A tense and mostly steady year for the show, and an emotionally satisfying one.
Warning: Full spoilers below.
With Homeland’s fifth season now on the books, we can look back on the latest adventures of Carrie Mathison, Saul Berenson, and Peter Quinn with a mix of satisfaction, sadness, and some frustration as well. The series, once again reflecting real-world events within its heightened thriller setting, depicted a Snowden-like intelligence leak, the ISIS threat, the Syrian refugee crisis, a traitor within the CIA’s ranks, and more, all while (seemingly and almost certainly) killing off one of Homeland’s most beloved characters.
Set a couple years after the close of Season 4, Claire Danes’ Carrie is no longer with the agency, having had a falling out with her friend and mentor Saul (Mandy Patinkin) at some point between seasons. We learned in the S5 premiere, “Separation Anxiety,” that Carrie did not back Saul’s bid to become director of the CIA, which led in part to their rift but also totally makes sense considering where we left things off at the end of last year. In the closing moments of the Season 4 finale, Carrie realized that Saul had made a deal with a terrorist; he did so for the greater good, but this was apparently one step too far for Carrie.
And so Carrie went on to work private security for German billionaire Otto Düring’s (Sebastian Koch) company in Berlin, where the season was set (and nicely shot on location). She also finally acclimated to the idea of being a mom and raising her child (Frannie, she of the Brody red hair) while living with her new man Jonas (Alexander Fehling, suspiciously also ginger but decidedly Brody Light). In a nice bit of symmetry, this season’s premiere called back to last year’s with a birthday party for Frannie. In the S4 opener it was Carrie’s birthday, complete with cake and a drone strike; for Frannie’s celebration, the drones were of course replaced by balloons — seemingly to drive home how “normal” Carrie had become. That wouldn’t last for long.
When, in the first episode, computer hacker dude Numan (Atheer Adel) downloads a bunch of classified CIA data in a moment of Snowden-ian luck (or bad luck, depending on how you look at it), the main plot of the early part of the season kicked in. Not only would these documents, if leaked to the public, cause a great strain between Germany and the U.S. and reveal important Langley secrets, but it would also turn out that they tied directly to Carrie in some way — so much so that she would soon wind up on the run as assassins attempted to hunt her down because of the docs. (It was actually a bit of a confusing story thread, and one that was never adequately explained as the season progressed.)
That brings us to Rupert Friend’s Peter Quinn, who perhaps got his best scene of the season in the opener when he lectured the CIA brass in Langley about the real state of things in Syria, where he’d been stationed since his and Carrie’s missed connection at the end of Season 4. “They call it the end times,” he says of the terrorists. “It’s all in the book. Their f#@king book. The only book they ever read.” Burnt out and ready to sign off from the whole thing, Quinn would eventually get his wish, unfortunately.
It’s a shame then that the character was treated so shabbily as things proceeded from the strong debut to the year. Quinn, back to his Black Ops work but reporting to Saul now in Berlin, would soon be assigned the task of killing Carrie herself. Could Saul really have ordered the hit? And would Quinn actually go through with it? Well, of course not, and of course not again. But it was an intriguing way to end the second episode of the season, with our three leads — Carrie, Saul and Quinn — all separated and seemingly opposed to one another.
Several new characters were introduced this year as well, with the most memorable and effective being Miranda Otto’s Allison Carr, the Berlin CIA Station Chief and another former pupil of Saul’s. In time we would learn that Allison had been recruited by the Russians a decade ago to serve as a double-agent within the CIA, and that it was she who ordered Carrie’s assassination. She also would be revealed to be the now-divorced Saul’s lover (Oh Mira!), which certainly would complicate matters for Saul once Allison’s betrayal was revealed.
Other new characters were perhaps less successful. The expatriate American reporter Laura Sutton (Sarah Sokolovic), who was committed to getting ahold of those leaked documents in order to reveal them to the public, played mostly as a caricature throughout the season. Surprisingly, though, she was redeemed in the last couple of episodes where Sutton actually became the sort of conscience of Homeland. Astrid (Nina Hoss), Quinn’s former lover from last season and a German intelligence offer, took on a bigger role this year and almost stole the scene with her smart, biting wit whenever she was onscreen. Numan seemed destined for a larger part in the story early on, but eventually he was basically reduced to being a token computer tech guy.
If anything, that’s one of the major criticism I’d have for this season. It seems pretty clear that the show shifted gears at about the halfway point, trying to figure out a more compelling physical threat beyond Allison. Eventually it would settle on the group of Syrians who were planning a sarin gas attack on Berlin, but this felt a little perfunctory as the real guts of the drama was primarily pertaining to Allison.
Some logical gaps also cropped up, such as Quinn’s disappearance as far as Carrie would be concerned, and the fact that she didn’t mention him or look for him for nine days (a.k.a. the end of the season). The guy had a gunshot wound and was bleeding to death, and she kinda just forgot about him.
But that said, the show essentially maintained a steady pace throughout the year, building up mysteries but also answering enough questions from week to week to not become frustrating. The crazier Homeland of yesteryear — where you can assassinate the Vice President by remote-control heart attack — was barely present in Season 5, thank goodness.
And Otto played Allison deliciously all season, going from buttoned-up and supposedly loyal to lost and frightened at those times when she was on the verge of being found out, and finally to cold and calculating — and murderous. She was a sort of anti-Carrie, the flipside to what this life could do to one of its own, and this has always been a theme that Homeland has been interested in: What is the toll that this work takes on those who seek to protect us?
A question that was also rampant this season was that of who is good, and who is bad, and is there a clear line between the two? Allison is the obvious example here, but Carrie’s inner turmoil regarding the 167 lives snuffed out during her time as “the Drone Queen” (167!) also raises the question. Saul, too, is a different man from the one we first met five years ago, hardened and angry after his repeated failures when trying to make any kind of sense of the world in which he lives. “I actually convinced myself we were going to change the world,” he says at one point this season. In the end, it was he who was perhaps the starkest of examples of how the war can ruin a person, as he mercilessly gunned down a helpless Allison while she was locked in the trunk of a car. Sure, she was bad, and yes, maybe she deserved what she got, but what kind of person does that to a former student, friend, and lover?
In stark contrast we have Quinn, who after his initial few episodes this year — where he of course did not attempt to kill Carrie but rather tried to help her — became a virtual punching bag and human target, taking bullets and beatings and eventually enduring a sarin gas attack. But through it all, he was selfless in his protection of Carrie and in his cause. And even when he was comatose and essentially already dead in the final episode of the season, a letter he wrote to Carrie (all the way back in the Season 4 finale) implied that even in death, he would continue to be his friend’s protector and guide, perhaps away from the deadening life that Saul is trapped in.
“So don’t put a star on the wall for me,” his VO says. “Don’t say some dumb speech. Just think of me as a light on the heavens, a beacon, steering you clear of the rocks. I loved you. Yours, for always now, Quinn.”
Carrie has seen the light.
Homeland Season 5 was a tense and mostly steady year for the show, which has long since outgrown its Brody beginnings. Some cracks in the overall structure of the story could be detected mid-season, as the writers seemed to be recalibrating a bit. And considering this was almost certainly Quinn’s swan song, the character wasn’t very well served beyond a few episodes. But still, the final hour, “A False Glimmer,” brought not just his story, but Carrie and Saul’s as well to a strong conclusion — and an emotionally satisfying one. Where Homeland goes from here is anyone’s guess, but Season 5 definitely made me hungry for Season 6.
