'Homeland' Season 5 Preview: Get Briefed on Carrie's New Life, Her New Man, and the Future of the Series

You might not recognize Carrie Mathison when we catch up with her in Season 5 of Showtime’s hit thriller Homeland. She’s no longer working as an analyst for the CIA; instead, she’s living in Berlin, dating a new man (Alexander Fehling), and working as head of security for a German billionaire. She’s actively raising her daughter Franny. She even smiles sometimes!

But of course, she can’t stay away from the CIA for long: A massive data hack sends the agency scrambling, and Carrie becomes a suspect in the breach, bringing her back into the orbit of CIA lifer Saul Berenson and steely hired gun Quinn. Yahoo TV went to Homeland executive producer Alex Gansa to get the full briefing on what to expect from the new season… and how much longer the show might run.

We pick up two years later, and Carrie’s left the CIA to join the civilian world. Where do we find her when Season 5 opens?
She’s working for a foundation that does good works around the world run by a billionaire philanthropist. And she is his head of security, so she provides security for him when he travels, when he goes to conferences, when he’s in Africa or Asia or the Middle East somewhere. Wherever he is doing his good work, she’s there protecting him. And using all of her contacts and expertise to do so.

But judging from the trailer, she does still get drawn back into the world of international terrorism, right?
The world remains a dangerous place, regardless of whether she’s an intelligence officer anymore. And the past catches up with her.

We also see Carrie has a new man in her life. She’s in a stable relationship for once!
She’s dating one of the lawyers that also works at the foundation, and they’ve moved in together and they’re raising her daughter together. And he’s divorced, so he has kids as well. He’s the polar opposite of men that Carrie has been attracted to in the past. This is a very stable, secure, level-headed guy. Conventional, in the best sense of the word. And chosen for that reason by her. But he’s the innocent that is exposed to what her life is like. And that’s a brutal truth that he faces.

Where do we find Quinn in Season 5? It looks like he’s an assassin for hire.
Quinn has spent the last couple of years leading the special-ops team in Syria and Iraq, so he has been at the very tip of the spear down there. And his experiences facing all sorts of militia groups down there, including the Islamic State, has been pretty extreme, as you might imagine. He’s fairly hardened, as a person and as a friend to Carrie.

And Saul’s still around, too, of course.
Saul is now the European division chief of the Central Intelligence Agency, and so his job takes him to European capitals, including Berlin. Miranda Otto plays Alison Carr, and she is the Berlin station chief. And she is another one of Saul’s protégés.

Related: Ken Tucker Reviews the New Season of ‘Homeland’

You managed to reinvent the show in a big way last season, and now it seems like you’re reinventing it again. Are you seeing each season now as a self-contained story?
Very much so. Certainly, Season 4 and Season 5 will follow that pattern. It’s kind of the show we always thought Homeland was going to be. I think everybody involved in that first season, we all thought that the Brody story would last one year, and one year only. And we hired Damian [Lewis], and he was just too good to let go. [Laughs.] So that story, for better or for worse, lasted for three seasons. And now we’re into more of the model that we always imagined the show would be, which is: It’s an intelligence officer. It’s a franchise show that way, albeit we have a very unusual protagonist.

It’s much more like The Wire, or 24 did this, too, actually. Each season of 24 told a different story with a different set of characters. It definitely presents its challenges, and we wind up going to different locations. We were in Cape Town last year in South Africa; we’re in Berlin this year. And I imagine we will be somewhere else next season. We may be back in Berlin, but I’d say we’ll probably be somewhere else next year as well.

Does the ghost of Brody still linger at all in Carrie’s mind, or has she fully moved past him by this point?
Let’s put it this way: I don’t think Brody is ever that far from Carrie’s mind. And I think that was one of the seminal experiences and relationships in her life, personally and professionally. So I don’t think it’s ever going to leave her consciousness. But look, as time passes, memories dull, and so there’s no question that chapter of her life is receding. It’s very much in the rear-view mirror.

How much longer do you envision the show running? Are Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin signed on for more seasons?
You’d have to ask their representatives. I think they’re signed on for a couple more years at least. I think all of us see the show going for seven seasons — two more after this one. And what lifespan or shelf life it has after that, I couldn’t tell you. But if we’re going to do a sixth and seventh season, we have a fairly clear, however vague, idea of how the show will end, and what we want to tell between then and now.

Season 5 of Homeland premieres Sunday, Oct. 4 at 9 p.m. on Showtime.