Homeland recap: season three, episode 12 The Star

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SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching the third series of Homeland at UK broadcast pace. Don't read on if you haven't seen episode 12.

Catch up with previous episode blogposts

'What will you do, Carrie? Burn it all down?'

Out of the 12 episodes that made up Homeland's third season, I think I was fully on board with three of them, which isn't a particularly strong hit rate. I wanted it to be so much better – it occasionally hit the heights of season one, but so infrequently that it highlighted its many weaknesses yet further. And this season finale encapsulates all that was frustrating and patchy about it. It should have been a neat, confident bookend to the interesting new direction it was going in. But I was numb rather than moved. It felt grimly inevitable rather than surprising. More importantly, it felt rushed.

It started promisingly, however. Those first few minutes, with Brody escaping from Akbari's office, were perfectly tense; when he got to the gate just as the alarm rang out and was forced to pull his gun, I realised I'd been holding my breath. Brody got out, met up with Carrie and headed off to the safehouse. From Washington, Saul promised him safe passage home. There appeared to be no logic to his decision, however, which was out of character for Saul Berenson, CIA chief. This season, we've seen him making tough calls for the sake of the play, and really, he should have been on Dar Adal's side here – Brody dead was better for the mission.

At the safe house, Carrie told Brody about the baby. I knew here that it was going to go wrong. Lockhart and Dar Adal went over Saul's head and shopped Brody to the Kurdish police. From then on in, his fate was sealed: Nicholas Brody, who had fought so hard to escape and survive, finally gave up, and was hanged in a public square in Tehran. I'm curious to know how bumping off the show's co-lead made you feel. Were you shocked? It does shine a new light on speculation about how they'd make season four. To be optimistic, it may suggest that we won't be in for more of the same circular stories taking the same familiar path.

And yet. To say that this was an episode concerned with resetting the clock – and Brody's death came at the halfway point, so it wasn't the sole focus - so much of it went over old ground. We jumped forward four months, to see a now heavily pregnant Carrie picking up the pieces. In fact, she seems remarkably together and fine. Lockhart, who led a Senate investigation into her actions, who has seen her defy orders to follow her personal interests repeatedly, has decided that she's Carrie Mathieson, Super Spy once more. Not only does he fail to fire her, he actually promotes her, posting her to Istanbul as station chief (if I remember correctly, Saul held that position once too, so she's very much stepping into his shoes). Carrie, who had to be shot in order to stop her messing up an operation. The problem is that it removes what the show is good at, which is tension, because we're repeatedly shown that her actions have no consequences – she'll revert to her original setting regardless of what happens. So why bother investing in her as a character?

The last 15 minutes – should she keep the baby or let her dad take care of it – were too long, which was strange, given that Brody's demise had been rushed through. And then there was the memorial ceremony at Langley. Of course Brody couldn't be given a star. In the eyes of the United States, he is a terrorist. But Carrie, defying orders as always, draws him one on the wall anyway, in pen. Again, I'd love to know what you thought of this. I worried that I was heartless for being unmoved by it, but as soon as Lockhart said no, I realised that she was going to find a way to do it anyway. Who could have predicted that Brody's legacy would have been a star furtively scribbled in marker pen?

Notes and observations

I thought Brody was supposed to have picked up Farsi during his first week in Iran? He didn't make much use of it here.

 Mind you, given that he was supposed to be a hero in Iran, it was remarkable that not one person on the street seemed to recognise him.

In the end, I was baffled by who knew what about the mission. Obviously with Javadi in line to take charge, it was possible to cover up the CIA involvement in Iran, but does anyone in the US know that Brody was hanged as a traitor there? If not, how could they possibly have kept it quiet? Did they need to keep it quiet? Help!

Saul looks so jaunty at the end of the episode, probably because he's just fixed all of international relations. Although he's gone private sector now, Mandy Patinkin is definitely back for season four.

 Claire Danes contributed a large amount of potential gifs to the Cry Face Project.

There's a good Q&A with Alex Gansa over at Entertainment Weekly, in which he discusses Brody's exit (planned since the start of the season, apparently) and what could happen in season four.

Thanks to the commenters who contribute to the blog every week, from the ones who say we're taking it too seriously, to the people who have far more insight into the stories than I ever could. As always, it's been a pleasure to read your thoughts and you'd all get a Sharpie star on my wall.

Quote of the week

"It's what you always wanted. You deserve it." Saul congratulates Carrie on her promotion. He clearly didn't watch season three.

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