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Critics I’ve read who have commented on the Sunday finale of Homeland say the show made the right move. A few weeks earlier, Boardwalk Empire had killed off a character the audience cared about but the story runners didn’t know what more to do with, and now so did Homeland. Brody was a more central character, certainly, than Richard Harrow, but all the more reason to clear the decks. Homeland could be about Carrie and Brody’s impossible romance—meaning each season would be more contorted than the one before—or it could be about spycraft, espionage, and geopolitical morality. It had to quit trying to be about both. It was, said one critic, “ripping apart at the seams.”
But as we applaud Homeland for its cynical bravado, I think it needs to be said that what the CIA did to Brody, Homeland did to Brody. When he’d served his purpose it killed him off. Plenty of antiheroes die in the movies and on TV; they are characters created to die. But they die in the end; they aren’t thrown off the wagon because they take up too much space. The death of Brody is Homeland‘s authors’ way of telling us, it’s our show, not his, and we’re taking back the reins. If next year’s scripts are taut and the ratings go up, it’ll have been a righteous death. But what about Brody? When the finale was over I wondered this, as I’ve wondered at other times about Job’s seven sons and three daughters, created by the Author of us all and casually slain by Him to advance His argument with Satan. Death as an expedient always deserves to be called out, even if it means calling out the Bible.
