When season two of “Homeland” ended last year, there was some considerable question what would happen next. That’s the case of nearly every great episodic show, that leaves characters in an unfixable lurch at the end of every episode.
But in this case (well spoilers ahead for those a year behind on TV), things were even more dire. As Saul puts it in the season premiere next month, “the worst attack on America since 9/11” that happened at the doorstep of the CIA, whose very future is threatened.
There are things to surmise just from the makeup of the “Homeland” panel at the TV Critics Press Association summer press tour in Beverly Hills Sunday: Damian Lewis is there, albeit with much shorter hair, so we can safely assume he’s in season three?
“I’m not Damian,” he says, poking fun at the mystery.
Claire Danes and Rupert Friend are there too, for the record, as are the producers.
And there’s plenty of fallout from the crater in front of the CIA and the death toll, we learn of 216.
Would there be prosecution? Would focus fall from the Brody family if it’s out of the picture? For a show always tied to world events, grim news of the planet informed some of the drama, producers said — and not their earlier shows.
Yes, one season of “24” began with a Congressional investigation of Jack Bauer and the CTU itself was under attack. But, Howard Gordon says, “that’s a pretty clasical trope, after something terrible happens, to have an accounting.”
And it wasn’t so much Jack Bauer, producer Alex Gansa says, “We were actually thinking more about Darrell Issa as he was investigating the Benghazi thing. That’s what was in the news in January. So that’s what that’s what was front and center.”
“On C SPAN every day, basically,” says Gordon.
As for the decision to continue exploring the ramifications of the Brody family, “a lot of different scenarios were considered,” Gansa says. Ultimately, new writers on board had been fans of the show and were so invested in that story, “it was a unanimous consensus that there was interest in those people.
“We felt we had to honor those people that we created and [describe] what would their lives be like after this devastating attack and after their father, husband, you know, was accused of being the guy who did it,” Gansa says. “And also, you know, all these other things were happening. There was the Sandy Hook shooting and there was the Boston Marathon bombing. And all these family members are always paraded in front of the cameras, and it felt like a very good avenue to explore how this would reverberate down on to these people, and Dana and Jessica and Chris obviously.”
As for Claire Dane’s character, there are some dark moments initially. ” Carrie is always sitting on her own personal ticking bomb,” she says. “It’s just an impossible dilemma because she is not great on the meds and she’s even worse off of them.”
There is a “sweet spot” between the two where she is exceptionally high performing, Danes says, “But yeah, it’s pretty bleak in the beginning.”
“Homeland” returns to Showtime Sept. 29.