I’ve just finished watching the third season of Homeland the finale left me emotionally tormented. I always sympathised with Brody, a pawn in the CIA’s plays and Abu Nazir’s terrorist plans, unable to be his own person and as result of all the secrecy and his double agent routine, he lost his family. And sadly, I don’t think they know he was not behind the Langley bombing neither do they know about his tragic demise in Iran.
Yes some can argue that he deserved it for being a converted terrorist but he did redeem himself and after everything he’d gone through in his eight years of capture and simultaneous torture, he never had a chance to be more than his suffering. His character was flawed and intriguing, yet left undeveloped beyond his role as an asset to the CIA. Had he survived, what would he have done? Would he have raised his unborn daughter with Carrie? Would her life have been different or would she have gone on to be station chief in Istanbul anyway? Whatever it was, he would have been alive to figure it out.
I cried for a good half of the show, feeling the impending tragedy that was his public hanging. The beautiful thing about Homeland is the non-cliched plot and dialogue. The scene where Brody is being hanged and Carrie watches atop the climbed fence was heart breaking. And when she drew on the star because of the Director of the CIA refused to commemorate him on the same wall as the other demised CIA agents hit hard.
It was the perfect ending to the third season. So many questions troubled me and I genuinely spent half an hour in silence after watching the finale, too lost after Brody’s death. The Homeland I loved was always synonymous to Nicholas Brody, how do I watch the 4th season without him?
That is why the death of Nicholas Brody was and always will be the best yet worst TV death for me. The best because of the way it was written in the show for no other show could have such an intense death scene and worst because I will truly miss Brody.
He was a tortured man who kept his last promise but was not given what was promised to him. Most of all he was not honoured the way he should have been by the agency and his death was on them. Yet no tears were shed for his demise (except Carrie and Saul who truly felt terrible about it). So I cried for him.
R.I.P Nicholas Brody.
And Damian Lewis is one of the most captivating and fascinating actors I’ve ever seen on screen. I have so much respect for him and I’m sad that I won’t be able to see him on the show anymore. He carried the show along with Clair Danes so I’m apprehensive how the dynamics will work post his characters death but I certainly don’t want anymore screen time to be given to Morgan Saylor as Dana Brody. I didn’t feel like she needed so much time in the 3rd season as they had given her, thus making the first half of the season seem sluggish for this and other reasons. Perhaps it was Lewis limited role in this season that made it seem sub par compared to the first two seasons. Either way I’m hoping the 4th season lives up to the fans expectations. It’ll be hard without Brody although there still is Quinn whose role could be solidified.
Yes I do connect and get attached to characters, whether they are my own or that of another it matters not, for though they may not be actual people in the physical sense, they have a cognitive and imaginative existence. I want to honour that.
And yes, I can distinguish between the actor and the character.
The Tea-Infused Typewriter 