After Sunday's "Homeland" season finale, it's clear Season 3 will be a very different beast, which executive producers Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon confirmed Monday in a conference call with members of the media.
Season 1 ended with only Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) believing in Nicholas Brody's (Damian Lewis) guilt and the Season 2 finale of "Homeland" ended with her as the only one who believes in his innocence. "That was the broad architecture of the year," Gansa said.
How Brody will figure into Season 3 is "very much up in the air," Gansa said. "We had a much clearer picture" of what the first two seasons would be than what the third will be, he said. Will Brody recede into the background now that he's on the run? "I think it's an open question," said Gansa, who added that a change in Brody's level of involvement was "inevitable."
"We've told a significant part of that story," Gansa added. "If there's a chapter 3, it's going to have to be a reinvention of some kind [in which] Carrie and Saul work to keep the world safe."
The chemistry between Claire Danes and Damian Lewis was not far from their minds when they chose to keep Brody alive, and they did acknowledge also considering the awards that the show and the actors have won. But ultimately, they realized that the Brody-Carrie story as presently constituted had to come to a close and that a new dynamic -- possibly one with a reduced role for Lewis -- would have to come into play.
"You just can't let the tail wag the dog and all the awards in the world" won't give rise to a story that will compel viewers to watch, Gordon said.
In fact, the producers toyed with the idea of killing off Brody in Episode 7 or 8 of Season 2, but decided to keep him around for the duration of the second year. "It's a nice idea to have hanging over next season: Where is Brody? What's he doing?" Gansa said.
As "Homeland" moves forward, the tight bond between Carrie and Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin), who is the acting head of the CIA, will "push the story forward," the producers said. Carrie ultimately chose to go back to the Agency and work with Saul, and that bond will be critical to "Homeland's" future, they said.
What they don't want to do in Season 3 is another story in which Carrie witnesses or works to prevent an attack on American soil. The idea is to "find another thriller trope," Gansa said.
Was it hard to deal with the increased public profile of the show and the rollercoaster of praise and blame in Season 2? "The short answer to that is yes," Gansa said. "There was a lot of pressure on us. We all felt it, this [need] to live up to the promise of the first year ... We kept telling ourselves in the story room to go for it and surprise people and paint ourselves into narrative corners and try to tell our way out of it."
Gordon compared telling "Homeland's" story to a high-wire act and "if we did fall off, I like to think we had the safety net of the audience's" belief in and trust of the show. Ultimately, once the audience understood what terrorist Abu Nazir (Navid Negahban) had been planning all along, he and the other writers feel the season "really did all make sense."
But Gordon and Gansa also acknowledged that there was both "fair and unfair" criticism of Season 2. After the season's fifth episode, in which Carrie interrogated Brody, there was concern that "we were repeating ourselves slightly," Gansa said. "We don't want to be telling the same story again. If we bring Brody back, something else" would have to occur.
The writers have just begun talking about Season 3, so not much is known, but the producers did drop some clues about who might return for the show's next season.
In the hourlong discussion, the producers also discussed many Season 2 questions and decisions. Here's a list of the highlights:
- Showtime's top executives, David Nevins and Matt Blank, as well as CBS head Les Moonves, discussed whether to show the finale in light of the Newtown tragedy. Showtime (which is part of the CBS corporation) eventually opted to air the finale with a disclaimer at the beginning of the program. "I thought it was a really great idea," Gansa said. He added that "Homeland" wasn't "exploitative" about the deaths on the show and that the only bodies glimpsed after the CIA explosion were under sheets.
UPDATE: Ryan McGee and I discussed the "Homeland" finale in the Dec. 17 podcast below; you can also find it here and on iTunes.