Debora Cahn brought her experience as a writer and producer on Homeland and The West Wing to The Diplomat, an eight-episode Netflix political drama starring Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell as husband-and-wife American ambassadors forced to play nice in London after a surprise attack on a British warship.
Here’s a quote from our review:
It’s good, this. Sometimes really good. It’s as much a relationship drama as a political thriller and as much a comedy as either, so it moves between genres and tones with relentless enthusiasm and strings them together with surprisingly sharp writing.
Given the show ends on a pretty major cliffhanger, people may well be wondering about its future, so here’s everything we know.
Will there be a Season 2 of The Diplomat on Netflix?
May 1st, 2023
It has been confirmed by Netflix that The Diplomat will be returning for Season 2. We are not surprised by this renewal as the series hit 57 million+ hours viewed in its first week, reaching the number 1 spot.
Here is the tweet that confirmed the news:
The Diplomat has been renewed for Season 2. pic.twitter.com/bnfaLvfoU1
— Netflix (@netflix) May 1, 2023
Netflix bases its renewals on view hours, so it’s no surprise that the streaming service rushed to get this news out.
April 20, 2023
At the time of writing Netflix hasn’t officially confirmed a second season of The Diplomat. However, it’s clear that’s the intention of the showrunners after the cliffhanger ending, and there’s still plenty of plot to unpack in a potential follow-up.
The Diplomat currently has a score of 94% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer, which will never trump raw viewing data for Netflix but will certainly factor into discussions of the show’s appeal. The cast will also help, too; Russell and Sewell are both marketable stars, and the show is littered with strong supporting turns. Crucially, nobody involved is so famous and in-demand that scheduling conflicts would be likely to prevent them returning.
It’ll be interesting to see how the show is received by fans. The first season isn’t too long with eight 45-50-minute episodes, but it’s offputtingly dense with information in the early-going which might prevent some less patient viewers from seeing it through to the end. Since Netflix put a fair degree of importance on how many viewers actually complete a show, this could be detrimental to its chances of renewal.
However, given all of the above and the fact that The Diplomat is really rather good, I’m leaning towards a potentially bright future. Our official prediction is that The Diplomat will be renewed for Season 2, but we’ll update this article as soon as we know more.
