Elizabeth McCord is running for president.
Five seasons later, what always seemed inevitable has finally come true and "Madam Secretary" is aiming for a higher office.
CBS still hasn't renewed the drama for a sixth season, so for now, executive producers Barbra Hall and Lori McCreary have set up a wild next phase: Bess (Tea Leoni) and her team's push for the White House.
"Natural evolution was to get her to the point where she would consider running for president," Hall told the Daily News.
To get there, though, the Secretary of State had to be convinced, once again, that she was meant to serve. And if it takes the better part of a dozen dead UN special envoys, including Peter Harriman (Skipp Sudduth), so be it.
Like most of the weekly themes this season, the UN assassination seems ripped from the headlines and taken to the next level: a group called Knights of Western Freedom, a "resistance to the globalist conspiracy" that believes the migration treaty is "an attempt to undermine national sovereignty and so-called ethnic purity," plants sarin gas inside a hall and wipes out the enemy or, at least, the protectors of the enemy.
For a minute, Harriman seemed like a possible vice presidential candidate, brash but strong-willed, angry but righteous.
"We wanted to have a moment that was galvanizing," Hall told The News. "We hated to see him go but he died for a good cause."
Last season, white supremacists bombed the White House. This season, they gassed a secret meeting. "Madam Secretary" has never shied away from taking a side, on nationalism, on immigration, on climate change.
Since 2016, or maybe even before, Hollywood has struggled to handle the Trump presidency. Some shows, like "The Good Fight," have leaned in and found stellar results. But most have flailed, either by trying to fictionalize the outside world or by simply pretending it isn't happening.
"Madam Secretary" took the opposite approach by focusing not on Trump but on the ideas that surround his White House: climate change isn't real, migrant children should be taken from their parents. Bess' presidential opponent, Owen Callister (Will Chase, "Nashville"), is even quickly written off after speculation that he was being paid for and puppet-mastered by Russia; Hall wouldn't confirm whether Callister is gone for good or not if they come back next season.
Without CBS yet greenlighting a sixth season, the showrunners haven't quite started plotting out the next 20-or-so episodes, but Sunday's finale dropped enough hints: Henry and Stevie's conflicts of interests within the White House, the junior McCords' personal lives, power struggles within her staff. And then there's Bess herself.
"We're looking at how a campaign for a woman differs for a man," Hall told The News. "It's evolving alongside what's happening in real time."
Where "Madam Secretary" last looked to Hillary Clinton as inspiration, this time, Hall said, they have a deeper roster to pull from: Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, the list goes on.
Hall just wouldn't admit whether they're taking the DNC playbook as advice or what not to do.
