The upcoming season of the Showtime series will take place 'between Election Day in November and the inauguration of a new president in January,' says showrunner Alex Gansa.
- May 27, 2016
AceShowbiz - More details about the upcoming sixth season of "Homeland" have been revealed, months before the show returns. At a For Your Consideration Emmy panel for the show on Wednesday night, May 25, showrunner Alex Gansa talked about the setting of the next season and addressed the lingering question about Quinn's (Rupert Friend) fate.
Last January at the TCA press tour, Showtime boss David Nevins had announced that the show would return Stateside and would "be set primarily in the New York area." Now Gansa added that season 6 would span throughout the period between Election Day and the inauguration of a new president.
"The whole season takes place between Election Day in November and the inauguration of a new president in January," Gansa said, "during this strange and interregnum where a very fragile transfer or power takes place between the outgoing president and the incoming president-elect."
He continued detailing the focus of the show, "There is this strange period in America where there are 72 days when it's not exactly clear who's in charge, and there is a new president that needs to be educated on what it means to be president. That is a very complex transfer of power filled with all kinds of anxiety and different competing interests - How do I get the ear of the new president? How does the new president elect deal with the president that's going out? - and it's a dangerous time in our democracy."
The fifth season finale left Quinn's fate hanging on the balance, but Gansa assured us that Rupert Friend would return as a full-fledged series regular. He teased about how the near-death experience would change Quinn, "I hope he enjoys eating through a tube. How [Quinn] is gonna be dramatized this year is going to surprise people, and it may not be what you think."
On what's next for Carrie (Claire Danes), Gansa shared, "She's got a couple of big questions on the table. The first one: is she going to marry Otto (her boss who proposed to her in the season finale)? Is she going to listen to Saul's plea to come back to the intelligence agency? And what exactly happened with Peter Quinn? So these are big issues."
He added, "I can tell you that Carrie is going to have a very different and singular journey this season that when she did when she was the station chief in Islamabad and when she was in Berlin, outside of the agency. The series is going to have a different feel this year, and it does every year, which is one of its strengths."
Since the show is back in the U.S., there will be some familiar faces popping up in the sixth season. "There will definitely be some cameos from characters from past seasons. Whether they are the Brody family I'm not going to say, but we are back in the United States ... [Carrie's] going to have old acquaintances to reconnect with and establish a new life for herself, so we're going to see some familiar faces," Gansa said.
"Homeland" returns for its sixth season this fall on Showtime.
