Designated Survivor season 2: It’s too soon for President Kirkman romance

Is a President Kirkman romance coming on Designated Survivor? Maybe this is a great story for a season 3 or season 4 (if the show eventually gets there), but this is absolutely not something you should expect now. We’re still sifting through the aftermath of the epic midseason finale, one that led to the death of the popular Alex Kirkman (Natascha McElhone, who is departing to pursue another opportunity).

We’ve already explained one of the major reasons why the writers chose this route to write McElhone off the series — they wanted to showcase a President struggling as a widow, territory that has not been explored all that much in popular culture. It’s because of that, in turn, that the writers are not going to be in all that much of a hurry when it comes to pushing forward his romantic life.

For a little more insight on this subject, just take a look at what executive producer Keith Eisner had to say to TV Guide in a recent interview:

“I think you’re going to see, at least for a while, Tom Kirkman grappling with the after effects of his wife’s death … We won’t plunge headlong into romance, because we don’t think that’s true to life.”

This is true. Given just how much Tom loved Alex it’s hard to envision him even thinking about romance for the next several episodes, letting alone acting on something. We’re sure that an external factor will cause him to think about his romantic future — such as another character asking him about it — but it’s hard for him to proactively think that getting into a relationship is going to be a good idea. He has so many other issues on his plate to think about, plus his own grieving process. The only issue may come in the form of if Designated Survivor wants to end with Tom moving towards another relationship — the ratings for season 2 aren’t great so the writers may need to accelerate the grieving process to get him in that sort of place by the finale.

Designated Survivor season 2 is going to return with new episodes in late February — you can read more about the return date here. Hopefully, at some point before then we’ll have some more details about the investigation into Alex’s death and some other storylines pervading their way through the story.

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