Homeland's third season is now over, and so is the story that the show started to tell 36 episodes ago.

An American prisoner of war had been turned, and turned back, then turned again, then turned back again, then, well, you get the picture. In "The Star", Season 3's finale, that prisoner of war found himself a prisoner again. There would be no escape this time, as Nicholas Brody met his demise at the hands of Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

For the second consecutive season, Homeland recovered just enough from its wobbly plot and well-documented absurdities to deliver a gut-wrenching farewell scene between Carrie and Brody. In Season 2, we had "this was love, you and I," while this year we had a solemn Carrie scrribbling a tribute to her fallen lover with a magic marker. I won't forget either scene any time soon.

"The Star" felt very much like a memorial service, serving mostly to remember the show that has been for three seasons, but if there was an underlying theme to the hour, it was that everybody got their victory, but no one can ever learn of their triumph.

Saul's Javadi plan worked out, and he affected real change in international relations in Iran, but it cost him the career that had been the center of his life for years and years. Carrie was right about Brody, and everyone saw him through her eyes, as Javadi told her. However, none of Brody's heroism can ever be made known publicly.

As for Brody, he asked the question that Homeland has been asking its audience in one form or another for three years: can one redeem themselves for taking human life by taking another human life, even if it's in the name of some greater good?

Also, Brody, the man who ended up clearing channels for somewhat normalized relations between the United States and Iran, will be remembered as an enemy of the state in both places.

There was still plenty of absurdity in "The Star", lest we forget how wacky things got at times during this season. Carrie, who went rogue and jeopardized as many operations as she saved this year, was rewarded with a promotion. She's a vandal, too, by the way.

Season 4 could end up going in any number of directions, but we know that the playing field will look completely different than it did this year. Brody is dead, Saul is in the private sector, Carrie is in Istanbul and Carrie's father is presumably going to be raising her child, for starters.

This much is clear, though: Brody's story should have been over long ago.

Now, it's really over.

Thank you for reading each week, and special thanks to the Homeland Podcast for promoting my recaps. I hope our paths cross again before the next season of Homeland.

For a weekly Homeland podcast and other Homeland news, check out   http://www.homelandpodcast.com

Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here: http://homelandpodcast.com/itunes

Or on your mobile device here: http://homelandpodcast.com/stitcher

Follow the Homeland Podcast on Twitter @HomelandPodcast

Follow me on Twitter @EthanRenner or @ethanwritescom

Really, Senator? You don't say.

Saul's scheme to plant Javadi at the highest level of Iran's government worked.

Did it work because of his stubborn ability to trust his people, even when every shred of evidence suggests that he shouldn't, as laid out in "The Yoga Play"? No, not really. Did Saul's plan succeed because he trusted his star agent's uncanny ability to always know what their wild card field operative will do? No, not exactly.

Saul's plan ultimately worked because Brody changed his mind and did what he had to do to ensure his own survival.

Wait, that's it? Yup, that's it.

"Big Man in Tehran" chronicled the most important phase of Saul's masterpiece, one that hinged on the wherewithal of Homeland's two most volatile compounds, Carrie and Brody. Would Brody crack under pressure? Would Carrie go off the rails and eff everything up? The answer to both questions was "yes", undoubtedly.

I imagine that there could be two schools of thought when it comes to Brody's actions throughout "Big Man in Tehran". If you want to believe that Brody, hellbent on righting all of his wrongs, had every intention of eventually following through with his orders, there's probably enough evidence there to support that thesis.

I don't think that was the case, though. Did you see the deep sigh and how all the tension left Brody's body when he dropped the cyanide needle (brilliantly played by Damian Lewis, by the way)?
"I want to stop running," Brody told Abu Nazir's widow, as they commiserated and spoke of how their lives lacked the peace that they had been promised. Brody had finally found a semblance of that peace in Tehran. He could stop running, too. All he had to do was spout some "standard 'death to America' fare", and he could survive. And really, isn't that what Brody wants most?

And when Brody did carry out his orders, after Carrie aided and abetted his getaway (wouldn't you love to see her personnel file?), did Brody kill Akbari because it was his duty? Or was Brody simply settling a personal score, killing one of the men responsible for setting him on his path, in the room where everything started? I think we know the answer to that.

