Season 8

Complete listed story — includes the ending

1. Deception Indicated

Following her release from captivity in Russia, Carrie recovers at a hospital in Germany. Her poor performance on a polygraph test stirs concern among CIA officials that she may have betrayed her country during her months in captivity, most of which she cannot remember. Saul leads the U.S. effort to end the war in Afghanistan, but negotiations collapse when Vice President Abdul Qadir G'ulom refuses the proposed terms. Saul recruits Carrie to join him in Kabul to help salvage peace talks. Carrie learns that one of her former assets was executed by the Taliban on treason charges, and begins to worry about what she may have revealed during her captivity. Her concerns are exacerbated when Kabul station chief Mike Dunne confirms that Russia shares information with the Taliban. The next day, on her way to meet G'ulom, Carrie sees Yevgeny Gromov leave G'ulom's office.

2. Catch and Release

Carrie receives an anonymous tip regarding Samira Noori, an activist against G'ulom's regime whose husband died in a car bombing likely intended for her. Carrie searches Samira's apartment and finds evidence Samira collected on G'ulom's embezzlement of military funds. She uses this to leverage G'ulom to reverse his stance and release 1,000 Taliban prisoners per the peace deal. Carrie is later met by Yevgeny, who reveals himself as the source of the anonymous tip. Max intercepts Taliban communications, which capture now-leader Haissam Haqqani expressing his interest in ending the war; Saul sees an opportunity to negotiate with Haqqani. Tasneem Qureishi, now the head of the ISI, resolves to disrupt Saul's negotiations. During Saul's planned meeting with Haqqani in Peshawar, the ISI ambush Haqqani's convoy. Saul is captured and brought to Haqqani.

3. False Friends

Saul convinces Haqqani that the ISI was responsible for the ambush of his convoy and that a traitor in Haqqani's camp must have leaked information about the meeting. Haqqani deduces that his last living son, Jalal, betrayed him to Tasneem because he is opposed to the peace talks. Haqqani exiles Jalal from their household and agrees to the terms of the peace deal. Jalal is picked up by Tasneem. Carrie agrees to a meeting with Yevgeny, which Mike uses to test her allegiance, but Yevgeny arranges to meet her at a location where the CIA is unable to listen in on their conversation. He says he wants to renew a relationship they developed in Moscow, of which she has no memory; he apologizes for leaving Carrie alone in the asylum and tells her he later saved her life by preventing her from committing suicide. He says they became close and, as proof, reveals that Carrie told him she once considered drowning Franny. Carrie tells Mike it is unclear whether Yevgeny can be recruited as a CIA asset, but she should stay in Kabul to find out.

4. Chalk One Up

Carrie learns Mike has a recording of her meeting with Yevgeny that agents are trying to decipher. She is taken to Bagram Airfield, where Saul tells her President Warner is arriving in Kabul to announce the end of the war in person and wants to speak to her; on arriving, Warner thanks her for her service, referring to her ordeal in Moscow, and says he wants to give her a position in the White House on their return to Washington. He departs for Combat Outpost Steedley, where Max is stationed, to make the announcement there alongside Afghan President Daoud. Meanwhile, Carrie saves Samira from being kidnapped by her Taliban brother-in-law, who intends to forcibly marry her after her husband's death. On its way back from the military outpost, the helicopter carrying Warner and Daoud disappears off the CIA's radar; its wreckage is discovered in a forest by the crew of an escort helicopter, who spot Taliban soldiers in the area and open fire. In response, the Taliban shoot down the second helicopter with an RPG blast.

5. Chalk Two Down

Troops from Combat Outpost Steedley, accompanied by Max, arrive at the site of the helicopter crash and confirm that Presidents Warner and Daoud have both been killed. General G'ulom inherits the Afghan presidency and unilaterally declares martial law, ordering his army to apprehend Haqqani, whom he blames for the presidents' deaths. Saul warns Haqqani, believing him to be innocent, but Haqqani is unable to flee Kabul. Carrie learns that Warner's helicopter was switched at the last minute, but determines that it was a routine swap, leading her to speculate that the crash of the helicopter the presidents were in may have been an accident. A massive Taliban attack risks overwhelming the U.S. troops; on Wellington's recommendation, Vice President Benjamin Hayes orders the site abandoned and bombed to avoid having the President's body fall into Taliban hands. Carrie contacts Max and tells him he first has to retrieve the helicopter's flight recorder so the cause of the crash can be determined; Max succeeds, but the entire squad is killed by the Taliban and he is forced to surrender.

