Claire Danes says that the next season of Homeland will be its last

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Currently nearing the end of its seventh season, Homeland is one of Showtime's longest running dramas, but all good things must come to an end and Claire Danes has said that the upcoming eighth season will be the series' last. Although Showtime hasn't made an official comment just yet, this news has been expected ever since the network renewed Homeland for a seventh and eighth season two years ago.

Claire Danes dropped the news while speaking with Howard Stern on his Sirius XM show, confirming, "yeah, that's it." When ask by Stern how she feels about the eighth season being the last, Danes admitted that she's feeling "really conflicted" about it. "I mean, I'll be ready. She's a lot, this Carrie-freakin' Mathison character," Danes explained. "It's a workout, so I'll be ready for a reprieve from that." Showrunner Alex Gansa has already said that the eighth season would be it for him as well, telling THR earlier this year that the next season will "be designed to be the end of an eight-season story." However, it's been said that Showtime is reluctant to put a stake in the series as there's always the potential that it could continue with a new cast and showrunner.

While speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Alex Gansa teased that some major changes will be coming for the (potentially) final season which will bring the series back to its roots with a self-contained story-line.

[Season 7 arranges] all the pieces on the chessboard to make that a proper finale for the story we’ve been telling. We get to play this last season in D.C with the intention of taking us overseas for one last chapter. Season 8 will be overseas somewhere. We get to play a story with larger national stakes in season 7 and we’ll go back to a smaller intelligence-based season in 8. We get to pull out all the stops this year and then get to the emotional heart of things in season 8. We’re going to start fresh in season 8 and probably do a fairly big time jump between 7 and 8 and put any Trump parallels behind us. We’ll tell a very contained story, hopefully in Israel.

Homeland currently airs on Sundays on Showtime, with the seventh season finale set to air on April 29th.