Where do we go from here, now that Saul's plan worked? Season 3 wraps up next week, so we'll soon find out. How will Brody, still seen by the public as the world's most wanted man, survive? He was last seen denouncing the United States on state television in Iran. He probably can't just move back to D.C., get a fake name and an apartment, right?

Will we find out with absolute certainty that Carrie is carrying Brody's child? Will Carrie again find herself phased out at the CIA, only to be brought back next season because there's an asset that will only talk to her, Bauer-on-24-style?

Will Lockhart have a place for Saul in his CIA after his master plan worked in spite of nearly everyone involved? Will Peter Quinn's somewhat puzzling loyalty to Carrie be fully explained? Is there something deeper there? Will Dar Adal continue to skulk around, tossing off all of his lines as though he's projecting to the back row of the theater?

For a weekly Homeland podcast and other Homeland news, check out   http://www.homelandpodcast.com

Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here: http://homelandpodcast.com/itunes

Or on your mobile device here: http://homelandpodcast.com/stitcher

Follow the Homeland Podcast on Twitter @HomelandPodcast

Follow me on Twitter @EthanRenner or @ethanwritescom

I want to enjoy the shows I write about. I want to be entertained and asked existential questions. I want to wax poetically about what the subtext of some bit of dialogue meant. The lowest form of writing is to critically pick apart what is obviously bad, to paraphrase Chuck Klosterman, and I really don't have any interest in doing that.

But I've committed to writing about Homeland, a show that I used to enjoy, that used to touch on philosophical things and ask important questions of us as an audience and challenged our way of thinking. Even when its plot wobbled, as in most of Season 2, the acting was top shelf, so there was at least that to enjoy.

Now? Well, the acting is still pretty good, I guess.

"Good Night", Season 3's tenth episode, broke me, just as Brody's nameless CIA colleague might have broken under interrogation had Javadi not put a bullet in his skull.

I could talk about the absurdity of the plot. I could bemoan how Claire Danes' Carrie has been marginalized in her own show, once presented as deeply flawed and compelling as protagonists like Don Draper and Walter White, now just a lip-quivering baby's mama. I could rip on the cliched dialogue. I'm really not interested in doing those things any more than I just did.

What I will touch on is my biggest problem with Homeland:

Brody.

I don't care about Brody at all. Do you? How could we? This guy has been turned good guy and bad guy, babyface and heel, so many times, that I find it impossible to care about his fate, even if it's tied to that of characters that I do still care about, like Saul and Carrie.

I'll admit that there is an element of intrigue that his constant turns bring to every scene he's in. When he was captured by the Iranians in this episode, for example, I wondered whether or not he was about to jettison the whole operation that he had just fought so hard to keep alive. I wondered, but I didn't care.

Maybe this is my fault. Maybe my hopes are so high for this show because it delivered one of the great television seasons of all time with Season 1. It set an incredibly high bar that it hasn't come close to reaching again since somewhere in the middle of its second season.

Maybe this isn't a show that is all that interested in delivering the things that I want from my television. That's fine. If Homeland wants to be a soap opera about Carrie and Brody, or a small screen version of The Hurt Locker or Zero Dark Thirty, more power to it. It's just not for me.

Tierney Sneed over at U.S . News & World Report writes about the show every week, and posited a conspiracy theory in her "Good Night" recap. You can read it here, but the gist of it was that Dar Adal has a side deal with Javadi going, and that's why the Iranians were able to slip in and grab Brody at just the right moment. Yes, Saul's operation is saved for the moment, but Javadi and Adal could pull the rug out from under him at any moment and use, or not use Brody to further their own agenda.

That would be a neat twist, and would explain why Adal whipped out his Blackberry while he was trying to manage expectations with the chief of staff.

I'm all for it if it means taking Brody, a character that I could not care less about, out of his current role at the center of the all of the show's action and theoretical drama.

The guys at Homeland Podcast always seem to find something to enjoy in the show, and my guess is that their show this week will be far more positive than my take was.

Check them out at http://www.homelandpodcast.com
Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here: http://homelandpodcast.com/itunes
Or on your mobile device here: http://homelandpodcast.com/stitcher
Follow the podcast on Twitter @HomelandPodcast
Follow me on Twitter @EthanRenner or @ethanwritescom