Season Finale of 'Homeland' on Showtime Leaves Us Hanging

The season finale of "Homeland" on Showtime ended the first season of this second Claire Danes television series (after "My So-Called Life") with plenty of unanswered questions and unresolved dilemmas.

Claire Danes/Carrie Matheson

Star Claire Danes, who plays Carrie Matheson, the bipolar CIA agent, told Amy Anantangelo of the Boston Herald (December 18, 2011), "Carrie is pretty crumpled by the end."

The basic premise of the Showtime series brought to American television by "24" producers Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, is that a Marine held as a prisoner of war for eight years by Al Quaeda, has returned to the United States intent on seeking retribution for the murder of 82 children in a drone strike. The Marine, Sergeant Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), is working with another traitorous returned veteran, Tom Walker (Chris Chalk). They are to carry out a plot seeking vengeance against the Vice President (Jamey Sheridan) and Secretary of Defense who ordered the drone strike.

From the start, Claire Danes' character of Carrie Matheson has been suspicious of Nicholas Brody, based on a tip she received from a prisoner just before he was to be executed. But things really became complicated when Brody and Carrie have a tryst at Carrie's cabin in the woods. Brody rats out Carrie, because she is getting much too close to the truth.

Mandy Patimkin /Saul Berenson

Carrie loses her job with the agency after Brody's call to Langley. Telling her sister Maggie (Amy Hargreaves), "She'll never set foot in Langley again," her boss Saul Berenson confronts Carrie about Brody in the season finale, saying, "This man has poisoned your thoughts. He has cost you almost everything" before he realizes, "My God! You're in love with him."

The Attack

In the finale episode, Tom Walker (Chris Chalk) and Brody attempt to execute an attack that would take out the highest-ranking members of the administration and avenge the death of Abu Nazir's (Navid Negahban) ten-year-old son.

From the first episode, it seemed that Nicholas Brody infiltrating the administration would be more valuable to Al Quaeda than a dead Nicholas Brody, suicide bomber. Apparently the creators of the show agreed. The series is based on an Israeli television series "Hatufim," also known as "Prisoners of War".

Claire Danes told Ellen Gray of the Philadelphia Daily News (Dec. 18, 2011), "I like my crazy lady…Yeah, she is compulsive. I think that she is, you know, a workaholic, to put it mildly; she is very consumed by her profession…She's kind of better at her job than most people. And she doesn't have much tolerance for bureaucratic nonsense…And I think she does recognize Brody because they've had a lot of similar experiences. And I think she does genuinely fall in love with him."

The series, which premiered on October 2, 2011, will return to Showtime next season.