In what is hardly a surprise, it was confirmed some time ago that Homeland Season 8 will be the final year of espionage with Carrie, Saul, and the whole CIA gang. Showtime president David Nevins confirmed it again at TCA, saying this was executive producer Alex Gansa and Claire Danes’ call, who said they definitely wanted season 8 to be the end after Nevins asked “are you sure?”
This was expected, as Claire Danes said in spring 2018 the long rumored end was upon us. While the series has been on a creative upswing in the last few years, it was the show’s star herself, Claire Danes, who confirmed that the series will see its final twist in season 8 during an interview with Howard Stern. “Yeah that’s it,” Danes said when Stern asked if 2019 is really to be the final stand for the trials and tribulations of Carrie Mathison, the woman who has given up everything for country despite her bipolar disorder.
During the last season of Homeland, Claire Danes’s Carrie Mathison went from chasing terrorists to pursuing Russian spies who were hoping to destabilize the U.S. government. She might have prevented their worst agenda, but if you’ve seen the most recent season 7 finale, it came at a high cost–like the seeming sanity of Carrie, who was left to rot in an unmedicated bipolar hell by her Russian jailors. So what could be next?
Homeland Season 8 Trailer
The first teaser for Homeland Season 8 is here, and it really is a tease as it relies on our own fuzzy memory of the series as Carrie’s mind is called into question again…
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Homeland Season 8 Release Date
Homeland returns at 9pm on Feb. 9, 2020. Brace yourself for one last ride.
read more: Shameless Season 9 Return – Everything We Know
Homeland Season 8 Cast
Sam Trammell (The Order, True Blood) is set to recur in the eighth season of Homeland, reports THR. He will play Vice President Benjamin Hayes, described as “a political survivor with an aptitude for optics who crosses the aisle to serve alongside the series’ new president [the former vice president] played by Beau Bridges. Bridges’ character believes tapping Hayes is an innocuous choice, one that could help heal the partisan divide, but the politico proves to be more dangerous than anticipated.” The actor is, of course, best known for his series-spanning role on HBO’s 2008-2014 series, True Blood, as shapeshifter/bar-owner Sam Merlotte.
Our first casting news for Homeland Season 8 revealed some familiar faces returning for season 8. As revealed via Deadline, Nimrat Kaur and Numan Acar are reprising their pivotal roles that had taken center stage during season 4, the year Carrie went to Pakistan. The two previously played Tasneem Qureshi and Haissam Haqqani, resptively. The former is a member of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence who had infiltrated the American embassy by turning the ambassador’s feckless husband into an asset. The latter was a Taliban leader who, with information from Qureshi, staged a violent attack on the embassy.
Hugh Dancy (Hannibal, The Big C) has meanwhile been cast as John Zabel, a D.C. beltway insider who is part of a new White House administration. There he is a foreign policy advisor for the president and a foe for political power against Mandy Patinkin’s Saul Berenson. It is unclear if Saul is still an advisor or might be directly back at the CIA, or even if this is still part of Beau Bridges’ President Ralph Warner administration.
Homeland Season 8 Plot Details
Here is the sparkly new synopsis for season 8.
The final season of HOMELAND finds Carrie Mathison (Danes) recovering from months of brutal confinement in a Russian gulag. Her body is healing, but her memory remains fractured – which is a problem for Saul (Patinkin), now National Security Advisor to the newly ascendant President Warner (Emmy and Golden Globe winner Beau Bridges). The top priority of Warner’s young administration is an end to the “forever war” in Afghanistan, and Saul has been dispatched to engage the Taliban in peace negotiations. But Kabul teems with warlords and mercenaries, zealots and spies – and Saul needs the relationships and expertise that only his protégé can provide. Against medical advice, Saul asks Carrie to walk with him into the lion’s den – one last time. Along with Danes and Patinkin, the final season stars Maury Sterling, Linus Roache and Costa Ronin, with Nimrat Kaur and Numan Acar also returning from season four in series regular roles.
This is again intended to be the ending, and showrunner Alex Gansa has been teasing some major details in the past. Gansa told EW in April that the last hurrah will be set in Europe.
“[Season 7 arranges] all the pieces on the chessboard to make that a proper finale for the story we’ve been telling,” Gansa said. “We get to play this last season in D.C with the intention of taking us overseas for one last chapter. Season 8 will be overseas somewhere. We get to play a story with larger national stakes in season 7 and we’ll go back to a smaller intelligence-based season in 8.”
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David Crow is the Film Section Editor at Den of Geek. He’s also a member of the Online Film Critics Society. Read more of his work here. You can follow him on Twitter @DCrowsNest.