Carrie Anne Mathison, played by actress Claire Danes, is a fictional character and the protagonist of the American television drama/thriller series Homeland on Showtime, created by Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon.

Carrie Anne Mathison was an Arabic language student at Princeton University, where she was recruited into the CIA by veteran officer Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin).

[5] In college, Carrie was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, for which she secretly began taking clozapine supplied by her older sister, Maggie (Amy Hargreaves), a psychiatrist.

[4] As a field operative in Iraq, Carrie infiltrated a prison to meet with an imprisoned CIA asset named Hasan Ibrahim, who claimed that he had information regarding an imminent terrorist attack in the United States.

[4] Ten months after her reassignment, Carrie attends an emergency staff meeting and learns that Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), a U.S. Marine sergeant, has been rescued after eight years in terrorist captivity.

Upon learning of her affair with Brody, Estes — already under pressure by Vice President William Walden (Jamey Sheridan) to find a scapegoat for the bombing — dismisses Carrie from the CIA.

When one of her former CIA assets, Fatima Ali (Clara Khoury), demands to talk with Carrie, Saul and Estes persuade her to fly to Lebanon for a meeting.

After a pursuit by a Lebanese mob, Saul finds a hidden compartment in the satchel that contains a memory card with Brody confessing to the aborted State Department bombing.

[14] The video convinces Estes to let Carrie watch Brody, and to assign a CIA analyst named Peter Quinn (Rupert Friend) to run the operation.

[22] Weeks later, lawyer Paul Franklin (Jason Butler Harner) visits Carrie in the hospital and offers to help her retaliate against the CIA, but she refuses.

Franklin nevertheless secures her release and persuades her to meet with Leland Bennett (Martin Donovan), a lawyer representing the Iranian bank that financed the Langley bombing.

Carrie runs a ploy to slip her surveillance and tell FBI Special Agent Hall (Billy Smith), who is assigned to the Brody family detail, to find Dana.

[27] Saul visits Carrie in the hospital and reveals the full scope of the operation: Brody will seek political asylum in Iran and assassinate the leader of the Revolutionary Guard so that Javadi can take his place.

[29] Carrie travels to Tehran to make sure the assassination goes smoothly, and watches as Brody is taken to meet with the head of the Revolutionary Guard, General Deshan Akbari (Houshang Touzie).

Saul assures her that Brody will be safely extracted, but his successor as CIA Director, Senator Andrew Lockhart (Tracy Letts), betrays their location to Javadi, who arranges their capture.

[31] Four months later, Lockhart promotes a heavily pregnant Carrie to Station Chief in Istanbul, but refuses her request to give Brody a star on the CIA Memorial Wall.

[31] Carrie, now CIA Station Chief in Afghanistan, authorizes a drone strike on a Pakistani farmhouse where terrorist Haissam Haqqani (Numan Acar) is in hiding.

[33] Carrie and Quinn meet Jordan Harris (Adam Godley), a former CIA case officer who reveals that Bachman had leaked intelligence and was protected by Lockhart.

In Islamabad, Carrie attempts to turn Haqqani's nephew Aayan Ibrahim (Suraj Sharma), a Pakistani medical student whose family was killed in the drone strike, and who may hold valuable information.

[49] One of the documents concerns an operation she worked on in Baghdad with Allison ten years earlier, and she finds out that Ahmed Nazari (Darwin Shaw), a former asset who had been presumed dead, is still alive.

Carrie then sees a news report showing video of Islamic State terrorists poisoning Quinn with sarin, and threatening to unleash a chemical attack on a major European city in 24 hours.

[59] Saul raises Carrie's spirits by taking her to see Frannie, and asks for her help in setting up a meeting between Keane and Majid Javadi, who claims to have evidence that Adal is manipulating her.

Quinn smuggles Carrie and Keane out of the building in his car and sacrifices his life to save them when a special ops team, answering to Adal, opens fire on them.

Carrie sets up a meeting between Senator Sam Paley (Dylan Baker) and her old FBI contact Dante Allen (Morgan Spector), who has evidence of corruption within the administration.

Dante, Max, and former CIA officer Thomas Anson (James D'Arcy) kidnap Martin and get her to confess her complicity in MacLendon's death, which leads to her testifying in Paley's hearings.

Carrie has her doubts, however, and meets with Saul to discuss the matter; the two of them figure out that Dante is in fact a Russian agent and had orchestrated the entire affair in order to bring down Keane.

Saul persuades Keane to broadcast the code by compromising Twitter servers and violate the privacy of US citizens by tracking who posts confirmations in response to the tweet.

Gromov wants Carrie to film a confession video stating that Martin was a CIA operative and that the US orchestrated everything, while threatening to withhold her medication if she does not cooperate.

Homeland co-creators Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa initially pitched the show to networks with the Carrie Mathison character being a rather straight-laced CIA officer.

[71] For her portrayal of Carrie Mathison in the premiere season of Homeland, Claire Danes received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.