6. Two Minutes

The Taliban fighter who captured Max holds him prisoner and sells off the contents of his backpack, including the flight recorder. Carrie asks Yevgeny to use his Taliban contacts to help locate Max, and she discreetly disables the CIA's electronic surveillance of the region for two minutes to allow him to do so. President G'ulom threatens to execute 300 Taliban prisoners if Haqqani does not surrender, and he manipulates the inexperienced Hayes, now President, into agreeing with his strongman tactics. Haqqani decides to surrender to the U.S. in hopes of obtaining a fair trial and shows up at the embassy. Mike informs Saul that the recording of Carrie's earlier conversation with Yevgeny proves she lied about the nature of her relationship with him, and he is concerned that she may have unwittingly helped Yevgeny assassinate President Warner. Saul confronts Carrie and says he is sending her back to Germany to continue her treatment, but Carrie slips away before boarding her plane and is picked up on the tarmac by Yevgeny.

7. F**ker Shot Me

Saul turns Haqqani over to G'ulom, who releases his Taliban prisoners. President Hayes, wanting to be seen to be avenging Warner's death, refuses to allow Saul to release a classified recording that would prove Haqqani's innocence. Yevgeny helps Carrie find Max, who tells her the flight recorder was taken to nearby Kohat, but he is then removed to a different location. Carrie and Yevgeny follow him to the second location; Carrie calls Mike to request a special ops team to extract Max, but decides to go in herself when they fail to arrive. She sees Haqqani's son, Jalal, standing behind a camera while Jalal's men force Max into an orange jumpsuit; Yevgeny stops her from intervening. With Haqqani's trial approaching, Saul convinces Tasneem to help him prove Haqqani's innocence to avoid bloodshed. They persuade the presiding judge in the case to grant a continuance, but she is replaced on the day of the trial, in which Haqqani is summarily found guilty and sentenced to death.

8. Threnody(s)

Jalal threatens to execute Max if Haqqani dies. President Hayes requests and obtains a 24-hour stay of Haqqani's execution from G'ulom so that an attempt can be made to rescue Max first, but John Zabel, his hawkish new foreign policy advisor, convinces Hayes to reverse course. Haqqani is executed and Carrie sees Jalal shoot Max. Jalal attends a Taliban leadership council meeting in Miranshah, Pakistan and sways the other participants to support him by making a speech in which he falsely claims to have shot down both American helicopters. Zabel obtains a video of Jalal's speech and uses it to persuade Hayes to threaten Pakistan: if it does not arrest Jalal and turn him over, U.S. forces will come to get him. Saul arrives with a special ops team to retrieve Max's body; Carrie informs him that Max gave her the flight recorder's location, and he says he will work with her to find it. After the special ops team tries to arrest her despite Saul's intervention, Carrie leaves with Yevgeny.

9. In Full Flight

Pakistan begins moving its mobile nuclear arsenal towards the Afghan border in response to the United States' threats. Tasneem attempts to convince Jalal to go into hiding, but Jalal, empowered by the bolstered ranks of the Taliban, refuses. Tasneem decides that the ISI's best course of action is to protect Jalal. Carrie and Yevgeny search bazaars in Kohat looking for the flight recorder, while evading a CIA search team. Carrie dupes her young coworker Jenna Bragg into giving her the location of the team's safehouse and has Yevgeny direct the local police to apprehend them, giving her time to find the flight recorder. Carrie tracks down the broker in possession of the recorder and buys it from him; Yevgeny arrives, and the two listen to the contents, which confirm that the presidents' helicopter crashed due to mechanical failure. Yevgeny sedates Carrie and has his men confiscate the flight recorder.

10. Designated Driver

Carrie calls Saul to report that the helicopter crash resulted from a mechanical failure, and that the Russians are now in possession of the flight recorder. Saul reaches out to his contacts in Russia, but realizes that they have no interest in trading the item. Carrie is brought to meet Yevgeny, who offers her the flight recorder in exchange for the identity of Saul's deeply-embedded asset in the Kremlin. Carrie then turns herself in at the CIA's Kabul station, where she is arrested and put on a plane back to the U.S. Hoping to de-escalate the rising political tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan, Wellington negotiates the release of the special ops team in Kohat. However, Jalal forces one of his men to carry out a suicide bombing at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where the soldiers' release is taking place.

11. The English Teacher

Back in Washington, Carrie faces nearly a dozen federal charges, but Saul has her released into his custody. