Mirov makes a televised address in which he plays the cockpit recording, proving that President Warner's helicopter was not shot down.
The episode was directed by executive producer Lesli Linka Glatter and written by series co-creators Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon.
Although most of the season was shot in Morocco, production had to be moved to Los Angeles for this episode due to logistical issues.
[1] Gansa described the internal tension when crafting the finale: "The conversations got intense about how far Carrie would go and how far she wouldn’t go.. everyone — cast members, directors, writers — was in a froth….
24 hours before the finale was shot, Gansa, along with Claire Danes, settled on the idea of Carrie's authoring of a book denouncing the United States.
[3] "Prisoners of War" received universal acclaim from critics, who praised its direction, performances (particularly those of Danes and Patinkin), and satisfying conclusion of the series' story.
[4] Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair wrote "I found something strangely moving about the way Homeland closed, its poetic ambivalence serving as a neat and satisfying representation of its most worrisome idea: that this will never end", and continued "What worked so well about Prisoners of War, I think, is how it stripped away some of the show’s brittle context and compacted itself into a character study".
He continued "writer Alex Gansa and director Lesli Linka Glatter pulled off the rare trick of resolving almost a decade’s worth of storylines and relationships in a manner as unpredictable as it was completely satisfying".
[8] For the 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards, Lesli Linka Glatter received a nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for this episode.
[9] For the 73rd Directors Guild of America Awards, Glatter won for Outstanding Directing – Drama Series for this episode.