REVIEW: ‘The Diplomat’ Season 4 Continues Its Political Drama Supremacy

The Diplomat is one of Netflix’s most interesting series. With dialogue on par with The West Wing and relationships with more depth than most top-rated prestige dramas, the Keri Russell-produced and fronted series has yet to disappoint. And The Diplomat Season 4 just continues this. 

From creator, showrunner, and executive producer Debora Cahn, The Diplomat Season 4 picks up in the ashes of Ambassador Kate Wyler (Russell) being passed up for Vice President, only for her husband, Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell), to get the job from President Grace Penn (Allison Janney). Having colluded to steal Russia’s most powerful weapon, the United States is trying to use the UK (the country they betrayed) to clean it up. 

After President Grace Penn is wounded in an attempted assassination at the start of the season, The Diplomat Season 4 focuses on how she has devolved into an aggressive hawk, with a finger itching to move the world into a nuclear event. 

The Diplomat Season 4 continues to put itself at the top of the political drama pantheon.

The UK’s lack of trust in the US, and the US’s lack of trust in the UK, work like a dance. At times, the two countries lean on each other because the better angels know that mutually assured destruction is in their best interest. Other times, emotions flare up to a point where it’s hard to calm. 

As the relationship between the two countries frays further, Kate and Todd Penn (Bradley Whitford) try to stop their spouses. Only, that is a hard job. Now, with the weapon, it is hurtling the United States toward war and pushing tensions between the US and the UK to the breaking point. Now, Kate has to not only save her marriage (still), but also try to stop the bleeding from the gaping wound in the two countries’ alliance. 

Kate and Todd don’t want to be allies. They’re fundamentally different people, with different outlooks on the roles that spouses play in their marriages. But with Hal’s penchant for making impulsive decisions and President Penn’s increased paranoia, they need to be the adults in the room. But ultimately, these two couples give the audience a look into just how much a relationship can steady a person’s soul or make it break. 

Kate and Hal’s relationship is the star of The Diplomat Season 4. Across three seasons, we’ve seen the infidelity, the arguments, and the neglect. But we’ve also seen them both choose each other time and time again regardless of the stakes. They love each other too deeply to stop choosing their life together, with all its mess. 

However, in the past seasons, Hal has been the person chasing the other in the marriage. They have hated each other, loved each other, cheated on each other, and underestimated each other. But here, in The Diplomat Season 4, they’re still here, in love, and making it work. More importantly, Kate is finally putting in the effort Hal has been begging her to do. It just took him becoming VP for her to do it. 

The boundaries that Hal sets this season are simple. Against his better judgment, he has chosen to stay by Kate’s side. He has chased her, caved into her requests and guidance, stifled his growth to facilitate hers, and now Kate has to do the same. When they fight, and they both know that they will, she has to be the one to try and make it better. 

But when you strip it all back, the request is simple. For the first time in the series, Kate has to put work into her marriage instead of running from it. She can’t be scared of it, and more importantly, she has to trust that Hal can succeed doing things his way. 

Hal and Kate’s marriage remains the nexus of The Diplomat Season 4. 

While this may seem like a childish push from a man to make his wife bend, the reality is that Hal has been bending over backward the entire series to keep their marriage alive. The two are deeply flawed spouses and people, but they both also understand how they make each other better. And now, Kate has to give up and do things Hal’s way, even when it’s wrong. 

These are the moments when Kate struggles. She has been the special envoy to the UK, and she knows how to win them over. She knows what to say and do, and how to negotiate. But instead of being herself, The Diplomat Season 4 makes her sacrifice parts of herself to be Hal’s strong arm. Blackmailing? Well, that’s just a Tuesday. 

Kate and Hal are the center of everything, and their relationship represents the state of the rest of the field at the same time. The series is at its best when it’s leveraging the power (read: dysfunctional) couple’s marriage as a microcosm of the threats around them, and the need to trust the plan. 

For the first half of the season, the only element explored is Kate and Hal’s marriage. It stands out beautifully and captures the decision to stay with someone, to fix something, and to atone for your mistakes. Still, though, while their marriage grounds the first half of the season, it leaves that section of Season 4 feeling blander than anticipated. 

This is largely because The Diplomat Season 4 is, for the most part, just conversations. The sharp writing, from humor to intense drama, still carries the series, but when Kate and Hal aren’t on screen, it suffers. That is, unless the other grounding force in the series isn’t also on camera. 

That honor goes to Grace Penn, the President of the United States; her transformation is fueled by a little bit of megalomania and the trauma of almost dying, creating a woman whose aggression is turned up to 100. Janney’s Penn is terrifying and refreshing in equal measure. And corralling her becomes the focus of her timid husband, Todd, and, more entertainingly, the Vice Presidential couple. 

This Netflix series remains some of Kerri Russell’s best work. 

Janney’s performance is one for the record books. While her presence was felt last season, The Diplomat Season 4 uses her as much as it can, especially in the back half. Her steely demeanor consistently makes her a terrifying presence in the series. Whenever President Penn would enter the room, I felt myself holding my breath slightly. She is a suffocating presence, and that is her success as a character. 

Stress is what The Diplomat thrives on, and this season is no different. Balanced against the husband she is smothering with her power, eroding any semblance of kindness that came from her love for him, Penn’s story feels every bit as tragic as the opening of the season alludes to.

There is no shortage of table negotiations, but where The Diplomat shines isn’t in the political intrigue. It finds its focus, and its wit, in the interpersonal conversations. The dialogue is strongest when it explores the awkward minefield of interpersonal boundaries, old mistakes, and general sensitivities. And maybe that’s why this season, for all its slowness, succeeds. 

The world is shaped by what happens behind the doors. A Prime Minister resigning is shaped by his deteriorating mental state and a woman he secretly wants to sleep with blackmailing him. A Vice President is chosen out of fear of his powerful and willful wife. It’s what happens at the awkward dinners and relationship discussions, or in bed. Not a speck of dialogue uses piercing words to cut through thick political allegiances or oaths to three-letter agencies. 

The Diplomat Season 4 may take four episodes to truly get going, but this political drama is far beyond your typical politician fair. Instead, it focuses on people, not power. Even when the latter screams loudly from the narrative, it’s the person giving it a voice that matters. Intensity lives in the pit a broken marriage is trying to repair, and nothing else on television compares. 

The Diplomat Season 4 is streaming now, exclusively on Netflix. 

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