Homeland wrapped its sixth season without showing a single sign of its veteran age. The taut closer, "America First," gave fans a major character death in Peter Quinn (Rupert Friend), endless breathless moments, and a very foreboding look into what to expect from the next batch of episodes. After such an awesome season finale, it’s hard not to wonder, "So, Homeland is never going to end, right?"
Sadly, that’s not exactly true. But viewers will still have a lot more time to spend with Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) and her signature cry face. Showtime already renewed Homeland for both season 7 and season 8, with the promise of more seasons still on the table. Now the big question is when we’ll see them.
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Although the first five seasons of the counterterrorism thriller premiered in the fall, the latest set of installments didn’t follow the same schedule. Season 6 was pushed back to the winter release date of January 2017 after executive producer Alex Gansa requested a writing extension.
"Time does really help," fellow EP Howard Gordon explained to IndieWire in June 2016. "It’s getting the composure for whatever reinvention needs to be done. Bridging what happened and what’s going to happen on the show, it requires sometimes taking wrong turns before it comes together."
It sounds like Gansa feels the same way right now, meaning we’ll likely see Homeland season 7 in 2018, as opposed to this fall.
"We have some big ideas but we are just at the very beginning of that process. We don’t really even know where we’re going to be shooting the last two seasons," the writer-producer tells Deadline. That news might come as a surprise, since the end of season 6 tease a very specific and compelling season 7 storyline.
The final moments of "America First" hint fans really are about to see a "civil war" between the White House and the U.S. intelligence community following the assassination conspiracy against first female president Elizabeth Keane (Elizabeth Marvel). Even Saul (Mandy Patinkin) has been arrested amid the “full-on Joe Stalin” madness of President Keane's response. And, yet, the Homeland writers are only "gestating" their next storylines right now.
"Our research trip to DC happens at the end of this month, so that’s going to be a big part of whatever we decide to do," Gansa says. "Also, we’re going to have to keep one ear cocked to see what’s actually happening in the real world, and how much that will influence the story we’ll tell also remains to be seen."
After already covering fake news, Internet trolls, and polarizing President-Elects, we’re sure the Homeland team can handle anything the real world throws at them next.
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