stuart and Eidra’s relationship? “There’s ambiguity in it,” Essandoh tells Tudum, adding that there are parallels between the romantic and diplomatic affairs in the show. “If you multiply it out to countries and nations, this is what diplomacy is. One country thinks you did it wrong, and the other country thinks, ‘No, you did it wrong,’ and there’s finger-pointing. It’s no different from relationships.”

Does the prime minister know the vice president was involved in the attack?

No, and he’s still reeling from the Roylin reveal. Trowbridge wants to start an investigation into who else was involved, and he isn’t eager to resign even though Roylin was one of his closest advisers. “Like most politicians, particularly prime ministers, his main goal is to stay in power,” says Kinnear. “Once you get to the top, the ground beneath you becomes shakier, and you realize it’s a lonely business up there.” 

Not knowing anything about Grace’s involvement in the attack, Trowbridge also calls the president to tell him what a “gem” he finds her to be. The endorsement has some impact and the president ends up offering Grace a new position as the nuclear czar. (That’s a fancy name for someone who works on reducing weapons stockpiles and growing their own country’s nuclear power capacity.) The president is considering it in her capacity as VP. So now it’s looking like Grace might not be stepping down after all. 

Grace tells Kate about this development and that she feels bad for the fuss — after all, Kate is wearing her VP hair and everything. But the White House Chief of Staff Billie Appiah (Nana Mensah) is not on board with this plan and instructs Stuart not to let the Brits make a thing of it, because she’s going to walk it back.

What’s going on with Dennison and Kate’s relationship?

Nothing much. As everyone shows up at the Nuclear Partnership for a Global Future event, Kate (who’s dressed as “geo-strategy Barbie”) approaches Dennison (David Gyasi). He tells her he’s putting an end to their partnership, deciding that, for now, he has to be loyal to Trowbridge. “That was a mistake … all of it,” he tells her, implying their almost-romance too.  

“There’s a limited number of people that you have a really strong connection with on that many levels,” says Cahn. “Somebody who you feel that intellectual, moral, and professional connection with. Obviously, there’s also an emotional connection there that neither of them are really prepared to handle. So even with the best of intentions — and she’s not looking for anything; she’s 100 percent in her marriage — he’s a hard guy to walk away from.”

Gyasi agrees. “To use cricket terminology, Austin plays with a straight bat, but his relationship with Kate is hard to break down.”

But why did Grace order the attack?

After Hal and Kate manage to stop the PM from mentioning the nuclear czar promotion in his pre-dinner remarks, Grace realizes something is up. She thinks Kate wants her job (she is wearing the bun!) and is trying to make sure it’s on the table. So Hal tells Grace what they know. Grace walks out of dinner and Kate is asked to step out too. “The scenes that I have with Keri are just phenomenal,” says Janney. “They’re chess moves, there’s humor in them, there’s a lot of tension there.”

Brace yourself, here comes Grace’s reasoning. Grabbing a map of the world and a piece of coal from the fireplace, Grace gets to work, annotating the map to show that the quickest way for Russia to penetrate US naval defenses is steaming down through the Arctic Ocean and headed to the North Atlantic. There’s a lot more annotation, but what it boils down to is that a nuclear submarine base in Scotland, called Creegan, is the last place that the US can detect a Russian sub before it’s in the vast Atlantic Ocean barreling toward New York. If Scotland had gotten their independence, they would’ve closed the base because they hate nukes and English overreach — but they really hate “having a bull’s-eye on their heads.” Grace couldn’t allow that to happen, so she orchestrated the attack in the hope of unifying the UK. (She also didn’t intend for it to kill anyone.) “I own it, and I carry it, but I will not let it tear down the president,” Grace tells Kate.

“By taking the buck and letting it sit with her, instead of running it up the chain to the president, she has taken the hit,” executive producer Janice Williams tells Tudum. “For something that probably, had they all sat around and chatted about it, they would’ve said, ‘Yeah, (it’s) terrible, and we have to do it.’ ”

Is that nuclear submarine base in Scotland a real thing?

