While not present past the first episode, Jess Chanliau's Ronnie plays a key role in Season 2 of The Diplomat.
Starring alongside Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell as a member of The Diplomat cast, Chanliau's Netflix character triumphantly returns in Season 2.
Season 2 follows Russell's U.S. Ambassador to the UK, picking up the pieces after a devastating car bomb added a new wrinkle to the ongoing conspiracy that has started to hit a little too close to home for the TV bureaucrat.
Who Is Ronnie in The Diplomat?
Fans jumping into The Diplomat Season 2 may be slightly confused when hearing the name Ronnie in Episode 1, but the character has been a part of the show since the beginning.
Played by American/French actor Jess Chanliau, Ronnie Buckhusrt plays a major role in Season 2 of the Keri Russell-led series, serving as one of the narrative catalysts to the show's ever-unfolding international conspiracy.
Ronnie was an American foreign service officer working under Russell's Kate Wyler and Ato Essandoh's Stuart Hayford, seen throughout the series up to this point.
However, to start Season 2, it is revealed that the government services agent was a part of the devastating car bombing attack that closed Season 1 and kicked off Season 2.
Ronnie, Stuart, Kate's husband Hal, and British Parliamentarian Merritt Grove were all caught in the crossfire of the attack, with the fate of all four left hanging in the balance as Season 1 ended.
While Hal and Stuart survive the bombing without a scratch, Ronnie and Grove are less fortunate.
Merritt Grove dies as a result of the attack (read more about British member of Parliament Merritt Grove), and Ronnie is left with devastating injuries they ultimately succumb to in hospital.
Reacting to Ronnie's Diplomat Death
According to some of the creatives behind The Diplomat, Ronnie's death had been a crucial part of the Netflix drama's story from the beginning.
Series creator Debora Cahn told TVLine in the wake of the Season 2 premiere that "This was the plan from the get-go:"
"This was the plan from the get-go. I was really committed to writing a show about a marriage that was on the rocks, and not because of infidelity. The infidelity story has been extremely well told before. I really wanted there to be a chasm in the [Kate-Hal] relationship that came from a moral, ethical schism between the two of them, in terms of how they made decisions in the workplace."
Cahn also said Ronnie's death was meant to further drive a schism between the show's central couple, Kate and Hall Wyler.
She pointed to Ronnie's "optimistic and idealistic [nature]," making their death feel like they were "killing an angel:"
"Ronnie and Jess together were so optimistic and idealistic that It felt like killing an angel. Jess was kind of excited because… everybody likes the idea of being this thing that tears everyone’s heart out — and that’s what it felt like [for me]. My chest just collapses every time I see the scene in [the Season 2 premiere] where the paramedic says to Ronnie, ‘Does it hurt to talk?’ And Ronnie says, 'Yeah.' It’s just devastating."
It is, in part, the death of Ronnie that sends Russell's Kate Wyler onto the path she begins to forge in Season 2 of the hit Netflix series; she begins to suspect there may be something more behind the terrorist attacks that have befallen the English government.
While not a direct result of Ronnie dying, one can chart the course from the death of Kate's valued employee to her making the series-shaking accusation that it is UK Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge (played by Rory Kinnear) behind the attacks and not some foreign power like he has been touting.
The Diplomat Season 2 is streaming on Netflix.
