It could be a matter of art imitating life when the next season of Homeland arrives. While the Showtime drama series has always had its pulse on the current state of politics, a new development regarding Homeland Season 6 feels especially prescient. Per Variety, the main plot of the new season will “focus on a female president-elect navigating the transitional period between Election Day and the inauguration.” This particular news nugget was dropped on Tuesday by star Claire Danes and executive producer/director Lesli Linka Glatter during a Q&A, but Danes was quick to point out that we’re not gonna be delving into “Hillary Clinton proxy” territory here:
Homeland’s new president will not be a thinly veiled Hillary Clinton figure but rather “a composite of all the different candidates,” Danes said. The character is a politician who “challenges the norms (and) is a little scary for that reason.”
Female presidents in films and television aren't exactly new, just as African-American presidents weren't unfamiliar when Barack Obama took office—heck, 24 had both during the course of its run on Fox, and there was an entire TV series devoted to a female Commander in Chief called Commander in Chief. But Homeland has always tackled relevant current events, so this notion of turning the focus of the series on a president, and a female one at that, feels pointed.
This news actually gives us some solid insight into where things might pick up in Homeland Season 6. We know the show is returning to the States as its main location for the first time since Season 3, as the past two seasons have revolved around Claire Danes’ CIA agent Carrie Mathison operating abroad in South Africa and Berlin, using both locations as the show’s primary filming locations as well. Season 6, however, will be shooting primarily in New York, and it sounds like Carrie may be wading back into the world of U.S. politics as Danes noted that this female president-elect “gets along with Carrie Mathison pretty well.”
Homeland really picked up steam, creatively, in Season 5 after taking a bit of a creative nosedive in the second half of Season 2 and most of Season 3. I’m curious to see if showrunner Alex Gansa can maintain this momentum, although we’re going to have to wait a bit longer for the new season this time around, as Showtime recently pushed the Season 6 premiere date back from this fall to early 2017. But some good news arrived with the bad: Showtime is reportedly close to renewing the show for two more seasons.
Could this president storyline be the beginning of yet another evolution of the show into more of a domestic political drama? We’ll find out next year.
