‘Homeland’ Season 6 Will Scale Back Its Depiction Of Terrorism
Showtime’sHomelandhas always tried to do thatLaw and Order"ripped from the headlines" thing, but many fans and critics felt is may have gotten a little too real last season, with a central storyline eerily reflecting real world terrorist attacks. With season six now changing locations, showrunnerAlex Gansasays that the show will change gears, tweak its focus, and tell a different kind of story.
Gansa spoke withEntertainment Weeklyabout the new season, whichjust debuted its new trailer earlier this month, saying that the series has a responsibility to not depict vast terrorist plots that don’t actually exist:
Last season, world events tragically caught up to the story we were telling. We knew we were going to New York and back to the United States. And didn’t want to dramatize any threats to the United States — and to New York specifically — that don’t actually exist. That was our first karmic principle this year. We’re not going to posit that there are vast ISIS or Al Qaeda cells or networks in the United States like there are in Europe, because according to all our intelligence officers, there aren’t any.
Instead,Homelandseason 6 will focus on small scale, homegrown terrorism without the apocalyptic vibe that so often accompanies film and television depictions of this subject matter:
The threat we’re facing right now are these do-it-yourself self-radicalized individuals — and that’s a very different risk than another plot like 9/11. So we made a very conscious choice to not tell a ‘New York threatened by suitcase nuclear bomb’ story. We just weren’t going to do that. The thriller exists in a much more psychological way this year, and we’re curious to see how people respond to it.
Although it has ruffled its fair share of feathers over the years, Homeland has always prided itself on being24’s more level-headed counterpart, tackling similar subject matter with a bit more tact and sensitivity. Remember when24featured its lead character “heroically"out-manuevering a thinly veiled ACLU lawyer so he could torture a terrorism suspect?Yeeeah. Times have changed and it’s smart ofHomelandto take stock of the world as it makes creative choices.
Homelandseason 6 will premiere onJanuary 15, 2017. Here’s the official synopsis:
