Homeland Season 6: “Casus Belli”

Posted: February 22nd, 2017

By Michael Sulick

Michael Sulick is the former director of CIA’s National Clandestine Service and is currently a consultant on counterintelligence and global risk assessment. Sulick also served as Chief of Counterintelligence and Chief of the Central Eurasia Division where he was responsible for intelligence collection operations and foreign liaison relationships in Russia, Eastern Europe and the former republics of the Soviet Union. He is the author of Spying in America: Espionage From the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War and American Spies: Espionage Against the United States from the Cold War to the Present.

The previous episode of Homeland ended not with a whimper but a bang when the “Medina Medley” van driven by Sekou Bah exploded on a busy Manhattan street. In the same episode, Peter Quinn tracked a shadowy stranger to the Medina van parking lot. While watching news coverage of the incident, Quinn notices the Medina marking in the wreckage. Before he can connect the dots for Carrie, she is called by her coworker, attorney Hashem, who reveals that Sekou was the van driver and implores her to go to the lad’s home where the FBI is interrogating his mother and sister. Carrie asks Quinn to babysit until the nanny comes, a decision she will regret but which makes for high octane drama.

We predicted Quinn would be in the thick of the action. He was a physical and emotional wreck in opening episodes, but his keen instincts gradually returned as he monitored the stranger stalking Carrie’s home and tracked him to the parking lot. We imagined that he would soon be joining Carrie to solve this unfolding mystery and dispense with the wrongdoers.

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