Claire Danes in 'Homeland': What's coming up in season 2

It’s been an eventful year for Showtime’s new hit series Homeland. With two Golden Globe awards under their belt, as well as praise from audiences and critics alike, all eyes are on the cable drama as it heads into its second season this fall.

With Homeland being based on the hit Israeli series Hatufim (Kidnapped), you would think that many hints of what’s to come may lie in the source material. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

Homeland may have been based off of Hatufim, but the only element that remains from the original series is the fact that a solider (soldiers in the original) returned home after being held captive for many years, and must deal with adjusting to a world that has continued without him. While there are several mysteries surrounding what actually occurred during their captivity,Hatufim is not the narrative thriller that Homeland is.

And with Homeland season 2 set to begin production this summer, it’s time to find out exactly what those upcoming twists and turns may be. Speaking with E! Online recently, executive producer Alex Gansa (The X-Files, 24) revealed some details about what’s to come in one of cable television’s most talked about series.

The Time Jump

For those fans looking to find out what happened after Carrie (Claire Danes) attempted to cure her bi-polar disorder with electroconvulsive therapy, you may be disappointed with the intended plans for next season. It appears that instead of picking up where the Homeland season 1 finale left off, the producers are going to make use of television’s dreaded time jump. While we’ll ultimately see the result of Carrie’s treatments, it won’t be the seamless continuation that many expected.

We have the ability now to jump time between seasons—so don’t be surprised if we don’t pick up the very next day.

By jumping some time, we’re going to be able to put our characters in different places than they have been this season. There will be a reset, probably after a jump in time, and both [Carrie and Brody] will be in very different places than they are now.

Even though television’s often-abused time jumps do tend to give viewers the appearance that the producers are attempting to work with a clean slate, after what may be a disastrous season of storytelling, there have been many examples where a time jump, when handled correctly, can further explore aspects of a series and its characters that otherwise wouldn’t be available .

The People

Thanks to a perfectly-timed phone call to Sargent Brody (Damian Lewis) in the finale, the Al-Qaeda sleeper-assassin secured his placement in Homeland season 2, and perhaps a position in the White House. But according to Gansa, the second season will continue progressing the highly volatile relationship between Carrie and Brody.

The center of season two will be the same as the center of season one and that is the Carrie-Brody relationship. The reason why we decided not to kill Brody off in the finale is because that relationship hasn’t run its course yet. That’s what we always come back to—whenever we can intersect those two characters, that’s when we feel most alive as writers, that’s when the series really soars.

That being said, the producers are still focused on further evolving the series. And with the only reasoning for keeping Brody around being that his relationship with Carrie “hasn’t run its course yet,” Homeland is going to have to bring in some new talent. Perhaps an Oscar winner who already has an affinity for the series?

I think we will bring some new characters in, especially to the CIA. But that’s really just in the gestating…we just don’t know what we’re going to do yet.

I’ll tell you this: Robin Williams loves the show. So who knows? Can you imagine Robin Williams and Mandy Patinkin in a scene together? That’s what I want to see.”

Agreed!

The Plot

With Homeland’s intended time jump previously revealed, Gansa explains that the storyline inHomeland season 2 is going mirror the 2013 Presidential election, which will be occurring at the same time that the second season airs.

I think an election will be happening. And the great thing is, an election [for U.S. president] will really be happening when we air. So it’s going to be a really wonderful confluence of events.

And now that Brody has been able to been able to transition himself from a one-hit-bomber in the eyes of Abu Nazir, you can bet that Brody is going to take his ”American hero” persona further than anyone would have expected, and is going to be very involved in helping to shape the public’s opinion to better plan into Nazir’s plans.

As Nazir told Brody, “Why kill a man when you can kill an idea?”

But since a time jump has occurred, perhaps Brody has had a change of heart?

I suppose we’ll have to wait to find out

Anthony Ocasio blogs at Screen Rant.