As its final season kicks off, here’s how the terrorism thriller went from the Carrie-Brody chemistry show to the most unnervingly prescient TV of our time

As Homeland began its eighth and final season on Sunday, there was a strong sense that it was ending at the right time. When it bows out on 26 March (3 May in the UK) it will be on its 96th episode. Eight seasons is a rare accomplishment for a scripted drama these days, and it’s amazing it has got this far. The show arrived in 2011 with a barnstorming first season that filled the gap left by 24.

The premise was a doozy: missing marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), who had been presumed dead, is freed from years of imprisonment under terrorist Abu Nazir and returns home a hero. However, CIA officer Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) sees the truth: Brody is a double agent, turned in captivity and primed for atrocity. As Carrie cried conspiracy, it was dismissed as the product of her bipolar disorder. Her condition was at once her superpower and her fatal flaw; in her manic phase she spotted connections no other agent could, but she also saw things that weren’t there. The job she needed to survive was almost certainly going to kill her. It was the tightrope Danes walked each week, and it won her a Primetime Emmy and critical praise.

Of course, it was a given that Carrie and Brody would write a bad romance. As brilliant, beautiful and broken as her, he matched her energy every time they faced off. A heady mix of betrayal and lust between mortal enemies developed. It didn’t hurt that Danes and Lewis had the kind of chemistry that can carry an entire series if it needs to. Once viewers are invested in a relationship, they are on the hook. The heavy lifting storytellers are accustomed to becomes light work.

When a divisive finale in season one caused consternation, viewers tuned in to see how these two patched things up. Of course, it eventually ended with Brody hanging from a giant crane in Iran. There would be no last-minute reprieve or glorious resurrection. Three seasons in, Homeland had slaughtered its beloved son. What direction would it take? Could Homeland survive without him?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘A heady mix of betrayal and lust’ ... Claire Danes and Damian Lewis as Carrie and Brody. Photograph: Showtime/Everett/Rex Features

As it turned out, Homeland thrived. Carrie became the Drone Queen, the CIA’s youngest-ever station chief, carrying out her unique brand of car-bomb diplomacy with the relish of the true fanatic. While her relationship with father-figure Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) increasingly became the heart of the show, what was most impressive was how events on-screen mirrored real life. In the Berlin-set fifth season, it depicted an attempted terrorist attack on a European capital in the same timeframe as the November 2015 attacks in Paris. Then, season six opened with president-elect Elizabeth Keane at war with the intelligence community at the same time Donald Trump and the National Security establishment went to the mat in Washington.

The eerie resonance continued with sock puppet-stuffed troll farms, foreshadowing Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russians from the notorious Internet Research Agency and when the Kremlin co-opted “alt-right” goons for their own ends, Homeland had fake news master Yevgeny Gromov sowing discord. It was starting to get more than a bit spooky.

These plots weren’t just blind luck. The annual conference of showrunners, stars, the intelligence community and state department officials has been crucial to the show’s prescience. The week-long event was a grounding in the state of affairs that Danes referred to as a “massive, terribly unnerving download about what’s really happening and what is likely to happen”. It allowed Homeland to stay ahead of the game and ensure that, particularly in its later seasons, there was no more relevant show on TV.

None of which is to argue for a stay of execution. Eight seasons is an epic innings for a show that could easily have run out of ideas a lot earlier – 24’s more desperate episodes bear witness to that. Homeland deserves to go out on top. Apart from everything else, Carrie looks as if she could do with the break. Its greatest achievement was its reinvention as a commentary on the war on US enemies, foreign and domestic. In the end, then, Homeland became that rarest of oddities: a show improved by its midlife crisis.