The Spy Thriller With the Greatest Season 1 in TV History Has Found New Life on Streaming

If you’ve been scrolling Netflix lately looking for your next binge, you may already know the secret: Homeland is back — and it’s skyrocketing up the charts. The acclaimed spy drama, which ran from 2011 to 2020 on Showtime, quietly dropped all eight seasons onto Netflix, and within days, it became one of the platform’s highest-performing older series.

The series arrives with one of the most unforgettable hooks of modern TV: Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), missing for years and presumed dead, is suddenly rescued from captivity and welcomed home as a hero. CIA officer Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) — paranoid, volatile, and convinced she’s the only one who sees the truth — believes he’s been turned by al-Qaeda. That simple setup sparks one of television’s most gripping cat-and-mouse stories. When Brody’s arc ends in Season 3, the show evolved — repositioning itself again and again, following:

domestic terror threats;
Middle Eastern diplomacy;
Russian interference;
intelligence failures; and
disinformation wars

Across 96 episodes, Homeland never stopped reinventing itself — but one constant remained: Carrie Mathison and Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin)’s relationship was the heart and soul of the show, and they endured through the evolution of the cast, which included the likes of Rupert Friend, Morena Baccarin, Beau Bridges, F. Murray Abraham — and even a young Timothée Chalamet.

Is ‘Homeland’ Worth Watching on Netflix?

In a word: absolutely. The opening seasons remain among the strongest television of the 2010s, and the later arcs grow richer with time. Even going into the fifth season, the show was still delivering. Collider’s review of Season 5 praised Danes for her weighty performance, and the show’s handling of Carrie’s professional and personal evolutions, eventually summing up:

“All of this in concert makes Season 5’s opening trio of episodes an impressive start to what could be a thrilling season. Long-time fans will know better than to completely trust the series, both in knowing what to do with a good story, and also knowing when to stop it. But fans who have stuck with Homeland this long have made our loyalties clear, and with this season and most of the last, we’re finally being rewarded. What comes next may be a question, but it’s a hell of a start.”

Homeland is available to stream now on Netflix.