Note: The following story contains spoilers from the season 2 finale of “The Diplomat.”

While Keri Russell’s Kate Wyler was ready to sound the alarm on British corruption, the politician was plotting “The diplomat” Season 2 has taken a decisive turn.

In the Netflix series, Kate and her team gather incriminating evidence against British Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) to prove that he was behind the attack on the British aircraft carrier, HMS Courageous. But their investigation takes a turn when Trowbridge’s former advisor, Margaret Roylin (Celia Imrie), tells Kate that Trowbridge was not involved in the attack and that she hired Russian mercenary Roman Lenkov to stage an attack. which would create indignation, not evil. As we know, this did not go as planned and resulted in the deaths of 40 Royal Navy personnel.

As Vice President Grace Penn (Allison Janney) – who Kate is supposed to replace following a scandal involving Grace’s husband – arrives in the UK to help deal with the escalating disorder, Kate learns that it It was Grace who launched the idea at Roylin. participate in a project aimed at helping American diplomacy. So Kate was right that the call was coming from inside the house, but she didn’t realize it was inside her house.

In the season 2 finale, as Kate considers becoming vice president for the first time, Grace’s plans to leave her role as vice president are sidetracked when Grace is set up to become nuclear czar in her capacity as vice president. vice president, which puts Kate – and by extension Hal – in a tricky situation with their new acquaintances. They confront Grace, who tries to explain to Kate that she did what she did for the greater good. But Kate is now in Grace’s crosshairs, and Grace fears that Kate will reveal her big secret.

Kate and Hal agree to tell the Secretary of Defense about their discovery, but in true Hal fashion, he goes over Kate’s head and decides instead to break the news to the US President himself (played by Michael McKean). The president takes the news badly: he has a heart attack and dies on the phone after hearing the news.

In the final moments of season 2, Grace threatens Kate not to reveal her secret when secret security rushes towards Grace, who has suddenly become President of the United States. Boom. Cut to credits.

TheWrap spoke to showrunner Debora Cahn and stars Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell about the shocking season 2 ending of “The Diplomat.” And don’t worry, “The Diplomat” has already been renewed for season 3 by Netflix.

In the finale, we see Kate finally accept and show her willingness to become vice president. Why does she finally understand this?

Débora Cahn: She reaches a point where she feels obligated to do so – she has a responsibility to take on a role that needs to be filled by someone other than the person occupying it. And for Kate, what’s interesting about the relationship with Grace Penn is that she has a terrible impression of her, and then she sort of had a crush on her work, all of a sudden she’s fantastic, she was slandered, and then this relationship goes through these crazy fluctuations. and changes in her opinion of who Grace is, and her idea of ​​whether or not she should accept Grace’s job, or try to accept Grace’s job, changes as her opinion of Grace changes.

Keri Russell: (It’s) circumstantial. I think her love and loyalty is to the country – she believes in it. She really does. And someone is going to blame it – a bad person who shouldn’t be in charge, who handled things that shouldn’t have been handled, who put us in a bad situation, who doesn’t didn’t make the best choices, is going to take over, and I think she thinks it’s wrong. Even though it’s a job she doesn’t want, she thinks she’d be better than this person who has this stain on them and has been involved in some shady shit. It is a moral point of view.

Kate says in the finale that Hal wants her to be vice president so he can get closer to power. What do you think, Rufus?

Rufus Sewell: I think he wants to bring about change. He wants her to be in power. He wants to be in the best position to do the things he wants to do. But he really wants this for her. He’s really excited because he thinks she’s fantastic. He thinks she’s really the best person for this because they have things that they believe are important, not just love of country, but for the world. They care about Afghanistan, not just for America’s benefit, but…they’re humanitarians. They have very strong beliefs and want to do whatever is necessary to affect the changes in the world that they have always believed in. He is convinced that she should do this. He has his personal ambitions, but it’s not a secret Machiavellian thing for his own game. I keep coming back to it, but if events had unfolded in such a way that the best game for him would have been ‘be vice president, then they both would have worked to make it happen. But it was the door that opened.

The finale ends with the President dying after Hal tells him the news. Why did you want to stop this twist?

Cahn: We always want to start in a place where we’re asking a lot of questions that might be worth answering in another season. These are people in leadership positions who are new to them and feeling a little overwhelmed, so as soon as someone is sort of fixed in a role, we want to sort of shake the snow globe and see what happens if there is more on their plate or things are worse.

Why does Hal go over Kate’s head? Again?

Sewell: He has this panache, what we could call genius (or) courage when it works, because he sees several steps ahead, and he has a kind of bravado that will make him take enormous steps and achieve something. amazing thing. The downside is that it doesn’t work. Seen from the perspective of success, it was the right decision. What he couldn’t predict was what happened, because it was an act of God, which made it a terrible, terrible thing to do. But if it had worked, which one might have thought, given the situation, it was most likely, the reasons he gives are quite convincing for doing so. You just couldn’t predict…it’s bad luck. But at the same time, that doesn’t mean it was something that could have been predicted. So I think one of the downsides of having this character who can produce brilliant results is that when things go wrong, and that’s part of his reputation, there are casualties.

Seasons 1 and 2 of “The Diplomat” are now streaming on Netflix.