Showtime pushes Homeland back as plot details on the final season emerge

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

The eighth and final season of Showtime's Homeland was originally slated to debut last month, but the network later pushed the release back to fall 2019, citing "[international] production demands," and now the series' swan song has been bumped back yet again.

Showtime has announced that Homeland's final season is now set to debut on February 9, 2020, meaning that by the time the series returns, it will have been off the air for nearly two years. The network also released a logline for the final season, which you can read below.

The final season of Homeland finds Carrie Mathison (Danes) recovering from months of brutal confinement in a Russian gulag. Her body is healing, but her memory remains fractured — which is a problem for Saul (Mandy Patinkin), now National Security Advisor to the newly ascendant President Warner (Emmy and Golden Globe winner Beau Bridges). The top priority of Warner’s young administration is an end to the “forever war” in Afghanistan, and Saul has been dispatched to engage the Taliban in peace negotiations. But Kabul teems with warlords and mercenaries, zealots and spies — and Saul needs the relationships and expertise that only his protégé can provide. Against medical advice, Saul asks Carrie to walk with him into the lion’s den — one last time.

As for why the final season has been delayed several times, Showtime co-president Gary Levine explained during the Television Critics Association's summer press-tour that it's more to do with the ambitious production rather than any missteps. "Homeland is an ambitious series — especially in its final season. [Showrunner] Alex [Gansa] wants to go out proudly, and that has involved production in multiple countries at times and in places that have some issues. It just takes time," Levine said. "There have been no missteps. It’s been a relatively smooth process. But it’s a very ambitious production schedule and it has taken more time than we [anticipated]."

The final 12-episodes of Homeland will once again find Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin returning to lead the series as Carrie Matheson and Saul Bereson, respectively, along with Beau Bridges, Sam Trammell, Maury Sterling, Linus Roache, Costa Ronin, Nimrat Kaur, and Numan Acar. Danes' real life husband, Hugh Dancy, is also set to join the cast as John Zabel, a "savvy Washington consultant who joins the White House as a new foreign policy advisor to the President — and a formidable opponent to Saul."