[Review] The Diplomat Season 3: Hot Mess On The Global Stage

Kate Wyler’s hair is a mess, and that’s still a problem. Season 3 of Netflix’s snappy, intricate political drama The Diplomat returned this week, and by this point, Keri Russell’s messy but skilled UK ambassador has already survived a car bomb, a sinister false flag operation, endless marital problems, and way too much face time spent with TV’s most petulant prime minister. A darkly funny season 2 cliffhanger upped the ante for Kate considerably, but even as the dynamic between several global superpowers tilts towards total meltdown, she can't escape the side-eyes over her chronic bedhead.

Since its 2023 debut, The Diplomat has excelled at telling complex political stories by zooming in on the often-inane details that would catch a PR team's attention; wars, the show would have you believe, are won (or better yet, avoided) with quick thinking, bold propositions, and neatly manufactured public images. The latest batch of eight episodes continues this train of thought with some success, but as its central relationship disintegrates, it also trails off a few too many times. The result is a season that’s alternately compelling, vexing, and surprisingly draining.

The trouble, as usual, starts with Kate’s husband Hal (Rufus Sewell). The power couple has been in a rocky place since the shows’ earliest days, but season 3 devotes a massive chunk of screen time to their slow-burn implosion. Sewell is great as always as a foreign policy-minded charmer who constantly fails upward thanks to his impulsive gambits and strong white guy energy. This season, though, a fairly unbelievable bait-and-switch early in the season leads to a rift between the lead couple that soon widens into a gulf. While the world teeters on the edge of disaster, viewers too often end up trapped in rooms with a quietly broken Kate and a casually cruel Hal.

The Diplomat doesn’t work particularly well as a break-up story, and not just because Kate’s sudden teary-eyed insecurity underserves both her no-nonsense character and Russell’s powerhouse performance. The new season’s allegiance shifts also ask us to reframe the show not as the hyper-competent, deliciously inside baseball look at closed-door politics it once was, but as something more predictable — a political melodrama. Series creator Debora Cahn cut her teeth on both The West Wing and Grey’s Anatomy, and while the show still delivers the walk-and-talk thrills of the former, its latest heartbreaks and romantic misadventures (which, of course, always happen in the midst of international crises) veer into Seattle Grace territory more than once.

Hal’s new power trip and Kate’s devolution from fierce strategist to hot mess express make for a pretty rough binge-watch, especially compared to the tautly plotted, flowing earlier seasons. The new episodes also recycle some of the show's greatest hits to varying degrees of success, delivering more ballsy last minute interventions, wardrobe-based character moments, and American backstabbery. Still, there are pieces and performances worth loving. Allison Janney’s Grace Penn, the ruthless VP-turned-president who secretly orchestrated the show’s biggest tragedy, is here given the space to grow into a complexly shaded character. Bradley Whitford, always a welcome addition to any ensemble, completes the other half of a West Wing reunion by joining the inner circle as Penn’s restless and quirky First Man. Rory Kinnear and Nana Mensah remain standouts in a strong supporting cast, while Aidan Turner pops up as a sexy spy who reads more like a narrative device than a real person.

The somewhat mid third season of The Diplomat may be more of a hiccup than a total series derailment. The show remains intriguing and well-acted, with a strong sense of the absurd, a fairly clear-eyed take on American interventionism, and a keen eye for plotting. It also continues to deliver a sly, smart running commentary on the deeply gendered world of politics. Season 3’s shortcomings only stand out because, as the rare Emmy-worthy streaming original with the guts of an aughts primetime hit, its first two seasons felt like a minor miracle. The show’s doomsday clock might be a minute closer to midnight, but with a season 4 renewal already squared away, there’s still plenty of time for Kate Wyler to return to form. I don’t think the hair’s gonna get better, though.

Correction: an earlier version of this review said that Hal fails upwards because of his "impulsive gambits and XY chromosomes." Nobody knows anybody's chromosome situation and plenty of people with XY chromosomes don't have male privilege, so this has been changed to the more precise "strong white guy energy."