Relive "The Politician's" Action-Packed Finale Before Starting Season 2
Ryan Murphy's The Politician arrived on Netflix in 2019, and the opening credits song and Ben Platt's vocals had us hooked.
Season 1's finale featured a major time jump, and suggested that Payton (Platt) and his team—including cast members Laura Dreyfuss, Theo Germaine, Julia Schlaepfer, David Corenswet, and Rahne Jones—will mount a very different kind of campaign in season 2.
Here's what you need to remember from the first season of The Politician, ahead of season 2.
Though he made his name with network shows like Nip/Tuck and Glee, producer Ryan Murphy has spent the last several years making a number of anthology series for FX, including American Horror Story and American Crime Story. If you're unfamiliar, an anthology series is a show that tells a different story each season, and although The Politician technically isn't one, it seems like Murphy and his team are definitely setting up a very, very different kind of story for Payton (Ben Platt) and his team in season 2.
The season 1 finale, "Vienna," picks up three years after Payton left town in disgrace, having resigned from his hard-won position as class president after he was exposed for aiding and abetting the attempted murder of Infinity (Zoey Deutch). Since he's had his entire life mapped out since childhood (student body president, Harvard, the White House), Payton unsurprisingly doesn't cope super well with having lost everything, and is now living in New York with a low-key drinking problem and not much of a career to speak of–except for the odd gig singing heartrending ballads in a cocktail lounge.
But thanks to an intervention from McAfee (Laura Dreyfuss), Payton is back on message by the end of the episode, launching a whole new political campaign for the New York State Senate. There's a lot to unpack here, so here are our five biggest burning questions after the season 1 finale and episode 8.
How exactly does Payton plan to beat Dede Standish?
The incumbent senator, Dede Standish (Judith Light) has apparently gone unopposed for so long that her campaign team has grown complacent and out-of-touch, which McAfee identifies as an opportunity for a fresh, energetic candidate like Payton. And thanks to some unsolicited opportune research from Astrid (Lucy Boynton), the gang discovers Dede's most scandalous secret: she's in a throuple. An extremely sexy throuple, to be honest. And while that seems kind of tame by the standards of current political scandals, it probably won't play well with Dede's core voters.
Okay. All of that aside, Payton is still a 21-year-old kid who hasn't even graduated college. His only previous victory was for class president where his opponent was Astrid, an objectively terrible candidate who literally skipped town in the middle of the election. And nobody on his team has any actual political experience, setting aside McAfee's single day at the Standish campaign office. "This is going to be fun," says Bette Midler's gloriously sardonic Hadassah Gold, Standish's chief of staff. "We're going to eat him alive." Seems entirely likely!
Will Jessica Lange and Gwyneth Paltrow be back next season?
Both of these characters could conceivably not return, given the way they both ended the season. Lange has already hinted that she likely won't be back, after Dusty was exposed for abusing and poisoning her granddaughter, Infinity, in a Munchausen-by-proxy scenario that's right out of The Act. "I don’t think so," Lange told EW when asked if we'd be seeing Dusty again. "I mean, Dusty’s not one of those that has a second act. As Fitzgerald says, 'There’s no second act in America. Especially for her."
As for Paltrow's Georgina, she doesn't appear in the finale but does get a mention from Payton, who reveals that she's at a monastery in the Himalayas paving mountain roads by hand. As you do! But given her devotion to her son, you have to assume she's bound to fly right back to the States once she finds out about his renewed political ambitions.
Are Payton and Alice destined to be together?
By the time Payton cleans up his act and realizes what a huge mistake he made in letting Alice go, she is–of course–engaged to an incredibly sweet and handsome guy whose name is Thad. Nope, not a typo. Thad is his name.
Alice's wedding day is imminent, but Payton's still ballsy enough to try and steal her away, because he knows deep down she still loves him. And she doesn't even try to deny it, instead telling him, "I've come to believe that the way I love you really isn't healthy. It's more of an illness you spend your whole life learning how to live with." She also makes fun of Payton for asking her to leave Thad at the altar and jump on a Greyhound bus with him, which she points out is actually the final scene of The Graduate. But a few scenes later, Alice absolutely does leave poor Thad at the altar and jumps in a cab to New York. As soon as she hears about Payton's Senate run, she's in.
The couple's romantic future isn't addressed again in the finale, but will they become the power couple of The Politician? Alice definitely has the makings of a perfect First Lady, and Payton calls her "the love of his life." A related question: is it wrong that I still mostly ship Payton with River's ghost?
Will River continue appearing to Payton?
One of the most poignant aspects of season 1 was the presence of River (David Corenswet), who was Payton's rival for student body president–and also his tutor, his lover, and the one person who really saw his vulnerability. After River commits suicide in front of Payton in the pilot, he keeps appearing to Payton throughout the season, and in the finale we learn a little more about what he represents. "I'm your shadow, remember?" River says, explaining that he's the part of Payton that he tries to hide–the part of him that feels things.
It's also suggested in the finale that Payton doesn't conjure River as much as he used to, because he's become better at handling emotion and feeling things in himself. So does that mean Corenswet won't be around in season 2? Because if so, I would like to lodge a formal complaint in advance.
Can Payton really fix the New York subway?
Truly, the most pressing question of all. You could almost hear the collective inhale of each and every New Yorker watching the show as Payton made this bold promise – and in this outlandish, larger-than-life Ryan Murphy universe, a functioning MTA might actually be possible!
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