– Part Two –
by Damianista | Fan Fun With Damian Lewis | December 8, 2025
Thank you all so much for reading my thoughts about rewatching Homeland Seasons 1–2-3… twelve years later! I’m over the moon with how many of you checked out the post — though honestly, I can’t say I’m shocked. Homeland is suddenly back in Netflix’s Top 10, seven years after the series finale, so clearly we’re all finding our ways back to our favorite show together. I’ve been getting emails and messages from fans, and even our old Homeland posts from the early days of Fan Fun are getting tons of clicks again. It feels like a full-on revival… I am so happy!
As I told you in last week’s post, I have so much to say about my rewatch that I was not able to fit it all into one post — so welcome to Part II!
One of the things I appreciate more in this rewatch of Homeland is how the show tackles real-life issues, especially the way the powerful often get away with things ordinary people never could.
One of the most upsetting examples is when Dana and Finn hit a woman with their car and kill her, then panic and drive off. Dana immediately wants to do the right thing — tell their parents, go to the police, take responsibility — because that’s how she was raised.
However, Finn’s world operates by different rules. His powerful family intervenes, pays off the victim’s relatives in return for forgetting about what happened. Watching this, Dana realizes for the first time that the moral code she believes in is not the code Finn has lived under, and her disappointment feels huge (and completely justified). She has always believed her parents would try to do the right thing, and the truth is that they actually do. Brody even attempts to go to the police, but the CIA shuts him down because reporting the accident would strain his relationship with Vice President Walden, and that relationship is “too important” for the operation they’re running. In other words: protecting power matters more than telling the truth.
And this storyline is painfully real. While watching it, I couldn’t help thinking of a similar accident in Turkey, where the Prime Minister’s eldest son ran over a woman who later died — and absolutely nothing happened to him. It was quietly swept under the rug. When people in authority label others as “terrorists” while hiding their own deadly actions, the hypocrisy is hard to miss.
And it’s not just politicians; Homeland shows how this same mentality exists inside the CIA. Deputy Director David Estes tries to pressure Saul into resigning — accusing him of helping Aileen’s suicide by giving her his reading glasses. Estes pushes this only because he knows Saul knows the truth about the drone strike that killed 82 children in Iraq — a strike the CIA and Vice President Walden quietly covered up. Saul also discovers that Estes has brought in Peter Quinn from Special Operations not only to run the operation to catch Abu Nazir but also to kill Brody once Abu Nazir is gone. And Saul understands that Estes wants Brody dead not because Brody is dangerous, but because he is one of the few people who knows about the drone strike cover up.
Another real-life issue the show tackles is the struggle military families have when soldiers come back from the war. Back when I first watched Homeland, even though I was truly invested in the impossible Carrie and Brody love story, I was also intrigued by the “other” love story that we only witnessed bits and pieces of: Brody and Jessica. I wrote an entire post about them in the first year of Fan Fun (inspired by a fan fiction that one of my fellow bloggers wrote about their wedding day) because there was a love story that had fallen apart there before we ever saw it.
Jess and Brody were high-school sweethearts. The two talk about it when they talk about Dana being 16 and having a secret life, and the truth is Jess also had a secret life with Brody back when she was 16! Brody shows Dana the love paddock he and Jess had (NB and JL) when they were young lovers. They are a standard suburban couple living the so-called “American dream” – two kids, a house, the routines, the comfort – until war comes in and fucks it all.
One scene I still find almost unbearable to watch is the bedroom scene where Brody asks Jess to take off her shirt, touches her for a moment, then masturbates. The first time I watched it, I remember feeling uncomfortable. On this rewatch, I can see the sadness behind the act itself. It’s about how deeply damaged Brody is, and how disconnected he is from the life he’s supposed to return to. It is so much so that even makes Carrie feels uncomfortable that she stops watching… And Jess is right there, longing for intimacy with the man she remembers, and he wants that, too — but the part of him that knows how to be intimate, how to belong in this marriage is gone. They basically have to re-learn how to be in love, stay married, and keep their family together — no small task when you have been a POW for eight years or when your husband has been missing for eight years and comes back… well, different.
The scene where Brody shoots a deer in the backyard during a BBQ party feels even more heartbreaking on rewatch. Jessica’s reaction afterward — “You can’t even fuck your wife” — is so brutal. But don’t get me wrong, I am not blaming Jess at all – she is drowning in her own grief and exhaustion. They’re both hurting, and neither is capable of reaching the other. And there is no help available.
I understand why these scenes hit me so much harder this time. I didn’t love Brody until The Weekend, and it wasn’t because he was unreadable or mysterious — though he was absolutely both. It was mostly because I naturally took Carrie/Claire Danes/the CIA’s side; they were the familiar ones, and Brody was this huge question mark. But rewatching now, knowing everything he’s endured, those early moments hit ten times harder. Instead of feeling unsure about him, I just want to wrap him in a blanket, give him a long hug, and hand him a hot chocolate or something.
Jessica’s speech at the Wounded Veterans Fundraiser (which she has to give because Brody is off taking care of Bassel the tailor!) says everything about what her family — and many military families — go through when soldiers come back home from war. And she proposes the money raised that night to be used towards an initiative to help families with with returning war veterans. I don’t know whether that could help Brody and Jess but I am confident it would help a lot of people.
The end of Brody – Jess relationship takes place in the car when they go back home after Abu Nazir is finally killed. It is probably the only fully honest conversation they have after Brody’s return.
“I was fucked the moment I left for Iraq. We all were.”
This hits hard because it’s the truth of their marriage, their family, their history. The war didn’t just take eight years from Brody; it also took the version of him Jess loved. And in their final honest conversation in the car, they stop pretending, they just accept up that they just couldn’t make it back. Even after all this time, their story still feels like one of the most human parts of Homeland.
One of the things that still hits me exactly the same way it did the first time. is Brody’s faith, which I also wrote about in the early days of Fan Fun.
Back then, when I first realized Brody had converted to Islam, it didn’t shock me like it did Jess — it made sense. Coming from a Muslim-majority country, even though I’m not religious at all, I recognized that connection instantly. The quiet ritual, the washing, the way he rolled out the prayer rug with gentle hands — it wasn’t political. It was comfort. Essentially a lifeline for him when everything else had been taken from him.
And what still moves me — now even more than before — is how Homeland let that faith be human.
Read the rest of the original article at Fan Fun With Damian Lewis.