Homeland had a fitting ending, at least from its perspective

The Hollywood Reporter

Everything Carrie Mathison did in Sunday's series finale of the eight-season Showtime spy drama was hard to buy, says Daniel Fienberg, but "it was an entirely fitting ending from a Homeland perspective...The finale of Homeland was true to the ethos of Homeland and even if it annoyed me, I recognize that the things that annoyed me in the finale are things that are integral to the show. This was probably the right ending, or a right ending." It was also obvious, says Fienberg, that the finale was setting up some kind of follow-up. "If I give you five years before we get a Homeland reboot or telefilm, are you taking the over or the under? The set-up for a return to this world couldn't be more obvious," he says.

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• Showrunner Alex Gansa says he and Claire Danes agreed on Homeland's ending: "Well, the finale script went through a number of drafts and there was a lot of discussion among all parties involved," he says. "...We were all wrestling with this and it went through many iterations. Ultimately, it kind of boiled down to me and Claire. This particular ending really appealed to both of us because the character can continue on in our fans' imaginations. The story progresses in everybody's mind, just not as a TV show."
• Gansa really wanted to avoid a disappointing series finale: "We wanted to go out in a successful way," he says. “We obviously didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of some, you know, to be unnamed shows, that fell down and stumbled at the end...So, we really, really tried hard. We argued. We talked. We tried a bunch of different things, and this is ultimately what we came up with.”
• Gansa reveals the alternate ending that was cut for two reasons: The first “reason is we had gone so far over budget this season,” Gansa explains. “One of the battles that you have making television shows is how much you’re spending on every episode. And we just couldn’t (financially) fit it in.”
• The idea for the ending came 24 hours before it was shot