WARNING: This article contains Madam Secretary Season 6 spoilers, predictions, and theories that may influence your enjoyment in discovering the plotlines. Read at your own risk.
There will be new cast members coming to Madam Secretary Season 6. Fans will get to see Wentworth Miller in a recurring role in the last and final season, along with Michael Patrick Thornton in a character that will change the shape of the show.
As previously reported, the sixth installment of the series will be different from its predecessors. There will be a major time jump where Elizabeth McCord (Téa Leoni) has already taken a seat at the Oval Office as the new President of the United States.
According to TVLine, Miller will play the role of Senator Mark Hanson, a ruthless politician who hates knowing Elizabeth has won the presidency. Does this mean he will be the new antagonist in Madam Secretary Season 6?
Hanson will be the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He is a major power broker who has a great influence on Caption Hill, the kind of person no one wants to mess with. Will things be fine between him and Elizabeth or messy because of the dirty world of politics?
Thornton, on the other hand, will also recur as Captain Evan Moore, the chief of staff to First Gentleman Henry McCord (Tim Daly). He is an Army veteran who has served three deployments in Iraq with the 2nd Battalion/7th Cavalry. However, on his fourth deployment, he returned in a wheelchair after an encounter with an IED.
Miller and Thornton's inclusion is not only the cast shakeup happening in Madam Secretary Season 6. Kevin Rahm, who plays Mike B, is now promoted as a series regular, while Keith Carradine (President Conrad Dalton), Sara Ramirez (Kat Sandoval), Sebastian Arcelus (Jay Whitman), Geoffrey Arend (Matt Mahoney), Katherine Herzer (Alison McCord), and Evan Roe (Jason McCord) are no longer series regulars.
In an interview with executive producers Barbara Hall and Lori McCreary, they explained why some of the characters would not return as regulars in Madam Secretary Season 6. "The decision I had to make was what characters need to be most prominent in [Elizabeth's] new division and her world?" they said. "It's such a different world that some of the other [characters'] jobs were not translated into what we wanted for her, and the kids aren't really at home anymore."
They also revealed they intentionally jumped ahead, skipping the campaign and election, to see Elizabeth as the new president. They reportedly found a way to make the best of both worlds in the series, where they would feature a major time jump and make her a president.
However, fans would still see some flashback scenes of the campaign so that they would never take four or five episodes to feature the election alone. Madam Secretary Season 6 is set to be out on Sunday, Oct. 6, at 10 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.
