This is a list of characters appearing in the Showtime drama television series Homeland.

Appearances

= Main cast (credited)

= Recurring cast (3+)

= Guest cast (1-2)

Main cast

Recurring cast

Notes

Main characters

The following is a list of series regulars who have appeared in one or more of the series' eight seasons. The characters are listed in the order they were first credited in the series.

Carrie Mathison

Played by Claire Danes, Carrie Mathison is a CIA officer and the series' protagonist. Carrie is an intrepid, fiercely devoted agent who often resorts to underhanded or illegal means of chasing leads. She struggles with bipolar disorder, for which she receives treatment from her sister Maggie, a psychiatrist, and has a longstanding mentor relationship with Saul Berenson. While deployed in Iraq prior to the events of the series, Carrie receives intelligence that leads her to suspect rescued American POW Nicholas Brody of being a terrorist, initiating a long and increasingly personal pursuit that defines her career and personal life.

In season 1, Carrie conducts an unauthorized investigation into Brody, becoming obsessed with him and entering a brief romantic relationship. Though her suspicions are correct, Brody exposes her investigation, costing her job. Carrie prevents Brody's suicide bombing attempt but is led to believe he was innocent, leaving her demoralized and prompting her to undergo electroconvulsive therapy for her bipolar disorder.

In season 2, a confession video implicating Brody brings Carrie back to the CIA. She interrogates and flips him into an asset against al-Qaeda, acting as his handler as their relationship resumes. After being kidnapped by Abu Nazir, Carrie helps facilitate his capture. When Brody is framed for the bombing of the CIA's Langley headquarters, she aids his escape and vows to clear his name.

In season 3, Carrie and Saul orchestrate a plan to turn Iranian official Majid Javadi, the mastermind behind the Langley bombing, by publicly discrediting Carrie and committing her to a psych ward as cover. The operation succeeds, and Brody is brought back to carry out the assassination of a key al-Qaeda figure in Tehran. Carrie convinces him to accept the mission and later reveals she is pregnant with his child. Brody is captured and executed, and Carrie witnesses his public hanging.

In season 4, Carrie becomes CIA station chief in Kabul, leaving her daughter Franny with her sister Maggie. Known as the “Drone Queen,” she later transfers to Islamabad after botching a strike on Taliban leader Haissam Haqqani, and leads efforts in searching for him, going so far as seducing Haqqani's young nephew to use him as an asset. Disillusioned after learning Saul sanctioned a covert deal with Haqqani, Carrie quits the CIA.

In season 5, Carrie lives in Berlin as a security consultant for a nonprofit, with her daughter and boyfriend Jonas. She survives an attempt on her life and learns she was targeted by the Russian government, who have infiltrated the CIA's Berlin station. Carrie later diverts her efforts to rescue Peter Quinn, who suffers a sarin attack by a jihadist cell. Though she stops the jihadist group's planned terror attack in Berlin, Carrie declines to return to the CIA.

In season 6, Carrie works at a New York nonprofit providing legal aid to American Muslims while secretly advising President-elect Elizabeth Keane. She cares for Quinn and loses custody of Franny after Dar Adal manipulates child services. Quinn uncovers a black ops plot against Keane and dies saving her and Carrie. Carrie later regains custody of Franny and briefly serves as a White House advisor before being fired amid Keane's retaliatory purges.

In season 7, Carrie investigates Keane but learns the Russians are destabilizing the U.S. government. After repeatedly endangering Franny, she relinquishes custody to Maggie. Carrie and Saul travel to Russia to extract a major witness; Carrie is captured while diverting Russian authorities and spends months imprisoned without medication. Saul eventually secures her release, leaving her severely impaired.

In season 8, Carrie recovers in Germany with little memory of her captivity before returning to Kabul to assist in Afghan peace negotiations. After a helicopter crash kills U.S. and Afghan presidents Warner and Daoud, Carrie works with Russian agent Yevgeny Gromov to recover evidence that could prevent war. She trades the identity of Saul's longtime Kremlin asset to avert the war and escapes to Russia with Yevgeny. Two years later, Carrie lives in Moscow with Yevgeny, having defected, while secretly operating as Saul's new Russian asset.

Nicholas Brody

Played by Damian Lewis, Nicholas Brody is a former U.S. Marine, the husband of Jessica Brody, and the father of Dana and Chris. Captured by al-Qaeda during a mission in Iraq, he is held as a prisoner of war for eight years, during which he is brutalized and ultimately radicalized by Abu Nazir, who recruits him as a sleeper agent to be sent back to the United States.

