Our recap of the two-hour Homeland season 4 premiere breaks down the events of the very exciting, and at many times, surprising two-hour story.
Since the two-hour Homeland season 4 premiere was technically two episodes back to back, we’ve split our recap into two sections detailing each episode.
Episode 1
Homeland season 4 kicked off with Chief of Station Carrie getting word of a highly sought after target that they want to take out in a couple minutes. Sandy, played by Corey Stoll, tipped them off about this criminal. The new character supposedly has very good sources.
After a successful hit, some personal time is in order: It’s Carrie’s birthday! In addition to a cake from her colleagues, she has a Skype call with her sister Maggie, who wants Carrie to move to Istanbul, out of harm’s way. Carrie briefly asks about her baby – a clear point of tension between the two sisters.
Then, word gets out that Haissam Haqqani was killed in the attack that Carrie just ordered, but there’s a problem: Media reports reveal that a wedding was supposedly taking place at the compound and a larger number of family members were killed as well.
Sandy believes that the wedding claims are “PR bullshit,” and that it technically wasn’t a drone strike – something that protesters allege it was.
Is Sandy right? No, and he has a big new enemy in the form of a young adult who was at the wedding named Allyn. He was hit during the attack but eventually comes to and learns what happened. He walks outside to find the numerous bodies recovered at the scene. He sees one, a woman, who was particularly close to him. Then he turns to the sky and spots a drone – being used by Carrie – and stares straight at it.
Quinn calls Carrie about the attack and says that this one feels different than the others (later we’ll learn he’s right). She’s convinced that this area the attack took place in is so remote that no one will dare go in to investigate. “It’s bulletproof,” she says with not much confidence.
Indeed, she has a problem on her hands. Allyn has video of the wedding when the bomb hits, and he himself is in it, thus proving all of this happened. He doesn’t want to upload it because he’d be getting himself involved in a worldwide problem. Sadly, his friend disagrees and secretly gets his cousin to upload the video to YouTube. This upsets Allyn since he appears in it. He demands his cousin take it down, but we all know it’s too late to stop it from spreading across the world wide web.
The video receives 300,000 views in a few hours, prompting a pissed off Lockhart to send Carrie to Islamabad to fix the situation.
Carrie quickly arrives in Pakistan and gets caught up on everything in the country via Quinn. The two spar over their career paths, but they suddenly have a bigger issue on hand: Sandy’s been named on the news as the person responsible for the attack.
Carrie and Quinn rush off to pick him up and bring him to safety, but people in Islamabad are already after him. As crowds start moving towards him, so do Carrie and Quinn. Sandy hops in their car but protesters surround the vehicle and start busting in the windows. Despite firing a few bullets – including a couple point blank shots to faces (will this stir up more controversy?) – they grab Sandy and drag him onto the street, beating him to a pulp.
And as if that weren’t bad enough, this mess hits Quinn hard. He thinks he and Carrie could’ve done more to protect Sandy (like shot more people?). After a couple “fuck you’s” from Quinn, Carrie goes inside headquarters to greet the ambassador. But before that, Carrie first has to pucker up in the ladies room and appears undisturbed by everything that just happened. The first hour of the two-hour premiere ends here.
Episode 2, ‘Trylon and Perisphere’
If episode 1 wasn’t shocking enough for you, episode 2 does the trick as we dive deeper into the problems that Carrie, Quinn, and Saul now face.
It begins with Carrie and Quinn greeting Senator Lockhart in the United States. The two agents were sent back to the homeland following Sandy’s death. Lockhart apparently wants to make them feel horrible: They have to pass their sympathies on to Sandy’s wife, who is now raising three kids on her own.
Carrie heads home so she can sleep before the trouble that awaits her at the CIA, and the first thing she hears is her crying child. Maggie comes outside with Carrie’s daughter Frannie in her arms – who has Brody-red hair! – and Carrie takes a few steps back. Mom’s return to America surprises Maggie, but it’s Carrie’s who’s handling this reunion poorly.
Meanwhile, Quinn is also at home, getting really drunk by the apartment pool. He gets yelled at by the apartment manager, and after a brief conversation, we jump cut to Quinn having sex with her. That escalated quickly.
The next morning Carrie arrives at the CIA and gets yelled at by Lockhart, who has decided to formally bring her back from overseas. “Look at it this way, you’ll get to spend time with your kid,” he says with sarcasm. This doesn’t excite Carrie.
This same morning, Quinn invites the manager he just slept with to breakfast. Perhaps he’s looking for normalcy after so much horror? The calm atmosphere at their meal doesn’t last long, because two guys sitting at a table nearby start making fun of the manager for her weight. Quinn comes over and smashes both of their heads in.
Carrie pulls Quinn out of prison after being impounded for this outburst and reiterates her desire to get back to Islamabad. She then goes to Harris, a former case officer in Islamabad, who’s been moved to filing paperwork at the CIA, because she’s suspicious about how he was recalled and then given a horrible job in the basement. While she tries to get information out of him about Sandy, he refuses to talk.
Some time passes and she has no choice but to force herself into his car to get more information out of him. Harris reveals that Sandy was trading secret information about the United States in exchange for details that he needed.
At Sandy’s funeral, Carrie corners Lockhart about this new intel and accuses him of treason. Lockhart knew what Sandy was up to! Her demand to keep quiet? A move back to Islamabad as Station Chief.
Inside the funeral, Carrie asks Saul to send some of his security guys into Islamabad to ensure the messy situation doesn’t happen again. This is how they’ll be working together this season.
One person who won’t be working with them is Quinn, who refuses to go back to Islamabad after Carrie tells him the good news. Back home at his apartment that evening, Quinn opens a bottle of liquor and opens a note from his manager. “No one ever fought for me before,” it reads with a red lipstick kiss at the bottom.
At her home that evening, Carrie is yelled at by Maggie about going back overseas. Carrie acts like she had no choice but to go back to foreign territory, but Maggie doesn’t believe her. The sad part, as viewers know, is that Maggie is right no matter how much Carrie denies it.
Elsewhere…
– Our sole reference to Brody comes when Carrie is taking care of Frannie one day. Mom decides to take Frannie to Brody’s old home. It appears to be unoccupied. “He would’ve been a terrible father,” she says to Frannie before admitting she’s a terrible mother. Carrie then talks openly about missing Brody. “When I close my eyes I still see him there.”
Bathing her child later in the day, Carrie’s grip on Frannie accidentally loosens in the tub. It makes Carrie realize she could drown Frannie – and begins to do it – but then suddenly realizes what she’s doing and quickly pulls her out.
– At the Ommaya College of Medicine in Islamabad, Allyn is stressing over the exposure his video is going to bring him. A camera crew rushes up to him and questions if the video has brought any justice.
He brings some of his personal belongings to his girlfriend Kiran’s home. That night, he’s attacked by a few men who tell him to give no more interviews and share no more videos.
– Saul doesn’t appear much during the two episodes, but we do see he’s struggling to fit in with his position in the private sector. Toward the end of episode 2, Dar Adal suggests that the Islamabad situation may be an opportunity for Saul to replace Lockhart.
Lots of questions are still to be answered in the episodes ahead. Chief among them: What was Sandy up to? Viewers never had the chance to see who the “X” was that he tried to visit shortly before getting killed.
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