Note: The following story contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of The Diplomat.

Just when Keri Russell’s Kate Wyler was ready to raise the alarm about British corruption, the politician took a sharp turn in Season 2 of The Diplomat.

In the Netflix series, Kate and her team collect incriminating evidence against British Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) to prove that he was behind the attack on the British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous. But their investigation takes a turn when Trowbridge’s former advisor Margaret Roylin (Celia Imrie) tells Kate that Trowbridge was not involved in the attack and that she hired Russian mercenary Roman Lenkov to stage an attack that would cause outrage rather than harm would cause. As we know, it did not go according to plan and resulted in the deaths of 40 Royal Navy personnel.

When Vice President Grace Penn (Allison Janney) – who is supposed to replace Kate after a scandal involving Grace’s husband – arrives in the UK to help deal with the escalating chaos, Kate learns that it was Grace who initiated Roylin’s idea Head of a plan to support US diplomacy. So Kate was right that the call came from inside the house, but she didn’t know it came from her house.

In the Season 2 finale, when Kate first considers becoming Vice President, plans for Grace to leave her role as Vice President are sidetracked when Grace is nominated for the job of Nuclear Czar as part of her role as Vice President brings Kate – and This also includes Hal – with her newfound knowledge in a difficult situation. They confront Grace, who tries to explain to Kate that what she did was for the greater good. But Kate is now in Grace’s crosshairs, and Grace fears that Kate might reveal her big secret.

Kate and Hal agree to tell the Secretary of Defense about their discovery, but in true Hal fashion, he goes over Kate’s head and instead decides to deliver the message to the US President himself (played by Michael McKean). The President takes the news badly – he suffers a heart attack and dies during the call after hearing the news.

In the final moments of season two, Grace threatens Kate not to reveal her secret as secret security guards rush to Grace, who has suddenly become President of the United States. Boom. Cut to the end credits.

TheWrap spoke with showrunner Debora Cahn and stars Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell about the shocking end to season two of The Diplomat. And don’t worry, “The Diplomat” has already been renewed by Netflix for the third season.

In the finale, we see Kate finally accept and show her willingness to become vice president. Why does she finally get it into her head?

Deborah Cahn: She reaches a point where she feels like she has to do it – she has a responsibility to take on a role that needs to be filled by someone other than the person filling it. And for Kate, the interesting thing about the relationship with Grace Penn is that she has a terrible impression of her, and then she kind of has a crush on her, suddenly she’s amazing, she’s been vilified, and then that relationship goes through these wild swings and hers Opinions about who Grace is change, and her ideas about whether she should take Grace’s job or try to take Grace’s job change as her opinion of Grace changes.

Keri Russell: (It’s) awkward. I think her love and loyalty is to the country – she believes in it. She really does. And someone is going to clean that up – a bad person who shouldn’t be in charge, who manipulated things that shouldn’t be manipulated, who got us into a bad situation, who didn’t make the best decisions, is going to take over, and I think she thinks that’s wrong. Even though it’s a job she doesn’t want, she thinks she would be better than this person who has this flaw on them and was involved in shady things. It’s a moral standpoint.

Kate says in the finale that Hal wants her to be vice president so he can be closer to power. What do you think of that, Rufus?

Rufus Sewell: I think he wants to effect change. He wants her to come to power. He wants to be in the best position to do the things he wants to do. But that’s what he really wants for her. He’s very, very excited because he thinks she’s fantastic. He believes that she is really the best person for this because they have things that they believe are important, not just love for the country but for the world. They care about Afghanistan, not just for the benefit of America, but… they are humanitarian workers. They have very strong beliefs and want to do whatever it takes to bring about the changes in the world that they have always believed in. He strongly believes she should do this. He has his personal ambitions, but they are not some secret Machiavellian agenda for his own game. I keep coming back to this, but if events had unfolded in a way that best suited him to become vice president, they both would have worked toward making that happen. But this is the door that has opened.

The finale ends with the President dying after Hal tells him the news. Why did you want to stop with that twist?

Cahn: We always want to start in a place where we ask a lot of questions that might be worth answering in another season. It’s all about people in leadership positions who are new to it and feel kind of overwhelmed. So once someone gets kind of fixated on one role, we want to shake up the snow globe and see what happens if that’s more on their plate or things get worse.

Why does Hal go over Kate’s head? again?

Sewell: He has this drive that you could call brilliance (or bravery) when it works out because he can see several steps ahead, and he has a kind of bravery that makes him make enormous leaps and accomplish amazing things. The downside of this is when it doesn’t work out. From an implementation perspective, this was the right decision. He couldn’t predict what happened because it was an act of God, which made it a terrible, terrible thing. But if it had worked, which one would most likely have assumed when looking at the situation, the reasons he gives for it are quite convincing. You just couldn’t predict it…it’s bad luck. But at the same time that doesn’t mean that this could have been predicted. I think that’s one of the drawbacks of this character that can deliver brilliant results: if something goes wrong, and that’s part of his reputation, there are losses.

“The Diplomat” Seasons 1 and 2 are now streaming on Netflix.