Carrie Mathison will be living life as a normal single mother in Europe when the new season of Homeland begins.

The fifth season of the hit show, starring Claire Danes as the bipolar CIA agent Carrie, is to be set two-and-a-half years after the end of season four. Carrie has quit the CIA and is living in Berlin with her daughter.

Claire told E! News: “I think the idea is that she’s left the CIA, she’s utterly disenchanted and isolated, and during those intervening years, she’s acquired an actual life, which she’s maybe never had before.

Claire Danes as Carrie in Homeland (Showtime)
Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison in Homeland (Showtime)

“That will be interesting, to see her in that context, to be in a relationship, to actually be committed to her child, to have friends. We really have never seen her be relatively normal and social. I mean, I’m sure that will be completely ruined two episodes in!”

At the end of season four Carrie shared a kiss with fellow agent Quinn (Rupert Friend). So could a new romance be on the cards in the series set so long afterwards?

Showrunner Meredith Stiehm said: “We debate this a lot. It’s very split in the writers’ room on whether or not that’s a good idea.

“I really advocate it because I felt there was something in the air between them from the beginning, and then three years go by and there’s so much they’ve done together and have been through together, and I believe that kind of stuff leads to a closeness that you don’t have with other people, so it felt inevitable to me.”