'Homeland' Season 8 Episode 3 Review: Haissam Haqqani survives as focus shifts back to Carrie in 'False Friends'
Spoiler alert for 'Homeland' Season 8 Episode 3: 'False Friends'
The two recurring themes throughout seven seasons of the gritty spy drama were betrayal and dissimulation. 'False Friends' continues in the same vein in its quest to explain one part of the storyline and can be called a rather swift episode with multiple storylines.
Saul Berenson's (Mandy Patinkin) fate was immediately revealed - the National Security Advisor of POTUS is alive and kicking. Also explained is his relationship with Haissam Haqqani (Numan Acar) and the integral role he plays in getting the Afghan-Taliban peace settlement.
Haqqani survived the RPG attack on his convoy because he was never there. His men go in first to negotiate terms with Saul and pay the price after the ISI attempts to blow them to kingdom come. The traitor is revealed to be Haqqani's son Jalal who is shown to be in cahoots with the ISI and Tasneem Qureshi (Nimrat Kaur), who promises to make him the Emir after his father's death.
Haqqani's character is better explained as he is shown to be a man who could be approached concerning political matters. Saul's attempts to persuade him with the peace settlement sees him give a fair bit of thought to agree with the terms of the treaty, however, when he realizes his son Jalal was the traitor, there's a tense scene that sees Haqqani ready to blow his son's brains out before eventually casting him out.
At the other end, Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) is on another mission - to find the real reason behind Yevgeny Gromov's return. She gets a chance to figure it out when they have a rendezvous under the watchful eyes of the CIA.
'False Friends' shifts the focus back to Carrie in the second half of the episode, and shows her having haunting visions of her captivity and the time she spent at the Russian Gulag. At the start of the season, she was pretty much in the late Nick Brody's shoes, and despite her efforts to get back in the field, there is lingering suspicion at the CIA that she may have turned.
For now, it looks like the peace settlement is one storyline that's pretty much complete, but by the end of the episode, there's a sense of something brewing. Max Piotrowski (Maury Sterling) continues his surveillance stint with the marines and it's refreshing to see Carrie and Saul's go-to man going about his job. It has been another scintillating episode of 'Homeland'. The stark change is a strong signaling that the series wants to bow out with an impact.
Saul fans can breathe easy. For now at least.
'Homeland' Season 8 airs Sundays 9 pm ET/PT on Showtime.