In an age where top streaming TV shows (Wednesday, Severance, and Peacemaker come to mind) are taking three years to return for second seasons, it’s nice to realize that certain genuinely bingeworthy series do achieve followups at a steady clip. Those would include Reacher on Prime Video/Amazon, and on a not-entirely-dissimilar similar note, The Diplomat on Netflix. Heck, some ongoing series don’t even get renewed faster than these these two series can turn around new seasons.
An even better part of this budding rapid-fire release pattern: Keri Russell has been a TV mainstay for much of her life for good reason. Her Mickey Mouse Club days were followed by success on Felicity (including a fateful haircut) and The Americans (including butt kicking and wigs), and now, The Diplomat‘s appeal has been resting mainly on her shoulders.
This is no slight against her co-stars (including Rufus Sewell), of course, but let’s also admit that Russell is almost uniquely able to tackle this show’s hefty blend of suspenseful drama mixed up with some sardonic, even at times straight-up funny, flair. With that said, let’s get down to business on what to expect from more of The Diplomat.
Plot
Alright, so Netflix’s teaser trailer drop answers the most prominent question that was on viewers’ minds: does Hal Wyler live?
The answer (unless he somehow enters into another life-or-death situation) would be “yes.” And choosing to reveal his fate in the trailer is a clear signal that showrunner Debora Cahn would like us to focus elsewhere going into the season. For starters, Kate and Hal are also shown in the trailer while displaying a united front against the onscreen debut of Allison Janey as Vice President Grace Penn giving straight-up lethal looks to the married diplomats. However and as Cahn revealed to Entertainment Weekly, Hal is “shaken,” and “[a]lmost dying like that can shake a lot on every level.”
This will likely yield more personal-life disaster because, according to Cahn, this experience will throw Kate and Hal back together again despite the budding Dennison (David Gyasi) situation:
“Kate was ready for this new relationship. She was really ready to move on, and there’s nothing like a near-death experience for you to just cling to somebody and forget all of the stuff that was driving you apart. It was over. They had reached a conclusion, so when suddenly she’s like, ‘I’m back. I’m here now.’ Do you trust it? Do you trust her? A lot of the season is about trust and there is a line that comes later in the season, where Kate says to Hal, ‘Of course, I don’t trust you. This isn’t built on trust.’”
Additionally, the show juggles the matter of Kate realizing that Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) was surely behind the attack that nearly killed Hal, but there’s the difficulty of not being able to spy on him due to U.S.-U.K. relations. As Cahn describes the matter, “So how do you prove it? And then if you prove it, what the hell do you do about it?”
Meanwhile, Keri Russell has added more shading to the Hal-Kate dynamic:
“I think the people around them in the story don’t know what’s happening. They don’t know what to make of them. It’s unnerving because they’re fighting cats and dogs or they’re completely backing each other up in this fierce way. And it’s unnerving because people don’t know where they stand.”
These Kate-Hal developments might have disappointed David Gyasi, who previously followed up on the first season finale by telling Town and Country his hopes for the second season: “I’d love to explore what that relationship is with Kate. I mean, maybe they’d just gotten to a place when she makes that choice for that beautiful red dress. It’s the first time that they touch—they touch hands.” Well, damn.
In other words, expect the personal and professional relationships of this series to be even more intertwined than within the first season. And as Vanity Fair has reported, a Netflix consultant, ex-CIA official Kari Amelung, believes that the show does well at portraying how married diplomats will often stay married because filing for divorce causes them “to forfeit coveted overseas assignments to return to the States.” So, they will “just live in hatred [with each other].” God, this is so irresistibly messy.
Cast
Keri Russell returns as Kate Wyler with Rufus Sewell as Hal. Allison Janney appear to be ready to shake up everybody’s little world, and David Gyasi will return as Austin Dennison. Presumably, we will also see Rory Kinnear as PM Trowbridge and Ali Ahn as Eidra Graham.
Release Date
The Diplomat will return on October 31, 2024.
Trailer
Behold the return of Hal, even though he never left: