Homeland‘s sixth season is gambling big on its storyline, which takes place between Election Day and the swearing in of a new president: a woman who will be a cross between Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders, Deadline reports.
At the Television Critics Association summer press tour, executive producer Alex Gansa revealed details of the upcoming season, which premieres January 15, 2017 — just a few days before the real-life swearing in of the next president. The show’s newly elected president will be a woman and a junior senator from New York, where Season 6 is set, but Gansa remarked, “Although she’s a woman, she’s a little Hillary, a little Donald and a little Bernie Sanders.” The new POTUS will have the pragmatism of Hillary, the “progressive agenda” of Bernie, and the outsider-skepticism of Trump.
Hmm. I’m not entirely sure what the show is going for with this political mash-up, which will almost certainly feel irrelevant or at least a little stale by the time the season premieres. Then again, the season will examine how the intelligence community preps a new president in the time between election and inauguration, so maybe the president herself is less important than the characters who will be advising her. Showtime has already renewed Homeland for two additional seasons, so this plot could be part of a long game. We’ll have to wait until January to find out, although the suspense of the real-life election drama kind of overshadows this one. Y’know, just a bit.