Yes. Creegan is based on His Majesty’s Naval Base, Clyde — more commonly known as Faslane — the Royal Navy’s headquarters and the home of Britain’s nuclear weapons on Gare Loch in Scotland. “When I was growing up in Scotland, we actively talked about Faslane,” says Williams. “I protested it as a student at Glasgow University — we’ve got to change this because Scotland is currently ground zero for the theater of war. And frankly, what everyone was against was America putting us in that position.”

Wow. So is Grace Penn the bad guy?

“What the writing always does really well is that everybody’s right in their argument from where they stand,” executive producer and director Alex Graves tells Tudum. “Grace Penn has been doing, and is doing, what she thinks is the most responsible thing to do. But she’s moved into a gray area that Kate has a problem with.”

What Kate can admit is that she doesn’t know what she would’ve done in Grace’s position. Back at home, she fills Hal in, telling him she thinks Grace should keep her job., that she shouldn’t be punished for making a decision that had to be made. Hal still wants Kate to go for VP, but Kate says that she and he aren’t empowered to choose a head of state. 

Let’s let Sewell explain Hal’s point of view. “Yes, Grace Penn screwed up. Does she have her excuses? Yes, she has her excuses, but who cares? She screwed up. This is our opportunity to go in there and do bigger and better things than she’s capable of, for the world,” he says. “Grace has great qualities, but I think Hal is ultimately right in that Grace made the wrong call. And we could do that job better.” 

But for Cahn, it’s never black-and-white — and that’s the intention. “I want people coming out of Episodes 5 and 6 saying, ‘I don’t know what I would do if I were in Grace Penn’s shoes, and I’m not sure if she made the wrong decision.’ So Kate, standing in for us, is going through this swing of, ‘Oh my God, she’s the bad guy. Oh my God, she’s not really bad. Well, but maybe she is. But wouldn’t I have done the same thing?’ ”

Rufus Sewell on the Intrigue of Playing Hal Wyler in The Diplomat

How is Kate and Hal’s relationship at the end of Season 2?

Well, when Hal suggests calling Secretary of State Miguel Ganon (Miguel Sandoval) to tell him what Grace did and then letting the justice system and national security apparatus decide what happens next, Kate thinks he’s just doing it to make way for them. But Kate’s close friend makes a good point. “You want him to behave, but when he does, you don’t see it,” says Carol (Laurel Lefkow). “You can’t even detect it … You don’t like him when he’s good.”

“Often what you think you want is not necessarily what you want,” says Sewell. “People don’t know themselves. What people say they’re attracted to is not necessarily what they’re attracted to. There’s something to be said for not becoming what someone is asking you to be.”

Or, to put it in Kate and Hal’s terminology: “There can be a conflict between politics and the loins.”

What happens when Hal calls Ganon to tell him?

The next morning, Kate tells Hal he’s right. They need to tell Ganon what really happened, but Hal should be the one to do it so that she can keep a clean profile. Hal goes to the embassy to make a secure call to the secretary of state. On arrival, he leaves his cell phone in a cubby and goes to the secure room to make the call. But right before the call connects, Hal changes his mind and asks for his call to be placed to the president (Michael McKean) instead. 

Wait, what? Why does Hal call the president and not Ganon?

Graves says Hal doesn’t decide to make that call until the very last minute. “When he’s in the car on the way over there, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do,” says the director. “He has good intentions. He thinks he’s doing it all for the right reasons, even though he’s being ambitious and trying to get her into public office, but I think he’s less calculated and more instinctual.”

Cahn adds that, when writing Hal’s character, it’s always about trying to walk the line. “Hal choosing to talk to the president is one of those moments where, was it grossly irresponsible and reckless and stupid?” she says. “Or was it, in fact, the much more pragmatic thing to do? Because Ganon is a questionable figure, particularly when he hears things from Hal Wyler, who he really doesn’t like. We need to be able to buy into both of those.” 

