The darkness and the light.
Warning: Full spoilers below.
Wow, what a way to close the season. This year of Homeland has been somewhat uneven as it seemed to lurch a bit and recalibrate at the midseason point, but this finale, “A False Glimmer,” really managed to bring just about every element of the season to a thoughtful and emotionally satisfying close.
First off, Quinn: The writers avoided the Jack Bauer syndrome with the character after the severe beating he took all year, getting shot and gassed and then, tonight, suffering a cerebral hemorrhage after Carrie and Saul insisted he be awoken from his coma last week. But rather than give him a TV-style recovery, here Quinn slipped further and further away with little chance of survival. The episode ended with Carrie finally reading the letter Quinn had written for her way back in the Season 4 finale as she seemingly decided to put him out of his misery. As Dar Adal said earlier in the episode, this vegetative state was Quinn’s worst nightmare.
So did Carrie euthanize Quinn? We don’t definitively know as the episode closed on a moment of sunshine that broke up the darkness of the hour, with the light literally shining in through the hospital window and onto Quinn’s face. Did Carrie have an epiphany in that final moment? Or was this reflection of her newfound spirituality this season simply the go signal to do what needed to be done for her fallen friend? (I’d have to say it’s the latter, and certainly it would be ridiculous if Quinn was suddenly back to normal next season or on the road to recovery. It’s just too bad the character didn’t get a stronger story to go out on.)
The episode certainly didn’t go in traditional thriller directions, much like last season’s contemplative finale. Yes, Carrie successfully shut down the Berlin terror attack before it could happen, but this was accomplished in the opening moments of the segment. And she was helped by the enemy agent Qasim, who stuck to his “can’t we all get along” guns until the end and sacrificed himself to stop his cousin Bibi.
Even as that thread petered out — Carrie’s that good that she doesn’t even need a whole episode to defuse a threat these days — Qasim’s ability to do what he knew was right would later be echoed by Carrie when she turned down Saul’s job offer. “I’m not that person anymore,” she insisted. You’d think it would be easy to go back to Saul now after the hits she just took: the loss of Quinn, Jonas’ rejection of her, even that weird marriage proposal/business proposition thingee from During. (And what the hell with that, by the way?) But no, Carrie isn’t going back to that life. Where this will take her in Season 6 then is anyone’s guess.
Oh, and Saul. He also remained strictly committed to his convictions here, which ultimately resulted in the machine-gunning of Allison while she lay helplessly in the trunk of a car. Man. I mean, yes, Allison was an awful, selfish, vile thing who was prepared to let a terrorist attack take place just so that she could escape with her money. But think about how Saul has changed since we first met him. He was willing to murder Allison (his ex-lover) just because he felt burned and played by her and Ivan? Carrie was right to not support him in his bid for CIA director, it seems.
Still, that moment where Saul opens the trunk and we see Allison’s corpse was just one of many strong bits in “A False Glimmer.” Even Laura Sutton and Numan’s arcs were satisfyingly resolved as Astrid neatly tied up the matter of leaked documents and Faisal’s tragic suicide as she forced Laura to publicly denounce Faisal in order to save Numan from being deported (and likely executed). Between Astrid and Saul’s actions in this episode, it’s really gotten difficult to tell who the good guys are on Homeland.
Some notes:
- Dar Adal’s brief back story about Quinn was fascinating. Straight from the streets at 16…
- I was glad to see Dar there at Quinn’s bedside. The two always had more of a history than we saw onscreen.
- I guess During’s past bad-mouthing of Carrie to Jonas was just to push the latter away from the former? To make room for During himself? I guess…?
- Saul’s pitch to Ivan really was beautiful.
- But who’s going to tell Quinn’s apartment manager girlfriend the bad news?
Season 5 of Homeland was a pretty slow burn and an uneven one at that, but this finale was perhaps the highpoint of the year as Carrie, Quinn and Saul all reached notable conclusions. In particular, the presumed death of Quinn marks the end of a popular character who, while underused this season, will be sorely missed going forward. Hey Quinn, tell Brody we said hi!
