'Homeland' returns with its writers in a tight spot

Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison and Mandy Patinkin as Saul Berenson in "Homeland's" new season

At first, says Alex Gansa, his “Homeland” team may not have understood the gravity of the situation they faced coming into the third season, which launches Sunday night at 9 on Showtime.

“But when we convened early this year to start writing,” says the executive producer and showrunner, “we realized how deeply we had painted ourselves into a corner.”

He may be exaggerating slightly here. Not about the corner, which is quite real, but about not fully realizing it at first.

“Homeland” is, after all, one of the smartest shows on television. It’s a hit with critics, who adore it. Last season’s finale drew 2.3 million live viewers, a number that more than doubled once the people using DVRs caught up. It has won Emmy Awards and all in all has established itself as a standout in our current golden age of cable drama.

The “corner” business stems from the ending of season two, wherein a massive car bomb ripped through CIA headquarters, killing its director and scores of other people.

Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), the POW, returning hero and congressman who had just been outed as a murderous traitor, was widely assumed to be behind it.

Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), the CIA agent who fell in love with Brody while trying to expose him, knew he was an unlikely perp. She knew this because she was with him at the time, sharing a private moment in the building. Luckily for them, slipping away alone put them out of the bomb’s range.

In the confused uproar of the aftermath, Carrie helped smuggle Brody out of town and up to the Canadian border, where they said an emotional goodbye.

Flash forward to the start of season three.

“Our central character is the most wanted man on Earth,” says Gansa, which means he needs to stay out of sight to pretty much the rest of the world, including the TV audience and the other “Homeland” characters.

No show anywhere likes the idea of a character this acclaimed and popular — Lewis won an Emmy last year — being off the radar instead of on the air.

And the reason this paints “Homeland” into a corner, Gansa explains, goes beyond Brody’s guilt or innocence.

The Carrie/Brody relationship has become a fulcrum for the series, affecting both the lead characters and, directly or indirectly, those around them.

The power of that relationship “is not something we planned on,” says Gansa. “Neither [executive producer] Howard [Gordon] nor I envisioned that Carrie and Brody would have such an impact on each other’s lives. But eventually the story took on a life of its own.”