In season 1, Brody returns home a national hero but struggles to reintegrate into family life, which is strained by Jessica's affair with his best friend Mike. Secretly working for Nazir, he begins an affair with CIA officer Carrie Mathison, who suspects him of being a terrorist. Brody successfully reaches a secure bunker with Vice President Walden while wearing a suicide vest, but aborts the attack after an emotional phone call from Dana, leaving without raising suspicion.

In season 2, Brody capitalizes on his public image and the Vice President's support to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He continues working for Nazir until the CIA uncovers his role. Carrie persuades him to turn against al-Qaeda, and his intelligence helps prevent a major attack. He is later framed as the perpetrator of the CIA headquarters bombing on 12/12, becoming the most wanted man in America. Carrie helps him flee to Canada, promising to clear his name.

In season 3, Brody resurfaces in Caracas, injured and held by mercenaries with CIA ties, kept addicted to heroin and mentally broken. Saul negotiates his release and, after his recovery, convinces him to carry out an assassination in Tehran to kill IRGC chief Danesh Akbari, enabling Majid Javadi to take his place as a CIA asset. Before leaving, Brody has a final, rejected farewell with Dana. He successfully completes the mission, escapes to a CIA safehouse, and learns from Carrie that she is pregnant with his child. Brody is soon captured by Iranian authorities and executed by public hanging, which Carrie witnesses despite his objections.

Brody briefly reappears in season 4 as a hallucination to Carrie, whose bipolar medication was swapped for a hallucinogen by the ISI. Carrie tearfully embraces who she believes to be Brody, but is in fact ISI colonel Aasar Khan.

Saul Berenson

Played by Mandy Patinkin, Saul Berenson is a veteran CIA intelligence officer, initially serving as Middle East Division Chief. He recruits and mentors Carrie Mathison, forming a close but often strained partnership shaped by his cautious, institutional instincts and her impulsive methods. Deeply committed to his work, Saul's career comes at the cost of his personal life, including a failing marriage and long-standing family estrangements.

In season 1, Saul dismisses Carrie's suspicion that rescued POW Nicholas Brody has been turned by Abu Nazir, though he places her on Brody's debriefing and repeatedly shields her from disciplinary action. He later uncovers her illegal surveillance of Brody and confronts her personal entanglement with him, but grows more convinced by her findings. His marriage struggles in the meantime, with his wife Mira moving to India for work and asking him not to join her.

In season 2, Saul exposes CIA leadership's role in covering up a fatal drone strike and discovers Brody's confession tape, helping form a task force alongside Carrie to use Brody as a double agent. After CIA Director David Estes is killed in the Langley bombing on 12/12, Saul becomes acting director.

In season 3, Saul and Carrie execute a plan to expose Majid Javadi, the Iranian intelligence chief behind the 12/12 attacks, by publicly discrediting Carrie to draw him out. Saul leverages Javadi's past crimes to turn him into a CIA asset and sends him back to Iran. At the same time, Saul clashes with Senator Andrew Lockhart, learns his wife is having an affair, and faces his imminent removal as CIA director. Saul brings a broken, heroin-addicted Brody back from Caracas to carry out a covert mission to assassinate IRGC chief Danesh Akbari and install Javadi in his place. While the operation succeeds geopolitically, Lockhart and Dar Adal undermine Saul by leaking Brody's location, leading to Brody's execution. Despite achieving a strategic breakthrough with Iran, Saul is fired from the CIA and moves into the private sector.

In season 4, Saul, now working in the private sector and living in New York with Mira, travels to Islamabad, where he reconnects with ambassador Martha Boyd. He is later kidnapped by Taliban leader Haissam Haqqani, who uses him as leverage to negotiate a prisoner exchange. Saul later agrees to a covert deal brokered by Dar Adal that spares Haqqani in exchange for Taliban concessions, believing it necessary for long-term stability, while also positioning him to rejoin the CIA as director. Carrie is enraged upon learning about the deal.

In season 5, Saul, divorced from Mira, works as the head of the CIA's European division in Berlin, his bid for director torpedoed by Carrie after she lobbied against him. Though the CIA suffers a leak of documents attesting to its illegal surveillance of German citizens, Saul secretly continues the program after agreeing to shut it down, and begins a relationship with Berlin station chief Allison Carr, unaware she is a Russian mole. After Carrie exposes Allison's betrayal, Saul helps orchestrate her interception and death, narrowly containing the Russian operation.

In season 6, Saul advises President-elect Elizabeth Keane during her transition. He investigates Iran's nuclear compliance through Majid Javadi, but Dar Adal manipulates Javadi into misleading Keane that Iran is contravening their nuclear agreement. Saul and Carrie expose Dar's conspiracy, but after an assassination attempt on Keane, she orders mass arrests of federal employees, including Saul.

