Note: The following story contains spoilers from “The Diplomat” Season 3, Episode 8.
Just as Rufus Sewell’s Hal Wyler thought his marriage was done for good, “The Diplomat” Season 3 finale sees Keri Russell’s Kate revert course and ask for Hal to take her back in a decision that Russell said is both filled with safety and exhilaration for Kate.
“In that specific moment, the world is breaking down, and they are able to be at the center of it and work together to make it better,” Russell told TheWrap. “That’s their love language … that’s the drug, that’s the excitement … it’s safe and it feels good, and it’s familiar.”
“There’s something that Kate is wrestling, which is the thing that you want and the thing that you don’t want are the same thing,” creator Debora Cahn added. “We all carry around this fantasy that the things that make you most excited … and most alive can be had without the things that make you insane and homicidal, and those are very, very difficult to extricate.”
Cahn explained that Kate tested out whether she could have the good without “quite so much of the bad” in stepping away from Hal and trying out another relationship with Callum, but ultimately got her answer. “If you want the high highs,” Cahn started, “you got to have the low lows,” Russell finished.
Kate and Hal ride that high as they reunite, but Kate is suddenly blindsided by another low when she realizes Hal went behind her back and concocted a plan with Allison Janney’s President Grace Penn to steal Poseidon missile, which Kate warns both the Brits and the Russians will consider an “act of war.” With Hal and Grace making the secret deal the night before, Janney said she’d “like to feel like it was Grace’s idea” but ultimately thinks the idea came from Hal, and that Grace immediately agreed with the decision.
“I think she sees the value in in that and, because of the decision that she made to attack the British ship, that she’s capable of that doing something that may seem morally questionable, but it’s actually very smart politics and and it goes to protecting the United States,” Janney told TheWrap. “It’s a smart move, I think.”
While Janney notes Kate has always been a threat to Grace, with Kate now clued in on Hal and Grace’s not-so-covert plan, Janney teased a world of trouble ahead for Kate, both in her marriage as well as in her relationship to Grace.
“I don’t think that she would blow the whistle on us, but … I know trouble is coming, because she’s not going to like that decision,” Janney said. “She’s not going to be able to get behind that kind of decision. This is a woman who likes to tell the truth and be upfront about things, and this is very underhanded, and she is not on board with that.”
The Season 3 finale marks another staggering cliffhanger for “The Diplomat,” which closed out its first season with Kate suspecting British Prime Minister Trowbridge of orchestrating the British war ship attack while the second season saw the death of the president suddenly elevate Grace to the highest White House rank. Cahn revealed that she tried out a “softer” ending for Season 3, but “got a little bored” and opted for the more dramatic twist.
“I found myself at the end of the season craving that again and wanting to be really clear about why the relationship had reached a new place that we wanted to see more [of],” Cahn said.
With Kate and Hal seemingly solid in their marriage again, Cahn remained tight-lipped on whether or not there might be more exploration into Kate’s relationship with Dennison (David Gyasi), with their short-lived romance not explored too thoroughly in the backhalf of the season.
“We start these relationships, and we don’t necessarily know what is the essential nature of each of them, and … when I first thought about it, I thought ‘Kate is in this marriage, and she’s frustrated with it, she’s going to want to break out of it and get something spicy and smoky,’” Cahn said. “Dennison brings a quite a lot of spicy and smokey, but … we found ourselves drawn to the idea that he had a kind of a moral, ethical core — that is the thing that Kate always struggled with — with how she felt ethically, [Hal] made decisions that she wasn’t comfortable with, and that was kind of the marriage turn off.”
That said, Cahn noted Dennison is “morally less certain when he’s sleeping around with married ladies,” which, in turn, makes it “harder to find the place where that character can really break out.”
With “The Diplomat” already renewed for Season 4 well ahead of Season 3’s debut, Cahn said she feels as though the show has found its audience and shows no signs of ending the political drama series. “It’s nice when our hunger to keep telling the story matches the audience’s interest level,” Cahn said. “The world, sadly, keeps delivering more material for us.”
“I love this job — I’d be very happy for it to keep going,” Russell said.
“The Diplomat” Seasons 1-3 are now streaming on Netflix.
