The Diplomat season 2 episode 2 ending explained: The meaning behind "the cost of doing business"

Spoilers ahead for The Diplomat season 2 episode 2

The entirety of The Diplomat season 2 episode 2, "St. Paul's," is about loss but it's not until the end of the episode that we get to the crux of its message. There's a cost to the work of diplomacy, to keeping the wheels of government turning, and rooting out the rot. For this political thriller, the cost was Ronnie Buckhurst, the youngest member of Kate Wyler's team who lost their life in the car bombing that targeted MP Merritt Grove.

Though the episode doesn't answer who's responsible for the attack, we do learn what triggered it and that revelation changes Kate's view of herself and angers Stuart Hayford enough to make his opinion known about her decision making. Here's what happened.

Why was Merritt Grove killed on The Diplomat?

After a bit of spy craft at Grove's funeral so that Margaret Roylin could be seen, and Trowbridge would stop looking for her, she was set up in a secret room at the American embassy. Kate and the chief of the CIA's London station Eidra Park thought that she would only want to talk to them, but Roylin wanted to speak to Austin Dennison, the British Foreign Secretary, as well.

Though everyone was gathered together, as requested, Roylin wasn't as forthcoming as they hoped. She wouldn't tell them who was behind the car bombing, but she did warn Dennison to stop poking around because he's been making the culprits nervous and that can only end with his death. Roylin also confirmed that it was British citizens that hired Lenkov to launch a missile at the HMS Courageous, the aircraft carrier that sits at the heart of this whole situation.

Grove was a part of it. As Dennison put it, the MP became an extremist because it was the tide of the moment and he was swimming with it. He was re-elected after running on a platform that exploited people's fear about "immigrant invaders" and the supposed coming death of Great Britain. The attack on the carrier was meant to be a "unifying event" that would slow the momentum of the Scottish secession movement.

"Unifying event" is a phrase that Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge used which is why all but Roylin thinks he had a hand in what happened to Grove. But really the inciting event occurred when Kate placed a call to Roylin saying the MP seemed anxious. What the ambassador didn't know is that Trowbridge's most trusted advisor uses a disposable phone when she talks with him because her own phone has been tapped by people looking to know what the PM is thinking at any given time.

Kate inadvertently tipped Grover's co-conspirators off and that's why he was killed. Hal, Stuart, and Ronnie were collateral damage but only Ronnie's life was lost. It was a world viewing shaking revelation and Stuart later leaning into that wound poured salt on it.

Stuart blames Kate for Ronnie's death

After Kate read Stuart into the full circumstances of the attack, and her theory about Trowbridge, he laid into her. They were parked outside of the hangar where Ronnie's casket--draped in the American flag from the embassy--was waiting to be boarded on a plane back to the States where Ronnie's family would receive their loved one.

Stuart had warned Kate about Roylin. He told her to stay away from the woman. Not doing so, as he put it, was a tactical error. A deadly one. He believes that had Kate listened to him, Ronnie would still be alive. Kate carried the guilt she's been shouldering home with her where she and Hal got into it because of his expression, "the cost of doing business."

Now that she's in the position he was once in, she understands the "morally repugnant" part of the job, but she doesn't think it gives Hal a pass for how he behaved for years. This is her first experience knowing that a decision she made got a staff member killed, and the first time she's been in his shoes that way, but the difference to Kate is that she's not offloading the guilt from it on to him.

Hal's perspective is that he let her believe he was a man without a moral compass for a decade but she disagreed. She holds that he had her be the conscience for both of them. Her comment was the last straw. They'd been arguing about sleeping in separate rooms. He told her to go sleep in his. The fight, however, went out of them both when Hal realized that he couldn't take his shoes off himself due to his injuries.

The weight of what happened to Ronnie is likely going to continue to weigh heavily on this season. There's also an implication that something went down during Kate and Hal's time in Beirut that we've yet to hear about in full. Whatever it is clearly is informing the Wylers' reactions to each other in the aftermath of the bombing. Perhaps we'll learn more about it in episode 3.

Stay tuned to Americans Undercover for The Diplomat coverage. All six episodes of season 2 are available to stream on Netflix. Follow us on X for more content!