High Ratings and Emmy Wins Lead to Homeland Renewal
image via Showtime
News recently broke through TVLine that Showtime has announced their third season pickup of hit series Homeland. The pickup will be for a 12 episode season for the series. The news of a third season order is great, but hardly surprising considering both the huge Emmy night recently—wins for Damian Lewis, Claire Danes, and the series—as well as a series high rating for the most recent episode. Last Sunday’s episode brought in 1.75 million viewers for the network.
In a statement addressing the pickup, Showtime president David Nevins explained:
The Emmy wins for Homeland have certainly set the stage for a great second season. The writers, cast and crew of [the series] continue to create a remarkably entertaining and suspenseful roller coaster ride, growing audiences week after week. We can’t wait for our viewers to experience what unfolds through the rest of season two.
The series is definitely hitting high notes this season, packing a ton of character drama and huge moves into only a handful of episodes. The fact that I don’t know where the show will go throughout the rest of this season makes me very interested in what the writers will have in mind for a season three. The only reservation I have about this as a fan of the show is that the increasing ratings success will cause them to change things up and pull a Dexter by slowing down reveals in exchange for a sustainable narrative that they can draw out to season far into the future. With the critical buzz of the show though I’m hoping that they will understand the importance of keeping up the pace and quality, even if it means they can’t sustain a fifty, sixty, or seventy episode run.
Completely agree. Some shows need to burn brightly quickly, and then be done. It really never works when a story gets stretched to fill an arbitrary season or episode count.