In this year’s finale, all the tangled strands of the plot against the President-elect converge in a thrilling resolution—but, as always in Homeland, the season ends with unexpected plot twists.
As more details about Dar Adal’s plot were discovered by our heroes and relayed to the incoming President, the plotters clearly had little chance of covering up their scheme and had only one recourse—assassinating their target.
As the mastermind of the conspiracy, Dar seemed unlikely to escape a long prison sentence if the outlandish and thoroughly compromised plot failed. Ironically, Dar becomes one of the heroes. He has discovered a plot within a plot, not his original plan to force Keane’s resignation, but his fellow conspirators’ plan to kill her. To discover more about this subplot, Dar still resorts to the methods he knows best. He kidnaps one of the conspirators, a U.S. Senator, and locks him up in his undies in the freezer of his favorite restaurant (Dar must be a valued customer since the maître d’ facilitates the detention).
Ultimately the mastermind foils his own plot. Carrie and Quinn realize the assassination is imminent when she learns the special ops team led by General McClendon, one of the conspirators, is providing extra security to the President-elect. The general convinces the secret service detail leader of a possible bomb, which prompts the evacuation of the hotel and transporting the President-elect onto the street for the assassination. Suddenly, Dar calls Carrie to warn her the bomb threat is a ruse.
A bomb explodes the decoy car in the motorcade, but Carrie and Keane, still in the garage, manage to flee and meet Quinn who orders them into the remaining SUV. He speeds out onto the street where he is met with a hail of bullets from McClendon’s shooters.
We always suspected Quinn, troubled and crippled as he was throughout this season, would return to his old self and take charge in a crisis. He manages to break through the shooters, but the bullets ultimately pierce the armored front window and hit him. He still whisks his passengers to safety but finally succumbs as the SUV slows to a roll and smacks into parked cars. Carrie sees that he is dead, and the shaken President-elect murmurs, “he saved our lives.”
Quinn did more than any other character to unravel the coup, ultimately sacrificing his life. The men in Carrie’s life all come to a tragic end: Sergeant Brody, her lover and father of her daughter, was hung in Tehran, and now Quinn is killed as he saves her life.
Six weeks later, Elizabeth Keane is now the President, Carrie is her advisor, and Dar is in prison. While Saul visits him there, Dar admits he lost control of his own plot but still believes the President is “dogmatic, dangerous and un-American.” In another of the show’s ironies, Dar turns out to be right.
President Keane uses Carrie as a temporary advisor to reassure the national security apparatus as she secretly plans its demise. Keane completely reverses her campaign pledges, expanding rather than repealing the Patriot Act, and launches a massive witch hunt, arresting scores of personnel in national security agencies, even Saul who first warned her of the coup. The assassination attempt and the defaming of her son have now made Elizabeth Keane exactly what she tried to prevent. Carrie, livid over the arrests, storms into the White House and shouts her protest through the closed door of the Oval Office as the grim-faced President listens.
Next season, Carrie and Saul will have to combat Keane’s Stalinesque presidency. Dar lives to fight another day and may also collaborate with Saul and Carrie from within his prison confines like some mafia don. As usual in Homeland, a seeming aside unrelated to the scene at hand later becomes central to the plot. President Keane mentions to Carrie that she is sending a brigade of soldiers and an F-22 squadron to the Baltic states. Homeland frequently dovetails with today’s news, and considering Russia’s prominence in the headlines, we bet that President Keane’s plan will enrage a Putin-like Russian leader in Season 7.
Nailed it: The President tells her chief of staff that Carrie “never tells you what you want to hear, and that’s a “good thing.” She’s right on the mark. Intelligence advisors should present facts and objective analysis to Presidents, whether they want to hear it or not. Unfortunately, Keane doesn’t heed her own advice.
Failed it: President-elect Keane’s motorcade and secret service detail seem remarkably sparse, which leaves her protected only by her team leader and Carrie. Even without the mobs outside the New York hotel, the Secret Service would have a larger detail than in this episode, complemented by New York police. Then again, there wouldn’t be the dramatic escape by the Carrie and Keane.
Speaking of the secret service, the Delta team obviously share the concerns of their leader, General McClendon, about the incoming President. Disagreement is one matter, but it seems a bit far-fetched that two of the team haven’t the slightest compunction about gunning down a fellow U.S. Government employee, the head of Keane’s protective detail.
