What happened in The Politician Season 1?

At the start of the show, we meet Payton, a hyper-ambitious high school student convinced he will one day be president. However, right now he wants to start his political career by becoming student body president.

His rival for the seat is River Barkley (David Corenswet), a more popular student who is dating school mean girl Astrid Sloan (Lucy Boynton), who is acting as his campaign manager.

Payton, meanwhile, is dating Alice Charles (Julia Schlaepfer), who is also working on his campaign. However, he is secretly gay, and has previously had a relationship with River.

After River suddenly kills himself (a move that later in the show is hinted to be due to his long-standing depression), Astrid takes River’s place on the ticket and the race starts to get heated. Meanwhile, Payton continues to see River in his mind, who becomes somewhat of a mentor and conscience for the ambitious politician.

Astrid keeps River’s running-mate, the black gender non-conforming student Skye (Rahne Jones), so Payton tries to win sympathy votes by running with Infinity (Zoe Deutch), a student who everyone thinks has cancer–but is in fact the victim of Muchausen’s By Proxy at the hands of her grandmother Dusty (Jessica Lange).

Payton eventually wins the election, but his run is short-lived. Eventually, Dusty’s condition is revealed, and as the truth comes out Payton is damaged after it is revealed that he knew everything about it and was lying and saying Infinity had cancer to try and win votes. He is forced to step down from his post, shortly after he and mother Georgina (Gwyneth Paltrow) got cut off by Payton’s father (Bob Balaban).

By the end of the show, the action jumps ahead and Payton is living in New York, supporting himself as a nightclub pianist and developing a drinking problem. After meeting his former campaign team, he is persuaded to rejoin political life and take on Dede Standish.

Standish has been working in politics for three decades alongside her aide Hadassah Gold (Bette Midler), but has a secret: she is in a throuple, which is a fact Payton’s team is happy to exploit in their campaign against Dede, which will take place across Season 2 of the show.

The Politician Season 2 is released on Friday, June 19 on Netflix.