‘Homeland’ season 2, episode 12 review: Is this the craziest finale ever?

Going into Sunday night’s “Homeland” season 2 finale, there were a number of questions weighing on our mind, including whether or not Carrie and Brody would be together, whether Saul would find his way back into the good graces of the CIA, and even if Brody would find a way to even stay alive through the episode.

At the end of the day, we were met with answers on all counts for what was a crazy, at times brilliant, and also at times maddening hour of television. We should get the first issue out of the way now: it seems completely insane that nobody caught Carrie and Brody fleeing from Langley, one of the most-observed places in all of America, after the bomb went off. This is the only major problem that caused us to go a little nuts through the entire hour, even though everything else was fairly fantastic.

What was interesting about the hour is that while we did have many deaths (Finn Walden and Estes being the two most notable), we also had surprises we never saw coming, including Brody, whose past came fully back to haunt him here (even the old video he recorded claiming ownership for a different attack), fleeing to Canada as his wife and family were led to believe that he helped orchestrate one final attack as payback for Abu Nazir’s death. We also did not anticipate Carrie deciding to let him go for the time being at the border, as she had said right before the attack that the two parties were more or less meant to be (or at least as much as two people in this position can say something like that). Have there ever been a pair of lovers more doomed than these two? If they weren’t such a Shakespearean tragedy, we’d want to shake Carrie and tell her to stop.

We never imagined going into the finale that the events would unfold in the way that they did, and hats off to the writer for doing that and even such small details as Quinn’s decision not to kill Brody actually ending up being something that cost the lives of hundreds. Even though Brody is seemingly the “good guy” now, his past as the “bad guy” made him the perfect person to take the fall. The details in logic aside, these decisions are what make “Homeland” so brilliant. This is without even mentioning the acting, as Mandy Patinkin gave the best scene of the entire season as he, believing at the moment that Carrie was dead, leaving her a voice message on the off hope that he was somehow wrong.

“Homeland” may be an end product, but in a sense you have to look at it as human; it’s not perfect, and maybe we were wrong to ever think so. This episode had some flaws, but if you are willing to look past them you can see the pure beauty that was here within this episode. Next season is clearly going to revolve around Carrie trying to clear Brody’s name, and we are already infinitely curious to see where this new life will take him.

What did you think about this episode? If you want to check out what Damian Lewis had to say before the finale, you can do so over at the link here.

Photo: Showtime