Loss of Damian Lewis' character puts 'Homeland' back on original plan- NY Daily News 

Kent Smith/SHOWTIME Claire Danes will be posted in the Mideast in the next ‘Homeland’ season.

BEVERLY HILLS — The Brody era on Showtime’s spy drama “Homeland” is as dead as Nicholas Brody himself.

Creator Alex Gansa told TV writers here Friday that the upcoming fourth season of the award-winning show, which starts Oct. 5, will bury most of the storylines that drove its first three. With Brody (Damian Lewis) dead and his family written out, Carrie Matheson (Claire Danes) will be posted in Istanbul, fighting international terrorism and turmoil with a mostly new cast.

Writer Meredith Stiehm says Carrie even seems to have shaken some of her mental demons.

Her new daughter, fathered by Brody, won\'t be with her.

“The country where Carrie is posted is too dangerous for dependents,” said Gansa.

She will have a few of her old team members and will reconnect with her mentor and former CIA boss Saul (Mandy Patinkin), who now works for a private contractor.

Mandy Patinkin (l.) will return on ‘Homeland’ as Carrie’s former CIA boss.

But in a real sense, Gansa said, the fourth season will start where Gansa once thought he’d start the second.

“When we conceived the show,” he says, “we planned Brody for one season, and then we would send Carrie back overseas to do the job she was trained to do.”

But when Carrie and Brody began a relationship, a twist that resonated powerfully with fans, Gansa and his team decided to extend Brody’s storyline.

In the end, Gansa admitted, it was stretched about as far as it could go. Brody’s absence from the first half of the third season, Gansa said, reflected the lack of new places to take him.

Still, Gansa challenged criticism that the third “Homeland” season was weaker than the previous two.

“Our last six to seven episodes were among the best on television,” he said. “The last two were two of the best we’ve ever done.”

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