The Diplomat frustrated the heck out of viewers with a relatively short season, but the irresistibly frazzled Kate Wyler will keep attempting (and failing) to push everybody away with her questionable hygiene habits and refusal to dress for her role. Meanwhile, this show has been gleefully making nail-biting endings a custom that is also forgivable due to pace-perfect writing.
This Netflix series scored a third-season renewal before the last season even debuted, and that’s down to the show’s optimal blend of intrigue, chemistry, and Keri Russell’s pit-sniffing physical comedy that blasts yesteryear’s bad hair into the stratosphere. Meanwhile, Hal Wyler is the architect of doom, which is clearly a part that Rufus Sewell relishes. Let’s talk about what Hal might ruin next season, and where things sit with The Diplomat after it one-upped its own cliffhanger season finale.
Plot
Ahead of the second season premiere in November, the third series began with scenes filming in both London and New York. At that time, showrunner Deborah Cohn revealed to Netflix that the show was shooting “some stuff already in Season 3 that involves big groups and lots of people,” and the third season will not only “flip the chessboard” but also reveal how “Kate lives the particular nightmare that is getting what you want.”
That’s cryptic, but it’s safe to say that Kate does not want anything related to mandatory hairstyling or skirt-wearing. She will, however, need to feel out whether VP Grace Penn, who is now President Grace Penn, plans to keep her “enemy closer,” so to speak, by making Kate VP. That, of course, isn’t really what Kate wanted until very late in the second season, a prospect that sexually turned on Hal, who was of course the guy that inadvertently caused the president’s fatal collapse in the second season’s final moments. Will Hal feel guilty about what he wrought? Rufus Sewell thinks not, as he told Netflix:
“Guilt-schmilt. [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?”
On the topic of Hal, executive producers Alex Graves and Janice Williams did tell Screenrant that Kate and Hal’s exasperating marriage will soon receive plenty of attention. As Williams put things, “I think you saw in season 2 they broke apart and they came together. That is the state of their union. That has always been the state of their union—to be madly in love with someone and [have rage] toward them all at the same time.”
This mess also suggests that Kate and Hal will probably have to overlook how Grace was behind the warship attack that began The Diplomat. As Cohn puts it, “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.” What that work will be hasn’t come into view yet. Keri Russell told Harper’s Bazaar that she asked Cohn “early in the first season” this question: “‘I’m not going to have to be vice president, am I? … Debora took a long time, and she said, ‘The show’s called The Diplomat, not The Vice President.’ And I was like, ‘Good, okay.’”
Clear as mud. Russell did promise, however, “Debora has told me a little bit about what could come, and it just gets even better. You won’t believe what she has in store. It is better than I could ever imagine.” And will Allison Janney’s rise to being President Grace Penn receive any tweaks from current U.S. events? Those of us who turn on the TV for escapism would hope not, but Cohn admitted to Deadline that reality has “absolutely” made her reflect on possible changes to the show. She continued:
“The next four years are going to be very different from the last four, but much more similar to the world that was in my head when I was first developing the series, which is, how do we interact in the world with other countries when the basic agreements that we’ve had with most of our allies are in question? So I’m worried for the world but believe we have plenty to talk about.”
Cast
Allison Janney will return as Grace Penn. For more The West Wing flavor, Bradley Whitford ^^^ signed on to portray the First Gentleman.
Keri Russell is the only Kate Wyler while Rufus Sewell continues to botch history as Hal Wyler, possibly second gentleman of the United States.
Heads will likely roll if these characters don’t return: David Gyasi as Foreign Secretary Austin Denison, Ato Essandoh as Stuart, Ali Ahn as Eidra Graham, and Rory Kinnear as Prime Minister Trowbridge. However, Michael McKean has reportedly taken his final turn as President Rayburn.
Release Date
The third season should arrive quicker than the last one without Hollywood strikes on the table. Early 2026 sounds doable.
Trailer
We should be so lucky. However, this compilation of Kate Wyler being a total “dumpster fire” is excellent.