The Diplomat S3E2: Inside the 2010 Incident That Changed Hal and Kate Forever
The Diplomat season 3 episode 2, Last Dance at the Country Club, rewinds to 2010 Baghdad, where boss Hal and rising star Kate keep a clandestine spark under wraps—until a laugh-out-loud slip-up blows their cover and ignites the origin story fans have been waiting for.
Season 3, Episode 2 of The Diplomat dips back to 2010 and finally answers the question: how did Kate and Hal even happen? The answer is equal parts messy, funny, and kind of sweet in that very them way.
The flashback setup (and the very public oops)
Episode 2, titled 'Last Dance at the Country Club,' spends time in Baghdad, where Hal is Kate's boss. They keep things buttoned-up in public to hide the relationship, which lasts right up until the moment it doesn’t. The secrecy blows up in spectacular, sitcom-adjacent fashion when Kate walks into Carole Lengetti's office with her underwear accidentally hooked onto her pants. Subtle, it is not.
- Baghdad, 2010: Hal is Kate's superior, and they are quietly involved.
- Their secret goes kaboom when Kate's wardrobe mishap exposes everything in front of Carole Lengetti.
- With the cat out of the bag, Kate pushes Hal to define what they are. He tells her he has been reassigned to Vienna, Austria. Kate, surprisingly unflustered, is ready to follow him.
- Later, Hal improvises a proposal with a twist tie from a bag of party cups. He literally makes a ring out of it. Kate keeps that tiny, janky ring for years — and yes, we see it in the episode.
Why the show finally went back there
Series creator Debora Cahn told Tudum she added the flashback to map out the power imbalance between Kate (Keri Russell) and Hal that has always quietly defined them. In the present, he is the one clinging to the marriage while she keeps looking for the exit. But back then? It was flipped. The flashback makes it clear Kate was more all-in at the start, and Hal took a beat to catch up.
Cahn wanted to show that switch: Kate got there first, and Hal only later made the mental leap to 'this is forever.' It reframes the relationship we have been watching — the guy who now will do anything to keep them together used to be the one lagging behind emotionally. If that sounded confusing on the show, this episode cleans it up: the dynamic changed over time, and this is when the change started.
About that Season 4 tease: brace yourself
Season 3 ends with a big swing, and Cahn is already warning that the fallout is not going to be gentle for Kate and Hal. She told USA Today the marriage is in rough shape and the pressure is only going up, not just for them but for other couples on the show too. She also points out that Kate's take on who Hal is keeps shifting — just when she thinks she has him (and herself) figured out, the ground moves again. On the broader canvas, Cahn says to be very wary of who ends up with power next; the people who grab it might not wield it well, which is a cheery way of saying: expect volatile, maybe dangerous, scenarios.
'It's pretty bad.'
The Diplomat is streaming on Netflix.