Who Is Grace Penn in The Diplomat? Her Full Arc, Explained

Then Grace and Hal go further. Off England's north-east coast, a Russian submarine carries the Poseidon, a highly dangerous nuclear-powered weapon. Grace tells Trowbridge the US has sent a drone, when she has in fact sent a submarine that is big enough to hold the weapon.

Kate works out that Grace and Hal have taken it. Showrunner Debora Cahn put it plainly to Netflix's Tudum: "Hal and Grace are playing with matches in somebody else's house." Netflix frames Season 4 as Kate and Todd, an uneasy pair, uniting to stop the Grace and Hal alliance.

Grace Penn in Season 4

At the end of the first episode, a sniper shoots Grace outside Windsor Castle, where a protest had diverted the American motorcade. Before surgery, she transfers her presidential powers to Hal, who holds them temporarily. She is back in charge by Episode 3 but short-tempered, and the people around her, Todd most of all, notice she is not the same. When Trowbridge publicly announces the death of Foreign Secretary Austin Dennison (David Gyasi), his remarks appear aimed at the US and at Grace.

Trowbridge resigns soon after. His successor, Bethan Vaughn (Jodie Whittaker), is willing to let Russia recover its dead by sending vessels into British waters, which would expose the missing weapon. Todd ends up in London as special envoy, a job Grace steers him into partly to stop him probing into her mental health and partly so Kate has to manage him. Kate is ordered by Grace to tell Vaughn to call off Russia or face American warships. She never delivers the threat but tells the team she did. In Episode 7, set in Italy before the summit, the Wylers and the Penns sit down to a tense dinner, and Kate admits to the table that she kept Todd out of her meeting with Vaughn and never delivered the threat.

When Kate tells her that her behaviour changed after the shooting, Grace answers: "We need to face the idea that maybe I'm ... off." She holds her course anyway and sends Todd to deliver the threat himself. Grace thanks Kate for her service in what sounds like a dismissal, then sends Hal away as well.

Grace Penn at the G7

At the summit in Tuscany, Grace has already deployed US warships. She takes the floor and tells the assembled leaders that the US took the Poseidon, that it will bar Russian warships and surveillance vessels from European seas, and that it will open fire on any interfering country, allies included. None of the leaders challenges her straight away. In the same episode, she recalls Kate's deputy, Stuart Hayford (Ato Essandoh), to Washington because he wrote a dissent cable against the warship plan, even though Ganon agreed with it.

Kate then resigns as ambassador in front of Grace and walks out. As Hal stands, Grace tells him to sit, and he sits. White House chief of staff Billie Appiah (Nana Mensah) resigns and follows Kate out with Ganon, and then Hal steps out of the darkness to join them. Kate lets the press know the vice president has something to say. Before his words are heard, the season ends.

Janney put Grace's view of that moment this way to Tudum: "Is he going to be on my side? What is he going to say?"

What Allison Janney and Debora Cahn say about Grace Penn

Janney ties the change in Grace to the shooting. "When she gets shot, she has been made vulnerable in a way that I don’t think she’s ever been before," she told Tudum. "Grace starts to doubt herself but doesn’t want to show it," she said. "So to not show it, she doubles down and makes decisions that are scaring everybody else".

Cahn keeps the cause open on purpose. She told TheWrap: "I never really wanted it to be clear what was happening."

ShatteredBulbs' reading is that the shooting explains less than the characters think. Long before she was shot, Grace conceived the Courageous attack behind President Rayburn's back, so a woman who already trusted her own judgement over a president's now simply holds the office herself. Trowbridge's public remarks, which appear aimed at her, look like another possible spur.