After his attendance at the titular "Tailgate Party" is revealed to both Gil and the presumptive president-elect Daniel Jimenez (a suspiciously absent Elliot Villar), Nate makes a hasty exit — but not before rebuffing one last attempt from Kendall to secure his bosses' loyalty. In shutting him down, Nate attempts to ease the tension by reminding Kendall that he (Nate) is not Gil and Kendall is not Logan. Though this line primarily serves to deliver yet another blow to Kendall's already shattered ego, it also subtly ends Nate's character arc on a poetic note.
At the end of Season 1, Nate's relationship with Shiv ends in large part because she brokers a shady deal between her father and Gil, with the latter receiving favorable coverage from ATN in exchange for relaxing his crusade against Waystar Royco — not dissimilar to the deal Kendall hoped to reach with Nate in "Tailgate Party." Perhaps, throughout the evening, Nate found himself at the peak of conflict between his somewhat disingenuous moral ideals and the gritty world of Washington politics, a conflict that has been stirring in the background as the man he put his faith in continues to corrupt himself in small ways. Though Nate's eventual exit is at Gil's request, his insistence that he and Kendall are not Gil and Logan could be seen as him drawing one last moral line for himself to prevent his soul from ever being entangled with the Roys ever again.
And hey, he even got to drink Tom's wine this time.
