Entertainment

Who Survived 'Homeland's Shocking End?

by Rosie Narasaki

Carrie's been caught in her fair share of explosions over the course of four seasons, but this one might just be the worst. Now tell me, just how hard did your jaw hit the floor when (huge spoilers for "There's Something Else Going On" ahead), after the prisoner exchange, two of the CIA cars escorting Saul back to the embassy were blown up by a couple of RPGs in Sunday's episode of Homeland ? I mean, I hate to admit to my naiveté, but to put things in the immortal words of Taylor Swift, I totally thought we were out of the woods.

After that exceedingly terrifying prisoner exchange (and all of the heart attack-inducing suspenseful yo-yo-ing that came with it, courtesy of a small child wearing a suicide vest and, a man threatening to detonate him, and a very non-compliant Saul) was finished, I thought we were... well, in the clear. It felt a little too good to be true, sure, but seriously: after the stress of last week's near-constant threat of suicide, I thought we were getting a little break.

Well, on Homeland, there's no rest for the wicked... especially as the season crescendos towards its finale. And while, to the best of my knowledge, Carrie/Saul/Redmond weren't actually hit (I re-watched the scene three times — it was very hard to tell which CIA SUVs got hit by the RPGs, since there was a lot of spinning, and the cars all basically looked the same) but that was still a pretty gnarly explosion, and the show played its cards very close to the vest with regards to what's going to happen next — we didn't even get a single glimpse of Carrie trying to crawl out of the wreckage, or Saul's cracked glasses lying useless on the ground besides his lifeless form, or anything of the sort.

Do you think they'll all be coming out alive? Carrie's a given, sure (though saying that feels like a jinx), but what about Redmond and Saul? It would be an awful kind of poetic injustice if Saul died, especially seeing as he had just picked up the phone to talk to his wife after surviving as a hostage of the Taliban when the RPG hit (wow, this show's not dramatic or anything). Last week, I thought Saul would make it through all the death scares, but now I'm not so sure — the whole Mira aspect is not a good omen: nothing good ever comes of promising a crying spouse that their loved one will be coming home alive. It's kind of like saying "Beetlejuice" three times in a row.

As for Redmond, it would be just like the Homeland showrunners to make us fall in love with his character, only to have him die all-too-abruptly. Let's hope they all survive, though — Lockhart, Quinn, and the Boyds are sure going to need their help over at the embassy.

Image: David Bloomer/Showtime