In season 7, Saul is released and becomes National Security Advisor, overseeing domestic security crises (including an armed standoff with followers of right-wing provocateur Brett O'Keefe) and uncovering a Russian disinformation campaign undermining Keane's presidency. He and Carrie travel to Moscow to extract Simone Martin, a key Russian witness; Carrie is captured diverting Russian authorities, and Saul later negotiates her release after months of imprisonment.

In season 8, Saul remains National Security Advisor under President Ralph Warner and leads negotiations to end the war in Afghanistan. After Warner's death, Saul's influence wanes under the new administration, but he works with Carrie to prevent war with Pakistan by proving the helicopter crash that killed Warner and the Pakistani president was accidental. When Carrie trades the identity of Saul's longtime Kremlin asset, Anna Pomerantseva, to avert conflict, Anna commits suicide to avoid capture. Two years later, Carrie defects to Moscow, becoming Saul's new asset inside the Kremlin.

Jessica Brody

Played by Morena Baccarin, Jessica Brody is the wife of Nicholas Brody and mother of Dana and Chris. In the eight years her husband is gone and presumed dead, Jessica does not remarry but does engage in a serious relationship with Brody's best friend Mike Faber, which is abruptly ended when Brody returns home. The reunited couple struggle with their marriage. Brody resents Jessica's closeness with Mike, while Jessica, in turn, learns of Brody's affair with Carrie. As Brody's behavior becomes increasingly bizarre, Jessica suspects further infidelity. While Brody is assisting the CIA, Jessica and Mike's relationship is rekindled. Nicholas and Jessica eventually come to a mutual agreement that their marriage cannot continue. Brody is later framed for the bombing of the CIA and disappears; Jessica struggles to keep her family together, with Dana attempting suicide and later changing her last name and moving out of the house.

David Estes

Played by David Harewood, David Estes is the director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center. He has a tense relationship with Carrie, partly due to a past affair with her which led to the end of Estes' marriage. He fires Carrie upon learning of her bipolar disorder and her multiple contraventions of CIA protocols, but later on, he must reinstate her when she is proven to have been right about Brody. Saul discovers that Estes and then-CIA-director Walden ordered a drone strike launched in Abu Nazir's homeland, resulting in the destruction of a nearby school and that his efforts to undermine Carrie were actually an attempt to cover up the incident. Estes makes plans to have Brody assassinated once Abu Nazir is neutralized, and when Saul protests, he threatens Saul's job; Quinn later threatens Estes into calling off the hit on Brody. He is among those killed when a bomb planted by al-Qaeda explodes at the CIA building.

Mike Faber

Played by Diego Klattenhoff, Mike Faber is Nicholas Brody's best friend and Jessica's lover, having served with him in the Marines. While Brody is presumed to be dead as a prisoner-of-war, Mike gets involved in a long-term relationship with Jessica and becomes very attached to her and the Brody family. The relationship is abruptly ended when Brody returns. The Brody family still comes to depend on Mike when they are neglected by Nicholas. Mike and a fellow Marine, Lauder Wakefield, feel that Brody may have had something to do with the murder of Tom Walker and investigate the matter. Saul and Estes talk him down from investigating further, but he eventually confronts Jessica with his theories. Mike and Jessica rekindle their affair while staying under CIA protection. Brody eventually gives Mike his blessing to look after his family after separating from Jessica. Mike and Jessica are seemingly vindicated in their suspicions about Brody when he is publicly framed for the bombing of the CIA's Langley headquarters. In the aftermath, Mike continues to assist Jessica amid the public scrutiny her family faces. Klattenhoff appeared in a limited capacity in season 3 after joining the series The Blacklist as a regular.

Chris Brody

Played by Jackson Pace, Chris Brody is the son of Nicholas and Jessica and younger brother to Dana. Chris is too young to remember Nicholas before he went into service, and struggles to connect with his returned father at times. When his father's behavior becomes more erratic, Chris finds comfort in the familiar presence of Mike Faber.

Dana Brody

Played by Morgan Saylor, Dana Brody is the daughter of Nicholas and Jessica Brody and the older sister of Chris. Intelligent and strong-minded, she is the family member with whom Brody reconnects most easily after his return from captivity, and the only one to whom he openly admits his conversion to Islam. Dana harbors resentment toward her mother over her affair with Mike and becomes increasingly disillusioned with her family's moral compromises.

