Homeland finale series recap: Carrie and Saul go head-to-head in nail-biting climax

Homeland finale series recap: Carrie and Saul go head-to-head in nail-biting climax …as Claire Danes’ character pays heartbreaking sacrifice

‘After eight seasons and 95 episodes, Showtime’s flagship drama Homeland finally came to a close last night, with co-creators Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa giving it a fitting ending that was sure to satisfy fans.

The riveting episode was titled “Prisoners Of War” which immediately felt as though things were about to go full circle, given that it is the same title of the Israeli series that inspired the Emmy winning show to begin with.

It arguably gave fans exactly what they wanted – focusing primarily on Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin’s characters once again going head-to-head, closing off a season that has been hailed as one of the best yet.

WARNING: Below are spoilers for the finale episode of Homeland  

Head-to-head: Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) and Carrie Mathison (Danes) 

Carrying the episode was counter-terrorism operative Saul Berenson (Patinkin) doing his best to withhold information from CIA officer Carrie Mathison (Danes), now suspected to be a double agent, after her time spent in captivity in season seven.

The pair went toe-to-toe as old-school spy Saul rejected Carrie’s desperate pleas to for him to give up an asset, while she argued that it would but the kibosh on starting a nuclear war in the Middle East.

“No one person is worth the lives of tens of thousands… hundreds of thousands!” Carrie exclaimed in one of many tense exchanges between the two.

It’s a situation that they’ve been in before throughout the series, with the pair of them arguing over who is right and wrong – when truthfully often no-one wins in these types of high-stakes spy games.

During the scene that surely both actors banking on getting some Emmy recognition from, Carrie tries everything to get Saul to turn over the Russian asset, revealing that she already knows parts of her I.D. (that she is an English teacher that communicated with Saul through books.)

Carrie’s unstable nature in the past has led viewers to believe that she has never been more ruthless than she is now, and will stop at nothing to get what she wants, and sacrifice just about anyone – even Saul.

Saul understandably wants to keep the person he’s sworn to protect, while Carrie wants to save lives. And though she has tried in the past, thankfully Carrie doesn’t end up finishing Saul off.

Instead, we see her getting the agent’s name by paying a visit to Saul’s sister – and then sells the information to the Russians, getting a public confirmation that the death of the president was an accident.

This spy move from Carrie pays off, and results in the White House backing down from its plans to retaliate. But despite her efforts to ‘do the right thing’ – it’s made clear that Carrie will never return home, because of her illicit link-up with the Russians.

The revealing final ten minutes of the episode fast-forwards two years to see that Carrie has succeeded her mission of saving the world, but paying the ultimate sacrifice in return.

Now living in Moscow with the Russian spy (Yevgeny Gromov, played by Costa Ronin) she was in cahoots with, there is one special person noticeably absent from her life: her daughter.

A photo of Frannie sits in the middle of Carrie’s desk, creating a bittersweet conclusion to her heroic efforts to protect the lives of countless strangers.