‘Homeland’ series finale review: Carrie and Saul go to war in a tense finale

“Homeland” has consistently enjoyed uncanny timing, and the finale was no exception. That incorporated the pivotal job played by Russia as a nefarious existence, with Saul describing the nation as “a mortal enemy who’s slowly but surely but certainly strangling our democracy.”

Carrie reluctantly agreed to cooperate with her Russian counterpart Yevgeny (Costa Ronin, great throughout the season), who required to discover the identity of a mole in his authorities in exchange for help averting this sort of a state of affairs. But that intended opposing Saul, the spy’s make contact with, primary to a dangerous standoff.

For Carrie, sacrificing just one female to help save 1000’s wasn’t a close simply call, pleading with Saul, “Anything you have ever questioned of me, I have performed.” Saul’s loyalty to the spy, on the other hand, was unshakeable, forcing Carrie to break with him in purchase to fulfill Yevgeny’s requires.

Supplied Carrie’s historical past of sacrifice — which include her daughter, a narrative inconvenience for most of the collection who she wound up abandoning — the payoff manufactured appreciable sense: Capitalizing on Yevgeny’s earlier-referenced loneliness, she chose to fill the void left by the mole’s demise. Seemingly defecting to Moscow, she could feed Saul info, fittingly bringing them again collectively in a shared mission, if not geographically.

“Homeland” has excelled at choreographing this sort of cloak-and-dagger games, but the character selections and subplots via the a long time have not always been equivalent to them. By that evaluate the end wasn’t entirely convincing, and even though it presented a degree of closure, did not loop again to the show’s origins as deftly as just one may have hoped.

Producers Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa are both of those veterans of “24,” and like Jack Bauer in advance of her, Carrie silently endured for the rest of us, which incorporated paying months in Russian custody. Each figures serve as a reminder, in a broader sense, that the weight of this war has not been similarly shared.

Yet even with its splendid solid, savvy genuine-world echoes and present for reinvention, the Showtime drama grew to become a much more dutiful spy present as the a long time progressed, under no circumstances thoroughly recovering from the highs of the to start with season and subsequent imaginative missteps throughout the second.

The episode did open up with footage of Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis, now headlining “Billions”), but Carrie’s sacrifice notwithstanding, the relationship appeared flimsy. A lot more than anything at all, it was a welcome reminder of exactly where the tale started, and the distance traveled from that plateau. (The finale’s title, “Prisoners of War,” mirrors that of the Israeli collection on which “Homeland” was based.)

In hindsight, “Homeland’s” to start with yr was an virtually-perfect limited collection. Anything soon after that additional up to a superior, not fantastic, contemplation of an infinite war and unsettled geopolitical ecosystem that, in contrast to the present, keeps heading on and on.