Spoiler warning for anyone who hasn't yet watched the Season 6 finale of Homeland.
Homeland keeps ticking on Showtime, but we can't say the same about an increasing number of people that are important to Carrie Mathison. Season 6 was building to Elizabeth Marvel's President-Elect Elizabeth Keane taking office, and the finale's post bombing assassination attempt threatened to keep that event from ever happening. But while Keane lived to tell the tale, series veteran Peter Quinn did not, as he drove through a barrage of bullets in getting both Keane and Carrie to safety. Star Rupert Friend had a touching answer when asked if his goodbye to Quinn is an emotional one.
It is. And that's because the relationship with a character you play is always a close one. You attempt not to judge or take any kind of objective opinion, but if I were to do that now in hindsight, I just feel the enormous need for this guy to have someone he could genuinely trust. We all need that. And I don't feel like he ever got that in his life. Everyone he's been around has let him down or he left them. And for someone to live their whole life never having let anyone in strikes me as deeply sad.
Man, as if it wasn't hard enough just saying goodbye to Quinn already, especially after everything he's experienced in Season 6, as his recovery from the sarin gas exposure in Season 5's finale turned him from an often unflinching professional to someone else entirely. Watching him survive with his PTSD and his not-always-legal lifestyle was definitely difficult viewing, and his demise is even more effective knowing that Rupert Friend was personally affected by Quinn's lack of a traditional best friend, lover or trusted confidante. That he died saving Carrie's life is far more important than him saving the President-Elect, or any member of the U.S. government for that matter, because at least she was the closest thing that Peter had to any of those things. At least as far as what viewers witnessed.
In his interview with TVLine, Rupert Friend also talked how how this legitimate death compared to how things went down last season, with Carrie set up by his hospital bed ready to say goodbye.
Had he died at the end of Season 5, then we wouldn't have gotten to explore this fascinating and relevant moment where we not only took a character we all thought we knew and flipped him on his head, but we also were able to explore the reality of a modern veteran's life in whatever society he or she returns to. We were also able to [feature] a leading character with severe mental and psychological difficulties and I'm not sure that's something we've seen before.
Whatever anyone's opinions are of Homeland Season 6 as a whole, Rupert Friend's performance as a starkly different Peter Quinn was easily one of the most memorable aspects, and I am admittedly okay with not seeing him suffer through life like that for longer. Thankfully, Showtime already locked down Homeland for at least another two years no matter who had died in the finale, having ordered Season 7 and Season 8 when this most current set of episodes hadn't even been completed yet. Who will be the next member of Carrie's circle of secret-keepers to bite the bullet next? Or a bunch of bullets, as it was in this case.
While Homeland viewers likely won't get to see Peter Quinn saving anyone's lives in the future (unless we get to see some flashbacks), we'll likely get to watch Carrie and Saul and that bastard Dar when Season 7 gets here in what will likely be early 2018. In the meantime, head to our midseason premiere schedule and our summer TV guide to see what's coming to the small screen in the near future.
