Netflix’s The Diplomat isn’t just a spectacular political thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. In my humble opinion, this series from creator Debora Cahn, a veteran of iconic series like Homeland and The West Wing, is actually one of the best originals, period, that the streaming giant has released in the last few years. Blessed with a fantastic lead actress — Keri Russell, playing the brilliant and perpetually multi-tasking career diplomat who finds herself appointed ambassador to the UK — the show gets you invested right from the get-go, and it keeps you like that all the way to that explosive cliffhanger at the end of Season 1.
I know I wasn’t alone in screaming at the TV when the credits started to roll during that “explosive” finale. So I also know that I’m not alone in my happiness that Season 2 is just around the corner, debuting on Oct. 31. We also just got our first full-length trailer for the new season, which you can check out below.
I’m going to talk in this post about what the new season will entail, focused on what we definitely know so far, which is to say, be advised:
*Spoilers to follow*
Right off the bat, there are two big storylines to be aware of that will overshadow everything in the new season. For one thing, she was talked about all last season but never shown; now, we’ll actually get our first look at the show’s Vice President Grace Penn, played by Allison Janney. A veep, by the way, who thinks that Russell’s Kate Wyler is after her job (and who’s not entirely wrong in thinking that).
Also, more importantly, we’ll pick back up with the immediate aftermath of the bomb that went off during the Season 1 finale, an explosion that changed everything in an instant. Kate’s husband Hal Wyler, for example, had finally pieced some important things together but unfortunately got (literally) too close to the conspiracy he uncovered.
In the final moments of the Season 1 finale, Kate had also put it all together — that it was none other than UK prime minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) who planned the explosion of the British aircraft carrier in the series’ pilot episode. “Kate’s colleagues and her almost-ex-husband (Rufus Sewell) are victims of a politically motivated attack in London that takes some lives and shatters the rest,” Cahn said during a Netflix promotional interview. “The marriage she thought was over, the relationship she thought was beginning … all of it, in pieces.”
Long story short, everything we thought we knew about the Wylers has changed going into Season 2. So does everything they thought they knew about each other, while Kate’s world has likewise been titled on its axis. It all certainly made for a tight, seriously addictive first season debut — and you don’t have to take my word for it. The Diplomat premiered back in April and debuted at No. 1 on Netflix’s weekly global Top 10 TV ranking.
In its first weekend alone, according to Netflix, the series had 57.48 million hours viewed and appeared in the Top 10 in 87 countries.
