How to Catch Up With ‘Homeland’s Edge-of-Your-Seat Final Season

Over eight seasons, Homeland won Emmys for acting, writing, casting and, in its first year, Outstanding Drama Series. That excellence is again on display in the spy thriller’s emotional, edge-of-your-seat final season. 

It’s very much a full-circle storyline. As Claire Danes, who brilliantly embodied driven, bipolar CIA agent Carrie Mathison, told us earlier this year, “Carrie becomes Brody.” She means her onetime lover Marine Sgt. Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), who, in Season 1, returned from Al Qaeda captivity as a sleeper agent sent to kill U.S. officials.

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Now, Carrie is back in Afghanistan, where she had been a flawed CIA station chief, to help her mentor Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin, in a volcanic performance) close a peace deal. When it goes wrong, her agency colleagues believe Carrie’s a potential traitor who became a Russian asset while imprisoned there. 

The final season is replete with everything we’ve come to love about Homeland: spies, terrorists, treacherous leaders — even Carrie’s trademark lip quiver. Expect several heartbreaks too, including a long-running character’s death, and don’t miss the show’s final moment: It’s a stunner.

Made it through Homeland? Keep the adrenaline pumping with more series streaming on Hulu.

24 (Credit: Daniel Smith / © Fox / Courtesy: Everett Collection)

24

Counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) saves the U.S. from threats (and shouts “Damn it!” a lot). 

Deutschland 83

In the last years of the Cold War, an East German operative (Jonas Nay) slips into West Germany to (what else?) spy.

Burn Notice

CIA contractor Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) is “burned” (i.e., ditched) by the agency, leaving him to fend for himself.

Homeland, Season 8, Streaming, Monday, October 26, Hulu