What happened and what’s next + Allison Janney

(Editor’s note: This post contains spoilers for “The Diplomat” season 2, including the ending.)

Let’s be honest: As soon as viewers heard that Allison Janney (Allison Janney!) would be playing the never-before-seen Vice President of the United States, Grace Penn, in Netflix’s ‘The Diplomat,’ you just knew she was going to be heavily involved at the twists in the final episode.

And she was. After an episode 5 bombshell in which Penn himself ordered the attack on a British ship that killed soldiers, Kate (Keri Russell) is ready to throw her to the wolves – or at least the Secretary of State. But in classic ‘diplomat’ fashion, there is still one more revelation to go. Cue Janney in a ball gown dragging a card into a formal dining room and monologuing the complex decisions she makes every moment to keep Americans alive from a nuclear attack.

“She comes in, we think she’s terrible,” creator Debora Cahn explained to IndieWire about introducing the character. “We think she’s going to hate Kate and Kate’s going to hate her. Then there is immediately a kind of bromance. Kate says, “Oh my god, she’s the leader we all really want and who I want to be when I grow up.” Then Kate finds out what she did, then hates her again, and then finds out Why she did it, and then (she realized), “I would have done exactly the same thing,” and to Hal, “You would have done that too.” (We) try to get the audience to think about characters who are confronted with something so complicated that, yes, it is a horror show. It turned into a huge bloodbath. But the alternative was greater carnage. It wasn’t No massacre.”

The days on set when Russell and Janney went head-to-head ruled, of course.

“I think (Janney) was excited about it, and we were all a little scared about it,” Cahn said of Penn’s big card scene. “I was so scared that I had one of the other writers write that scene, Juliana Marr, one of our youngest staff writers, wrote it and killed it, and we were all nervous. And then the first rehearsal came and we walked through it a few times… then the whole crew comes in so the crew can see what the blocking is going to be, what they have to do, where, and they read through the scene for the crew, literally applause from the entire crew, and (I had) never seen that happen before.

Cahn confirmed that the role expanded when Janney signed on – and it appears she will return, as she ascends to the presidency in the final seconds of the season after Kate’s shifty husband Hal (Rufus Sewell) replaces the Secretary of State Business to call as they agreed goes rogue (!), calls the president (!!), and then kills him from the shock (!!!).

As for the following? While Netflix recently confirmed that they had already ordered a season 3, IndieWire spoke to Cahn that had not yet been announced.

“When we find out if we’re doing a Season 3, I’ll think of something great that’s going to happen,” Cahn said with a laugh. “I have ideas. I like to take them into a writers’ room and say, “Please give me a better idea than this.” I’m not coming in with nothing, but I really want it to be a living, organic process where we figure it out. I don’t want to get too attached to any idea. I don’t think my idea is always the best. And I have about six smart people who tell me their ideas.”

Let the brainstorming begin.

Season 2 of ‘The Diplomat’ is now streaming on Netflix.