Trailer

Tensions ratchet up in the latest official trailer for the third season of Netflix‘s The Diplomat, as viewers eagerly await the Oct. 16 premiere of the next set of episodes.

Kicking off with what looks like the immediate aftermath of President Rayburn (Michael McKean) dying at the end of season two, the preview sees staffers informed of his death and that the commander-in-chief was on the phone with former ambassador Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell) when he died.

Vice President Grace Penn (Allison Janney) soon learns that Hal was telling her boss that he had a “rogue deputy,” as Hal puts it, alluding to Grace’s involvement with the British warship attack that launched the series.

Hal and his U.K. ambassador wife, Kate (Keri Russell), then consider the risks of Grace as a “terribly flawed” president and the possibility of Kate keeping an eye on her in the White House, but Kate seems uninterested in the “opportunity” that Grace’s presidency presents.

“I’m not walking around in the middle of a constitutional crisis with a résumé stapled to my forehead,” Kate says at one point.

And soon the international stakes grow higher as viewers see British Foreign Secretary Austin Dennison (David Gyasi) warning Kate about Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) “concealing explosive information on [her] behalf,” saying he will extract “10 pounds of flesh.”

And Kate declares that the president, seemingly Grace, is “about to do something that is apocalyptically dumb” as Hal and Grace consider something “catastrophic” possibly “coming out.”

The trailer, offering the most substantive look at the season yet, then suggests larger tensions between the U.S. and the U.K. as a voiceover informs viewers of the Pentagon “drawing up battle plans for war with the U.K.”

Kate is shown saying, “I am doing everything I can, but there is a limit.” Meanwhile, Trowbridge declares, “I expected more from you.”

And, leaving viewers in suspense, Nana Mensah’s chief of staff Billie advises someone, “You should get a lawyer.”

The trailer and key art that Netflix released today tease that “no alliance lasts forever.”

After a shorter, six-episode second season, The Diplomat‘s third season will feature eight episodes, which Netflix describes as follows: “In season three of The Diplomat, Ambassador Kate Wyler lives the particular nightmare that is getting what you want. She just accused Vice President Grace Penn of hatching a terrorist plot and admitted she’s after the VP’s job. But now the president is dead, Kate’s husband Hal may have inadvertently killed him, and Grace Penn is leader of the free world. None of this slows Hal’s campaign to land Kate the vice presidency. Kate steps into a role she never wanted, with a freedom she never expected, an increasingly complicated friendship with Foreign Secretary Austin Dennison (Gyasi), and an unnerving bond with first gentleman Todd Penn (Bradley Whitford).”

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter about the end of season two and beginning of season three, Sewell teased that things soon get complicated.

“The end of season two is one thing but very quickly even more extraordinary things happen,” he told THR before the season two premiere, as season three was already in production, last fall. “Allison Janney coming in, the dynamics of the story after what happens at the end of season two really gives us some extraordinary things. Also it changes dynamics that might have been in danger of playing out. And it’s getting really complex.”

The Diplomat has already been renewed for a fourth season at Netflix.

Debora Cahn, who created the show, serves as showrunner and executive producer alongside Russell, Janice Williams, Alex Graves, Peter Noah and Eli Attie.

The cast includes Ali Ahn, Ato Essandoh, Celia Imrie and Miguel Sandoval.

Check out more images from season three below.