In season 1, Dana forms a close bond with her father as he struggles to reintegrate into family life. At Carrie Mathison's urging, Dana unknowingly prevents a terrorist attack by calling Brody and emotionally “talking him down” as he prepares to detonate a suicide vest at the State Department, though she remains unaware of what he was about to do.

In season 2, Dana's life unravels after her boyfriend Finn Walden kills a pedestrian in a hit-and-run accident. Overcome with guilt, she wants to report the crime, but Brody blocks her from doing so under pressure from the CIA, deeply alienating her.

In season 3, when Brody is later exposed as having been turned by al-Qaeda, Dana attempts suicide and is hospitalized in a psychiatric facility, where she begins a relationship with fellow patient Leo Carras. Dana runs away with Leo but leaves him after learning he may have been involved in his brother's death. She changes her last name to distance herself from her father, moves out, and drifts into an isolated, precarious life, working menial jobs. Dana sees Brody one final time before his mission to Iran, rejecting his attempt at reconciliation and telling him she never wants to see him again.

William Walden

Played by Jamey Sheridan, William Walden is the Vice President of the United States and a former director of the CIA. Both Brody and Abu Nazir hold him accountable for the drone strike that killed Nazir's son Issa. Walden capitalizes on Brody's political value following his return from captivity, offering him a seat in the House of Representatives in a special election. Not long after Brody is elected to Congress, Walden launches his own presidential bid and asks Brody to be his running mate. Walden is killed during a meeting with Brody when Nazir's associates tamper with his pacemaker. Brody agrees to provide the pacemaker's serial number for Nazir in exchange for releasing Carrie as his hostage. In Walden's dying moments, Brody finally disavows him in person and refuses to save him.

Virgil Piotrowski

Played by David Marciano, Virgil Piotrowski is a freelance surveillance expert and former CIA employee. He is one of Carrie's few friends. Carrie often enlists him to help her with surveillance operations, including that of Nicholas Brody's household. He frequently runs operations alongside his younger brother Max, also a freelancer with relatively less field experience but formidable technical skill. In season 2, Saul enlists Virgil to look into CIA operative Peter Quinn, and they learn that he is not an analyst as he claimed, but an assassin working for black-ops specialist Dar Adal.

Virgil does not appear in the series past season 3, with Max largely taking over his narrative function.

Abu Nazir

Played by Navid Negahban, Abu Nazir is a high-ranking operative, possibly the operational leader, of al-Qaeda. Nazir oversees the captivity of prisoners of war Nicholas Brody and Tom Walker, and over a period of years is able to groom them both to turn on the U.S. and align with al-Qaeda. Issa, Nazir's son, is killed by a CIA-sanctioned drone strike. The incident is pivotal in shifting the allegiance of Brody, and also leads Nazir to swear revenge on the CIA and its director. He sends Brody and Walker back to the U.S. with a plot to kill Vice President Walden and many other officials, but it is thwarted by the efforts of Carrie Mathison.

Brody is captured by the CIA and forced to work with them against al-Qaeda. Nazir then infiltrates the United States himself with a new plan. First, he orchestrates the assassination of Vice President Walden, holding Carrie as a hostage as leverage to force Brody's assistance. He then sacrifices himself (killed by SWAT team), along with his cell (captured by CIA forces), in order to give the appearance that the terror threat has been neutralized. However, Nazir had planted a bomb in Brody's car, and one of his associates detonates the bomb at the CIA's headquarters, killing 219 people and wiping out much of the CIA's infrastructure, and setting up the innocent Brody as the culprit.

Peter Quinn

Played by Rupert Friend, Peter Quinn is a highly skilled black ops soldier working for a clandestine CIA unit led by Dar Adal, who recruited him at age 16. Raised almost entirely within the intelligence apparatus, Quinn is an expert assassin whose life has been defined by deniable missions and moral compromise. Though deeply loyal to the agency and drawn to field work, he is increasingly weary of the violence he carries out. Quinn often serves as a stabilizing presence for Carrie, developing romantic feelings for her despite believing a normal life is unattainable. Little of his personal life is known; he has a son with a Philadelphia police officer, Julia Diaz, who knows him only by the alias “John.”

In season 2, Quinn is introduced as a CIA analyst assigned to lead the Brody task force, initially clashing with Carrie before the two come to respect each other's instincts. Saul later discovers that Quinn is in fact a black ops officer secretly hired by David Estes to assassinate Brody once Abu Nazir is neutralized. Quinn ultimately refuses to carry out the order, recognizing it as politically motivated and unwilling to devastate Carrie. Quinn spends season 3 assisting Carrie and Saul in their mission to find Iranian intelligence head Majid Javadi.