Keane seems genuine now, in a way she never quite has before in this season. Stopped in her tracks when she attempts to “strong-arm” Carrie — “Don’t ask me questions you know I can’t answer,” Carrie snaps — she appears both to grasp the extent of her own wrongdoing toward her ostensible friend, and to show respect for Carrie’s decision to put her daughter before ideology and political loyalty.

Is it that newfound sense of respect, or is it shame, or grief, or sheer isolation that leaves Keane, silenced and alone, in the home that Carrie has managed to make for herself and her little girl? If these two women can reunite and make peace, I think they could ride the force of outrage we heard expressed by the Child Services receptionist (“Now they’re after her son”), and become a powerful counterweight to Dar’s co-conspirators. Provided that Carrie doesn’t first self-destruct — which is always a real possibility.

Carrie may be off her meds again.

That, I think, was the implication behind Saul’s odd half-smile, after he let himself into her locked secret room, and found himself surrounded by the news clippings, maps, Post-its, and bright-colored threads that have in the past heralded the return of her brilliant, problem-solving mania. A normal friend’s face would have fallen at the sight, but as we’ve established time and again, these spies aren’t normal people — and Saul, in particular, has proved himself more than willing to weaponize Carrie’s illness when needed.

Perhaps it will take the outsized creativity and the mental drive of mania to tie together, in a just a few remaining episodes, the many threads of the complicated conspiracy that’s playing out with Dar Adal, Carrie, Sekou, Conlin and Quinn, the sock puppets, Keane, the would-be secretaries of state, and the men in suits who made scattered appearances with Dar in the early episodes of this season. And what about that Medina Medley truck in the dark ops bunk house in Queens? Is the catering company itself — with its almost comical name — some kind of C.I.A. front?

My head is spinning — and Saul’s about to do something big.

What it is, I’m not sure. Tonight’s Marathon Man journey from the diamond district to the Upper East Side was a bit too much for me. I was starting to hallucinate a dentist’s chair in the diamond dealers’ work room, and was bothered by the sound and pacing of Mira’s “paper-chasing” — it just didn’t have the feel of “Homeland” for me. And now there are so many confusing questions: Why was Saul given a gift of diamonds? What are those “morning walks” he refers to? (Somehow, I doubt they were an opportunity to hit a Starbucks and shoot the breeze with an old pal.) What’s the meaning of the line “You can’t fall off the middle”? And why “Mazel”? Can someone help?

“The truth does matter. I will make it matter. That’s a promise,” Saul told Javadi all those episodes ago. I guess now he’s got his chance.