What happened at the end of The Politician Season 2?
Major spoilers ahead…
The start of The Politician Season 2, Episode 7, titled “Election Day,” follows on from the previous episodes, which saw Dede and Payton reach a dead tie once all the votes have been recounted. Rather than endure enough 10 days of campaigning, they decide to let the winner of three rounds of rock-paper-scissors take the state senate seat.
Both spend a lot of time trying to game the rock-paper-scissors contest, but in the end, it does not matter. Dede confides to her campaign manager Hadassah Gold (Bette Midler) that she is tired of the campaigning and that if she wins the seat it will be her last term as a senator.
However, by the time she gets to the press conference where the rock-paper-scissors game was to be played, she decides to concede to Payton, meaning that yet again Payton has won an election because his opponent dropped out–after all, Astrid Sloan (Lucy Boynton) did exactly the same thing when they were fighting for their student president role in Season 1.
While Payton actually lost the vote of that contest, at the end of The Politician Season 2 we learn that the Senate election was not a tie. When Payton’s team counted the votes in the ballot box that Infinity Jackson (Zoey Deutsch) stole, he had more than Dede, meaning that technically won the popular vote.
Just as Dede seems to be done with politics, she gets a FaceTime from Payton’s mother Georgina (Gwyneth Paltrow), in a scene that seems to have been filmed after lockdown. In that scene, we learn that Georgina won the race to be the governor of California with 98% of the vote (!), but that she only intends to take the post for one year. After that, she intends to run for president, and she wants Dede to be her VP.
The ending of The Politician Season 2 then jumps forward two years, and for a brief moment, the show seems to be bringing the entire series to a close, with Payton no longer interested in chasing election glory. He has made some big changes to his district as a state senator and wants to continue to make a change. Plus, he and Alice Charles (Julia Schlaepfer) seem to be very happy, especially with the introduction into their lives of a new baby. Alice is studying to be a doctor, and the pair seem very content with their lives.
However, while jogging in the park, he is followed by Hadassah, who directs him to a meeting on a bench with Dede. She and Georgina have won the election, but the latter has pledged to serve only one term, teeing up Dede for a presidential bid in four years.
She has come to speak to Payton because she wants him to be her running mate during that bid. Payton will be under 35, but Dede says that she and Georgina have a plan to change the constitution (!) to allow him to run.
This Season 2 ending seems to hint at another location change for the Netflix show.
Season 1 was set in California, Season 2 in New York, while Season 3 looks to be sending the cast to Washington, DC, and on the campaign trail across the US.
Netflix has not renewed The Politician for Season 3 yet, but they could soon commission the show for another season where fans will find out how former opponents Dede and Payton can work together and if they can make it into the Oval Office.
The Politician Season 2 is streaming on Netflix.
