Spoiler alert! The following contains spoilers for the Season 3 finale of “The Diplomat.”
World domination? Hal Wyler would like that, please.
That’s what Kate (Keri Russell) learns about her husband (Rufus Sewell) in the Season 3 finale of “The Diplomat,” which concludes a tense season of marital and foreign policy madness as relations between the U.S. and the U.K. endure a roller coaster of disasters, as does the marriage between Kate and Hal.
“It’s the marriage of two countries and the marriage of these people, and it’s hard to keep both going,” says series creator and executive producer Debora Cahn. “I really wanted to just spend some time with both of them and find where the cracks are in each relationship.”
It’s a tantalizing cliffhanger to end the season on for fans — but don’t worry, Season 4 begins production soon. USA TODAY spoke with Cahn about the end of Season 3, Kate and Hal’s marriage, the equally fraught marriage of the U.S. and the U.K., and where things could go in Season 4.
‘The Diplomat’ Season 3 ends with a literal nuclear bombshell reveal
The season began with the swearing in of new president Grace Penn (Allison Janney), who also happened to have been involved in the false flag attack on a British ship in Season 1 that kicked the whole show off. Grace chooses Kate’s husband, tactless and upward failing Hal, as her vice president, forcing the series’ central couple to make a choice about their marriage. They choose “public marriage and private divorce,” Kate stays on as ambassador to the U.K. and they’re both free to discreetly see other people.
When Grace’s involvement in the ship bombing threatens to come to light, Kate, Hal, Grace’s husband Todd (Bradley Whitford, in a thrilling “West Wing” reunion) and the rest of the administration come up with a new disinformation line: The attack was planned by the now-dead president Grace succeeded. Just as U.K. prime minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) is fuming over this news, a Russian submarine carrying a doomsday weapon stuck in British waters needs to be handled. Everyone thinks it has been neutralized, but in the final moments of the finale, just after reconciling with Hal, Kate realizes Hal and Grace conspired to steal the weapon for the U.S.
Will Kate and Hal’s marriage survive? Will the relationship between the U.S. and the U.K. survive?
“It’s pretty bad,” says Cahn. Kate “is going through this experience in which her vision of who (Hal is) keeps changing and shifting. And just as soon as she feels like she understands who he is and understands who she is herself, the picture shifts radically.”
Will their relationship ever recover from this betrayal? What about Grace and Todd, whose marital issues became a subplot this season? Or Eidra (Ali Ahn) and Stuart (Ato Essandoh), the on-again-off-again foreign service pair, who have both been rocked by current events?
“I don’t think it’s gonna get easier going forward for these couples,” Cahn says. As Season 3 unfolded, “we kind of lay out all of the pieces of what we are then going to blow apart.”
What can we expect in Season 4 of ‘The Diplomat’?
Each season on “The Diplomat,” the crises get bigger. But what’s bigger than the U.S. stealing a weapon of mass destruction from Russia? How do they top that in Season 4?
“We spend a lot of time in the writers room asking” how to up the ante for each new season, Cahn says. “We don’t want to just keep ratcheting things up, but we do want to honestly look at what are the stakes of the decisions that get made in these rooms. And it turns out they’re big.”
Any hints for fans about what decisions Kate, Hal, Grace and Todd will make in Season 4? (Janney and Whitford will both be returning as series regulars.)
“We haven’t figured it out yet, but we’re having a really good time trying.”