Anna Daniels
At the end of Homeland‘s penultimate season, Carrie was left in the custody of Russian intelligence. Her GIU handler, Yevgeny Gromov (Costa Ronin), withheld her antipsychotic medication, allowing her to succumb to her disease for the duration of her incarceration. By the time Saul actually managed to negotiate for her release, months had passed, and Carrie was mired in the depths of a psychotic break.
At the outset of the final season, Carrie is recovering at a VA hospital. She’s back on her meds and fully functional, though she’s still missing time from her captivity. She wants to get back to work at the CIA, even though her doctors think she’s far from ready. A failed polygraph test calls into question her loyalty to her country, and lingering questions about her time in a Russian prison and her relationship to Yevgeny haunt her efforts to regain security clearance.
Enter Saul Berenson, come to save the day. Saul is now serving as National Security Advisor to the president, and he wants to place Carrie back in the field to help negotiate a fragile peace between the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan. Saul overrides both Carrie’s doctors and the CIA inspector to reinstate her at Kabul Station under the purview of the NSA. She doesn’t exactly receive a warm welcome from the CIA station chief, who’s been warned by the Agency that Carrie might be compromised. Carrie’s behavior upon arrival doesn’t do much to bolster her case, either, as she regularly flouts CIA protocol to run off-the-books operations for Saul, and even sets up a series of very suspicious meetings with Yevgeny, who also just happens to be working out of Kabul.
Her suspect behavior echoes what we saw of Sgt. Brody on the first two seasons of Homeland. Much of the final season is dominated by the same is-she-isn’t-she speculation that defined the early episodes of the series, and we don’t really get an answer until the final moments of the finale.
Written by: Looper
