Will any questions actually be answered this week on Homeland? I’ll let you be the judge of that.
The episode begins with Quinn following a GPS to a random diner where he tracked apartment man (who still doesn’t have a name, by the way) at the end of the last episode. He recognizes a waitress, and apparently Quinn used to be a regular at this establishment. He starts asking around about apartment man, gets no answers, and drives through a neighborhood where kids are playing, eventually finding a house that catches his eye.
Max tells Carrie about the sock puppet mill at O’Keefe’s building. She seems inattentive while gathering some of Franny’s things, and implores him not to go in today because of what she has planned for Dar Adal.
Saul walks through the streets of New York and ends up in a jewelry store, making his way to a second floor apartment for a meeting. He’s given a duffel bag with cash, guns, phones, passports, and some diamonds. It looks like some shit’s about to go down.
Carrie gets dropped off at DOJ, and her driver mysteriously tells her to call child services to confirm her appointment. A call to child services reveals that Franny is feeling ill and the visitation will have to be postponed. Chief of Staff Rob and a DOJ representative both confirm they didn’t send a car for Carrie as she’s about to begin her deposition about Saul and Dar…and she suddenly gets cold feet and leaves. She heads outside, calls the driver, and tells him to tell Dar that he wins.
President elect Keane gets the call from Rob about Carrie leaving the deposition, and she requests that DOJ approach Saul to get him to flip on Dar. Conveniently, Dar rolls into Keane’s office at this point, half tells her the truth about the facial injuries inflicted onto him by Quinn, and gives her the list of people to consider for Cabinet positions.
She blows him off, and tears apart his attempts to influence her. Dar then not so obliquely threatens her, and Keane doesn’t back down. Dar then calls O’Keefe with the bad news, and proposing “weaponizing” some information.
Quinn has a neighborhood kid ring the doorbell at the mystery home. No one answers, Quinn pays the kid, and he rolls around out back and unlocks the back door with a hidden key. Quinn has a flashback of being in this home to prepare for a mission in the past, when suddenly, a few men show up. He hides in the garage, and finds a van from the company Sekou drove for.
Carrie gets a call from child services, informing her that Franny is fine and that their visit for later today is still on. Keane and the Secret Service show up, and the President elect talks to Carrie about why she pulled out of the deposition. Keane correctly deduces that Dar is using Carrie’s daughter to control her, and Carrie essentially chooses Franny over going after Dar as she storms out.
Saul’s ex-wife Mira is at a restaurant sipping coffee, when a waitress gives her a note with directions for her to follow. She’s eventually driven to an apartment building where Saul awaits in an empty apartment. He uses this as an opportunity to say goodbye to Mira and fill her in on where he’ll be going (a rectory in Athens, for what it’s worth) and why.
Carrie gets her visit with Franny, but before that, notices a secretary watching an attack video on Keane’s son. Keane herself sees the video, blames Dar to her staff, and pushes for a response. Her staff doesn’t seem to agree with her, but she demands a press conference anyway.
O’Keefe and Dar discuss the video, and Max takes note of their conversation. O’Keefe hands Dar some talking points, and Dar notices a picture of Quinn on a laptop in O’Keefe’s office. Max attempts to capture some of the moment with his phone, and is eventually dragged out by security.
Clarice the hooker junkie meets Carrie outside of her townhouse with a video of her and Quinn, asking her to come see him. While she’s away with the two of them, Saul shows up and breaks in. After leaving her a voicemail, he hears a dinging upstairs and finds a room with all of the stories pinned up to the walls, much like she did back in the day when dealing with Brody and Abu Nazir. The dinging is revealed to be the video from Max, with a clean frame of Dar and O’Keefe in the office.
Keane tearfully watches the video again, and blames herself for bringing her son up after keeping his name out of the public spotlight for years.
Carrie arrives at a house in the suburbs under renovation, across the street from the house Quinn was staking out earlier. Through a rifle scope, Quinn points out the man in the apartment to Carrie.
It appears that some of our main characters have reversed direction. Saul, after seemingly wanting to get the hell out of the country, now looks to be staying with the intention of going after Dar. Carrie, after seemingly wanting to go full-bore into attacking Dar, wants to step back, get her daughter back, and end this chapter of her life for good. Max, after not playing a role in half of this season, is trying to do his best to get the necessary evidence to implicate Dar in the sock puppet scandal.
An then there’s Keane, who is trying to stick by her principles but is realizing that she’s going to need to get her hands dirty if she wants to truly wipe Dar and company out. She tried to freeze Dar out by using the expected, legal channels, but that won’t be enough.
The Quinn situation is up in the air. Carrie has realized that he’s not crazy. Dar realizes he’s a threat, and O’Keefe apparently does too and is planning something (with apartment man?!?) without Dar’s knowledge. When push comes to shove, Dar is probably going to end up siding with O’Keefe over Quinn, but maybe this emotional attachment he has to Quinn is stronger than we realize and he has a face turn.
I’m not sure what Keane ends up doing. The teaser for next week shows that she does indeed go through with her press conference, but there’s really nothing she can say that will minimize the effects of the video. The only thing she can really do is dig her hole deeper amongst the people that hate her.
In a strange way, the person who this season seems like it will end best for is…Carrie, actually. There seems to be a high chance of Quinn ending up dead, with Dar possibly joining him and Max looking like a near-lock to end up six feet under as well. Keane’s presidency could end up in shambles before it even begins. Saul is either going to end up exiled, jailed, or dead – he’s not going to keep existing and working in the intelligence community after everything that’s gone down this year.
But if Carrie just throws her hands up and stops actively trying to influence policy? She’ll get Franny back and everything will be back to normal in her home life. Sure, all of her friends will be in worse positions, but at least she’ll have Franny back, right? Right…?
