Credit: Netflix

Power has always come with strings attached in The Diplomat, and four seasons in, Kate Wyler has become rather good at standing in rooms full of powerful people making dreadful decisions. The woman has had enough practice biting her tongue when necessary and cleaning up other people’s messes without making too much of a fuss, which, frankly, should qualify her for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Season four, though, has got Kate dealing with a much bigger problem, because Grace Penn is not the vice president she can spar with from the sidelines anymore… She is sitting in the Oval Office, and Hal is now her vice president. And Kate? She gets lumbered with explaining why America has nicked Poseidon, a Russian weapon hauled out of a sunken submarine.

Kate does what Kate always does and stays close to the problem, convinced she can stop things getting worse, but Grace keeps pushing until that logic starts wearing thin.

By the finale, Britain has a new prime minister, and Stuart has been punished for speaking up, so Kate reaches the end of the road.

Why does Kate resign from her job?

And this, people, is where Kate’s patience with the whole administration starts running out, because Poseidon has already put her in an impossible position. She knows Grace and Hal helped take the Russian weapon, yet she stays in the tent and helps contain the damage. Then Windsor Castle changes everything when Grace is shot, and the situation worsens further when Austin Dennison later dies in a helicopter crash in Amritsar.

Then Hal tells Nicol Trowbridge what America did behind Britain’s back, and poor Kate is left facing the prime minister after her own husband has lobbed a diplomatic grenade into the room.

Kate then forces Trowbridge to resign, and Bethan Vaughan takes over, but the trouble does not stop there. Russia wants to recover its dead from the submarine; Vaughan agrees, and Grace tells Kate to pressure her into changing that decision.

The final push comes when Stuart Hayford uses the State Department’s dissent channel to challenge Grace’s policy, only for her to find out he wrote it and order him back to Washington. That is enough for Kate. She has already put up with plenty to keep the administration steady, but seeing someone punished for speaking up is the point where staying becomes impossible to justify.

What happens between Grace and Bethan Vaughan at the G7?

By the time the G7 comes around, American warships are heading towards Britain over the row about the Russian dead, and once you are sending naval vessels to put pressure on an ally, “a disagreement between friends” is doing some heroic work.

Bethan Vaughan arrives ready to expose Grace over Poseidon, but Grace beats her to it. She admits America took the weapon and then stands there defending the warships as necessary for protecting Britain and NATO. Luckily, the gamble pays off. Vaughan loses the reveal she had been banking on, while Kate gets a front-row seat to Grace crossing another line and then talking her way through the fallout.

And that is it for Kate. She resigns as ambassador in public, which means she no longer has to defend an administration she has stopped believing in. Billie Appiah walks out too, with Secretary of State Miguel Ganon following her, so Grace may have survived the G7 confrontation, but her own people going for the door tells a very different story.

What is Hal about to tell the press?

Hal walks out with Kate and the others, which for one lovely moment makes it look as though he has chosen his wife over power, but come on, this is Hal, and nice gestures have never been his strongest suit.

The finale never shows him resigning as vice president, and that is very important because Kate had not told him she planned to quit; instead, he walks towards the waiting reporters while Kate watches, and then the episode cuts before we hear a word.

He could be getting ready to back Kate and turn on Grace, or he could be covering himself while hanging on to the vice presidency, but you know, with Hal, the obvious answer is rarely the one you should trust.

Kate ends season four of The Diplomat knowing where she stands with Grace Penn, while Hal ends it walking towards a microphone, which is much more worrying.