The Diplomat Season 3 Episode 3: The Truth About Roylin’s Fate

The Diplomat Season 3 wastes no time swinging a sledgehammer. Margaret Roylin’s story ends almost as soon as it begins this year, and the fallout hits everyone from Downing Street to Langley. It’s messy, morally thorny, and very on-brand for this show.

How we got here

Roylin (Celia Imrie) was the former campaign manager and close advisor to UK Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge. After Season 2 exposed her role in the carrier attack, she became political poison. The U.S. granted her asylum and tucked her into a CIA safehouse, which is where Season 3 picks up.

The death, and the immediate shockwave

By the end of the Season 3 premiere, we see Roylin quietly taking pills in that safehouse. Episode 2 confirms the worst: Eidra Park (Ali Ahn) tells us Roylin has died. Kate Wyler (Keri Russell) then breaks the news to Trowbridge, leaving him and Austin Dennison stunned. Episode 3 widens the lens on what her death means for the rest of the chessboard, especially Eidra.

Eidra Park’s nightmare week

Here’s the tough part for Eidra: Roylin died while the CIA was protecting her, which is already a terrible headline. Then an attack on Trowbridge follows, and the optics go from bad to catastrophic. The show adds one very dark operational detail: the Agency quietly relocates Roylin’s body to her home to muddy the safehouse connection. It’s the kind of procedural move that makes you wince and nod at the same time, because of course they would try that.

MI6 doesn’t exactly rally around Eidra either. Tom Libby freezes her out and refuses to vouch for her, leaving her isolated in the transatlantic intel world. Kate really does try to help — she lines up a meeting with the CIA director to argue Eidra’s case — but when Hal’s vice president nomination becomes the priority, Eidra’s lifeline gets bumped. Across the first few episodes, Eidra ricochets between fury and panic at the thought that her career might already be over, while still refusing to roll over and accept that outcome.

What the creator says about Roylin’s choice

Series creator Debora Cahn has talked about the decision to end Roylin’s story here and what it says about the character. She frames Roylin as someone we’re primed to dislike, but whose choices start to make a complicated kind of sense.

"Roylin is a character who we introduce as though she’s a villain."

Cahn says Kate comes to begrudgingly respect Roylin because she believes she acted for her country. Cahn also strongly implies Roylin died by suicide after accepting U.S. asylum, because she did not want to betray the UK any further.

"Sometimes in order to be the person who rises to meet that moment, the game ends," Cahn says. "Which is a terrible outcome. But Roylin considers herself a public servant and a servant to her country."

Where that leaves everyone after Episode 3

• Roylin: Dead after taking pills in a CIA safehouse; her body was moved to her home to conceal Agency involvement.
• Kate: Breaks the news to Trowbridge and Dennison; wants to go to bat for Eidra, but Hal’s VP push takes precedence.
• Eidra: Under intense scrutiny because the death happened on her watch; MI6 shuts her out; Tom Libby won’t back her; still fighting to salvage her standing.
• Trowbridge and Dennison: Blindsided by Roylin’s death, now dealing with the political consequences and the attack that follows.
• CIA/MI6: The transatlantic trust is wobbly; the cleanup around Roylin’s death only makes the politics uglier.

The bottom line

Roylin’s exit is tragic and deliberately complicated. The show wants you to wrestle with whether her final act was a sacrifice, a refusal to betray her country, or a way to avoid living with the consequences. Where do you land — was it justified?

The Diplomat is streaming on Netflix.