Once shows start entering the sixth season, all bets are off. Shows can be completely changed from the surroundings of their first season, or facing a difficult rut, but many start thinking about the future. After a show has run for so long (and successfully, like Homeland has), what could be possibly be in store?
Variety sat down with showrunner/executive producer Alex Gansa to discuss what he wants to come out of the series. In a season that displayed an all-too-familiar tense transition to power and fake news, Variety asked if Gansa felt surprised that Homeland‘s storylines correlated with the real world.
Gansa replied, “The most surprising and alarming coincidence was that the very thing we had posited a year ago in February — that is a President-elect in an adversarial relationship with her own intelligence community – actually came to the fore after President Trump got elected was just a coincidence of epic proportions. Frankly that was the biggest surprise second only to the fact that Donald Trump got elected in the first place. That dynamic – a newly elected President at war with her intelligence community was really the fulcrum that the entire season hinged on. The fact that it played out in the real world on the national stage was shocking to witness.”
As Trump has a penchant for calling out shows that even slightly mention him, Variety asked if they received feedback from him or anyone from his team, to which Gansa replied, “Not a word. I have absolutely no idea if he watches.”
If he does, he only has two seasons more to watch. Variety asked how Gansa was planning to map out the rest of the series, especially in light of the season six finale that will be airing on Sunday, and he said, “I’m really at the very beginning of thinking about the last two seasons. The hope would be to tell one story that takes us through the last two seasons so that we don’t have to reinvent in the last season. We’d like to start a story in season seven that brings the series in for a landing. We’ll see if that happens. That’s the hope. (But) it’s hard to know until we start noodling around and make our trip to D.C. and until we decide where we want Carrie Mathison to be at the end of this journey.”
Don’t worry; Carrie Mathison is far from being in danger of wandering around aimlessly. Gansa also said, “One thing I can tell you about next season is that we have to get Carrie back into the intelligence business. She’s been out of it for two years. It’s time for her to return. We have to construct some sort of narrative to allow that to happen.”
The season six finale of Homeland airs Sunday at 9pm on Showtime.