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The fifth episode of Homeland Season 5 has the show fully committing to its bleakest instincts. With relief-filled good news that brings in solutions to a greater problem, the episode underlines how meaningless survival can be inside a system built on sacrifice.
On the other hand, Berlin faces a looming chemical threat, while personal loyalties collapse under political calculation, showing how quickly justice gives way to damage control when institutions decide survival matters more than truth. Here's what happened in Homeland Season 5, episode 10, and how it raises the stakes for the episodes to come.
What happens in Homeland Season 5 Episode 10?
The tenth episode of Homeland Season 5, titled New Normal opens with grim relief because Peter Quinn is alive. But only enough to survive and suffer. He is still trapped in the glass chamber where he collapsed after being gassed with sarin, filmed by terrorists who see his slow death as content. Homeland makes sure you sit with that discomfort, as Quinn is not treated like a hero here. He is a bargaining chip and a message.
That message detonates across Berlin when Bibi releases the video to the public. The footage of Quinn foaming at the mouth is paired with an ultimatum. Recognize the Islamic State at the U.N. Security Council, or a major European city will be hit with chemical weapons within 24 hours. Berlin immediately feels like the obvious target.
Inside the CIA, chaos takes on a more bureaucratic shape. Saul and Carrie are still convinced Allison Carr has been feeding intel to the Russians for years. Dar Adal remains maddeningly cautious. He acknowledges the evidence but keeps circling the political fallout. If Allison really was a double agent who rose to station chief, the scandal would swallow the agency whole. Dar’s solution is quiet damage control, by reassigning her, burying it and moving on.
Saul tries one last time to force the truth out of Allison. Alone in the interrogation room, he confronts her with the lives he believes she has destroyed. She responds with practiced calm, twisting every accusation back at him. She frames herself as wronged, misunderstood, and even offended by Saul’s anger.
When Saul finally snaps, slamming her against the wall and promising to personally make her future miserable, it is horrifying and heartbreaking. This is a man realizing that the system he devoted his life to may never punish the people who deserve it.
Before that moment can fully register, the Bibi threat takes over everything. Allison, despite the suspicion hanging over her, is brought back into the fold. Dar makes the call. The logic is ruthless and familiar: If she can help stop a chemical attack, the moral mess can wait. Saul is disgusted and Carrie is livid. But Homeland has never pretended that intelligence work is clean.
Carrie and Astrid, Berlin in danger, and the cost of silence
While the CIA debates optics, Carrie and Astrid focus on one thing: Quinn. Carrie is haunted by the video, replaying it obsessively in case he left a clue. Astrid, quieter but just as affected, becomes Carrie’s anchor. For the first time this season, the show lets them truly work together, not as rivals or reflections, but as equals.
Their scenes crackle with unspoken history. Both women loved Quinn in different ways. Both understand the cost of the job. Astrid reminds Carrie that Quinn chose this life, that he never did anything he did not want to do. She also gets the episode’s sharpest line, describing Quinn as stubborn, infuriating, and beautiful as she says,
“Quinn never did anything he didn’t want to. He was a complete pain in the ass that way… Stubborn as a mule. Beautiful, too.”
As Berlin braces for the worst, another ethical fault line opens. Otto Düring’s foundation is representing a man named Faisal, who was previously imprisoned after being illegally surveilled by intelligence agencies. During an interview, Faisal admits he overheard talk of a planned attack in Berlin while in prison. Laura and Jonas are immediately split as Jonas believes they must turn Faisal in. Laura insists that doing so would retraumatize an innocent man and repeat the same abuses that landed him there in the first place.
Otto tries to thread the needle. He calls Saul and asks for assurances. If Faisal comes in voluntarily, he must be treated fairly. Saul agrees and it feels like a rare moment of compromise but it lasts about five minutes. The BND arrests Faisal the moment he leaves the building. German turf, German rules.
At the same time, the CIA director delivers the episode’s bleak thesis: Berlin cannot be warned, not even quietly. Panic, he argues, is exactly what terrorists want. This is the new normal as citizens live with invisible threats so governments can maintain control. Saul is horrified, calling it the biggest threat since 9/11. The director signs off without saying goodbye.
Back at the CIA, Allison steps back into active duty with alarming ease.
How the ending of New Normal shows the absurd normalcy in the face of terror
This is where things start getting a little more solvable. As Carrie watches the video again, she notices the patterned floor beneath Quinn's feet. They then trace the design to a specific artist whose work appears in buildings across Berlin. With over a thousand matches, Carrie resurrects an old CIA algorithm used in Baghdad, cross-referencing the tiles with Bibi’s financial activity. In seconds, the list shrinks to a manageable handful.
While intelligence agencies race against the clock, Bibi’s operation begins to crack from the inside. One of his men discovers an empty atropine injector. Quinn should be dead, but he is not. Realizing someone saved him, Bibi orders everyone to open their hazmat packs, as the traitor must be exposed.
The truth is cruel and familial. Bibi switched the kits himself to protect his cousin Qasim, knowing Qasim had disobeyed orders by helping Quinn. Another man, Zaheer, is left holding the empty pack. Bibi executes him on the spot. The message is clear, that loyalty is conditional and blood ties only go so far.
On the other hand, Carrie and Astrid reach one of the buildings they had identified, and they find something horrifying. They find Zaheer's dead body wrapped in plastic and anxiety and fear build up as they look for Quinn. And just as their belief of him dying worsens, they finally find the chamber.
Carrie collapses against the glass, thinking he has died and just then, Quinn moves a finger. They immediately rush him to the hospital and Carrie and Saul sit beside him. As the episode closes, nothing feels resolved. Allison is back in Dar’s good graces, Berlin is still under threat, Quinn is alive but broken and the system remains intact, for better or worse.
More than comfort, the episode offers clarity. It shows the "new normal" these characters are living in, one where there's survival without safety and truth without justice and a constant grinding question of how much horror becomes acceptable in a society, once people start getting used to it?
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Homeland is available to watch on Prime Video.
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