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“The country is in freefall, tearing itself apart!” warns Carrie Mathison.
Yeah, so we’ve heard.
Former CIA agent Mathison (Claire Danes) is back in the first trailer for Showtime’s Homeland season 7, which depicts the show’s heroes and villains alike struggling against an overreaching and civil rights-abusing president.
The upcoming season of the espionage thriller has a rogue Mathison trying to take down criminals in the government under the tyrannical administration of President Keene (Elizabeth Marvel), who has arrested 200 members of the intelligence community after barely surviving an assassination plot in the season 6 finale.
Also targeting Keene: The show’s Alex Jones-like conspiracy character Brett O’Keefe (Jake Weber) who was first introduced last season. “The founding fathers foresaw the dark day when we would face a president like her,” warns O’Keefe as he aims a pistol at a poster of the president’s face. “Anyone who takes a stand for what they believe, people are gonna say they’re crazy. They’ve been calling me that for years.”
Meanwhile, Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) is getting close to Keene as a new member of her administration, while Keene herself is apparently under investigation for her actions (“How is that they tried to assassinate me and I’m the one under investigation?” she asks).
If you’re looking to figure out what Homeland might be trying to say about our current administration … well, it’s tricker than it looks. The show banked on Hillary Clinton winning in 2016 while making season 6, then recalibrated a bit midway through after Donald Trump won. Keene was originally presented as a liberal and sympathetic figure until the season’s climactic assassination attempt, after which she went on an authoritarian warpath, which is where this alternate D.C. universe finds itself now.