Spoilers! What to know about that big twist in 'The Diplomat' finale

Spoiler alert! The following contains details of the Season 2 finale of "The Diplomat."

The Wylers have really bad luck with sharing big news to world leaders.

The couple at the center of Netflix's soapy political drama "The Diplomat" has a bad habit of having intimate meetings with important people who drop dead in the middle of the conversation. And judging by the particular leader who didn't make it through the series' Season 2 finale, things are only going to get wilder from here.

The new episodes of "Diplomat," which began streaming Thursday, follow U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom Kate Wyler (Keri Russell) and her husband, former foreign service officer Hal (Rufus Sewell), as they try to keep the world from setting on fire in aftermath of an attack on a U.K. aircraft carrier. And by the end of Season 2, U.S. Vice President Grace Penn (Allison Janney) has appeared on the scene to help Kate, or maybe hinder her.

Here's what happened in the explosive finale, and what it could mean for the third season of the series (currently filming).

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

What happened in the 'The Diplomat' Season 2 finale?

Kate, Hal and CIA station chief Eidra Park (Ali Ahn) discovered midway through the season that the attack on the British ship HMS Courageous was a false-flag operation run by posh Conservative party broker Margaret Roylin (Celia Imrie). Roylin won't give up the biggest names of her co-conspirators to anyone but Hal, because he isn't an official representative of the U.S. government, but Hal tells Kate anyway. The real mastermind? Penn, the vice president.

Amid this chaos, Penn shows up in London, subtly manipulating British Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) into keeping the whole traitorous scheme under wraps. She does such a good job of charming Trowbridge that the prime minister seems to convince U.S. President William Rayburn (Michael McKean) to rethink his plan to boot Grace from the administration and replace her with Kate.

But after Trowbridge makes things awkward at the fancy dinner attended by Kate, Hal, Grace and other dignitaries, Kate and Hal are forced to reveal to Grace that they know she was behind the attack. The VP pulls Kate out of the dinner and, with the help of an inappropriately hilarious visual aid, explains that the attack was a scheme to prevent Scottish Independence, which would have meant the loss of a key U.S. nuclear base in the North Atlantic. So see, she didn't bomb the British ship because she's a bad person, she did it to save the world from nuclear annihilation by Russia in a future hypothetical war.

Kate struggles with how to handle this new information, and eventually realizes she and Hal should just play by the rules: Hal should inform the secretary of state and let someone higher up deal with it all. Except Hal doesn't do what he's told.

No, he goes straight to his good buddy President Rayburn, who finds the news so upsetting that he drops dead on the Zoom call. Hal runs screaming through the halls of the U.S. Embassy in London trying to reach Kate, who at that moment happens to be having a nice (read: super passive-aggressive) chat with Grace about how Grace wants to keep Kate and Hal quiet.

The episode ends as Secret Service agents sprint across the grounds of the ambassador's mansion toward Grace and Kate, as Hal screams through the phone in Kate's ear: "Grace Penn is president of the United States!"

What does this mean for 'The Diplomat' Season 3?

So now Grace is the president and only Kate, Hal and Margaret Roylin know that the new leader of the free world is also responsible for the death of 41 British sailors. So things are going to be pretty calm, right?

Probably not. Kate and Hal have made themselves bitter enemies of the newly most powerful person in the world, but they also have some pretty powerful leverage over her. The VP job is now open, and Kate had started to actually want it, but there's no way Grace will put Kate in such a position now. Plus, this isn't that much of a political fantasy: There's no way both the president and the vice president could be women, even in this fictional world.

Will Kate remain ambassador? Will Hal get a chance to get back into international relations with an official position? Will Austin Dennison (David Gyasi), the U.K. foreign minister, warm up to Kate again? Will Kate and Hal's marriage survive even more political turmoil?

Well, at the very least, we can predict Janney will be back as President Grace Penn. And more Allison Janney is never a bad thing. Even when she's playing a villain.