For Russell, the beauty of Hal’s character is that he always thinks he’s doing something for the greater good of moving things forward. “That’s why he’s so fun and awful and charming all at once,” she says. 

Graves sums it up as “pure, Grade-A Hal Wyler. It’s an ambitious, extremely crazy, explosive thing to try to do, which is right up his alley — and it proves to be a huge mistake.” 

Oh, no! What happens when the president finds out?

While Hal is passing on that information to the leader of the free world, Kate and Grace go for a walk on the grounds of Winfield House. Grace asks for Kate’s assurance she’s not going to tell anyone about her role in the attack, and Kate says that she won’t. Grace intends to keep her job as VP and that means Kate has to stop chasing it. Kate says she isn’t, but Grace points out that her hair is in a bun. (Remember, the hair indicates Kate’s VP goal.)

Back at the CIA headquarters, Hal bursts out of the secure room, desperately demanding someone get his wife on the phone. 

On the lawn at Winfield, Kate reiterates that she doesn’t want the VP job, but if the president asks her to serve, her answer will be yes. Grace says no, that is incorrect. The answer is no. They go back and forth — Kate realizes Grace faced an impossible situation and Grace thinks Kate would’ve done the same thing. 

Cahn says while watching the scene, she and Williams were “passing out behind the monitors, just seeing two women at the top of their game go at it. It’s inspiring. It’s pretty impressive.” (Also impressive? Between takes, Janney and Russell spent a good amount of time perfecting the Floss dance and practicing their lines in distorted voices.)

Then Stuart rushes over and interrupts their discussion with a call from Hal. Hal tells Kate he did something. He thought this way would be better, because what if Ganon made it all about Ganon? He tells Kate that he talked to the president instead. “He got really upset …”

Suddenly, about 20 members of the Secret Service come sprinting across the lawn.

“He died, Katie,” says Hal on the other end of the line. “The president is dead. Grace Penn is president.”

OMG. Is the president really dead? Does Hal feel guilty?

“Guilt-schmilt,” says Sewell. “(Hal) made the right call for him and it turned out wrong. This is the truth with high-risk strategies. Sometimes things go wrong, but you look back on it and think, ‘Well, with the information that I had, did I make the right decision?’ It was a fair guess. I respect the decision he made. This is why Hal is suited to these situations. They’re all life and death. It’s just, who’s it life for and who’s it death for?”

How does The Diplomat Season 2 end? 

Season 2 of The Diplomat ends with the camera trained on Grace Penn’s face as she sees the Secret Service agents charging toward her across the lawn at Winfield. While they were filming the scene on a cloudy day in March 2024, standing in an exceedingly muddy English field, Graves gave Janney a very specific direction. “The only reason the Secret Service would be running toward you is because you’re president,” he told her. “Take that in, in your reaction.” 

Janney says she was grateful to be working with Graves in these episodes because she “trusts him implicitly,” after working together for years on The West Wing. “He always comes in with a piece of direction that helps me and informs my character,” she says.

Essandoh describes shooting that scene as like something “out of The Matrix. They just fly out of the house and they grab the vice president. It was total adrenaline.” 

Is Grace Penn president now?

“The president is dead and, as a fan of the show, you immediately start to see the Rubik’s Cube (solution) that Grace is going to be president, and what is that going to mean for Kate and Hal?” says Graves. Both of them know what Grace has done, but will they be able to tell anyone else? Would that even be a smart thing to do? She is president now, after all. 

Once the creative team decided that Grace was behind the warship attack, part of the thinking in the writers’ room was, how do you then make it worse? “You give her more power,” says Cahn. “You put her in a situation where she’s elevated to president. We always talked about, what do you do when you find out your boss is a war criminal? And 99.9% of the time you just go to work.”

We’ll see how that plays out when The Diplomat returns for Season 3.

Stream Season 2 of The Diplomat now.

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