Homeland

About the series

Contains story spoilers.

Homeland begins with a homecoming that almost everyone wants to celebrate. Nicholas Brody returns to the United States after eight years in captivity, becoming a public symbol of endurance while his family tries to make room for him again. CIA officer Carrie Mathison sees a possible threat instead of a reassuring national story. Her suspicion connects the intimate business of a marriage and family to intelligence work, surveillance and the consequences of war. The American series was developed by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa from Gideon Raff’s Israeli Prisoners of War. Its first season keeps asking whether the evidence supports Carrie, and what her methods cost even when she is right.

Carrie’s starting point is a warning obtained from an informant in Baghdad: an American prisoner of war has been turned. When Brody is rescued, she decides he must be that man, despite lacking the proof her superiors require. She secretly has cameras installed in his house and watches a reunion that is difficult long before terrorism enters the conversation. Jessica has been involved with Brody’s friend Mike, while Dana and Chris must adjust to a father absent for much of their lives. Saul Berenson discovers Carrie’s illegal surveillance and reacts with alarm. Then she notices Brody’s finger movements during televised appearances and persuades Saul to have them analysed. Her observation gives the investigation another possibility, but the intrusion has already crossed into the private lives of people who have not consented to becoming intelligence subjects.

The capture of Brody’s former guard Afsal Hamid offers a more direct route into the mystery. In "Blind Spot," Brody helps Carrie and Saul question a man he remembers beating and humiliating him. Hamid supplies an email address that points toward a university professor, Raquim Faisel, and a house near the airport. Brody then persuades David Estes to allow a personal confrontation with the prisoner, presenting it as a chance to close a painful chapter. They fight, and Hamid later dies after obtaining a razor blade. Carrie finds the professor’s house empty and sees the encounter as another reason to suspect Brody, though it does not establish who supplied the blade. The dispute brings her into conflict with Saul. What looks to Brody like a survivor’s right to confront his torturer looks to Carrie like an opportunity to silence a source.

Her growing relationship with Brody makes the investigation more tangled. During "The Weekend," they retreat to her family cabin and briefly find comfort with one another, but Carrie mentions his preferred tea and exposes knowledge she should not possess. Brody realises she has been watching him. Under questioning, he admits his conversion to Islam, his connection to Abu Nazir and his belief that he was forced to beat fellow Marine Tom Walker to death. At the same time, Saul’s patient conversations with the fugitive Aileen reveal that Walker is alive. Her identification points the investigation toward a trained sniper with access to a view of Marine One’s landing area. Carrie takes the news as proof that she accused the wrong man and tries to preserve the relationship. Brody leaves instead, and a seeming breakthrough has destroyed the short-lived peace between them.

"Crossfire" changes the meaning of Brody’s captivity by showing the child at the centre of his attachment to Nazir. After a period of abuse, he is given better quarters and asked to teach Nazir’s son Issa English. The relationship develops through football, reading and shared time, giving Brody somebody to care for inside the world of his captors. Then a drone strike kills Issa. Brody sees Vice President William Walden publicly dismiss evidence of dead children as enemy propaganda, despite having found the boy’s body himself. In the present, Nazir uses that memory to renew Brody’s commitment after the revelation that Walker survived. A Saudi diplomat also encourages him to accept Walden’s attention and a possible political career. His public reintegration is becoming useful to the very organisation Carrie fears, while his anger is rooted in a loss his country has denied.

By "The Vest," the audience can see a plan developing while Carrie is struggling to communicate what she has discovered. Brody takes his family to Gettysburg, talks about sacrifice for a cause and secretly collects an explosive vest from a tailor. Dana notices his strange stillness and worries about the package he brings back to the car. Carrie, recovering from an explosion and experiencing a manic episode, fills her home with documents. Saul organises the material into a timeline, and together they identify a period of mourning followed by renewed activity in Nazir’s operations. Carrie calls Brody because she thinks he can help explain it. He responds by telling Estes about their affair and her surveillance. Estes dismisses her and has the documents removed. Her professional standing collapses just as the investigation is reaching the personal event that explains Brody’s purpose.

In the first-season finale, "Marine One," Walker’s gunfire drives political figures into a protected interior, where Brody is waiting with his vest. His initial attempt to detonate it fails; after repairing the fault, he receives a call from Dana begging him to come home. That call follows Carrie’s desperate visit to the Brody household, which ends with her arrest. Brody abandons the bombing, but Carrie does not receive confirmation that she helped prevent it. He later confronts her and demands she stay away, while arranging with Nazir to pursue influence through his political position instead. Carrie agrees to electroconvulsive therapy as her depression deepens. The immediate attack has been stopped, yet Brody’s relationship with Nazir continues and Carrie is left believing her judgment has failed. The season closes with their private bond, political ambitions and intelligence dispute still dangerously entangled.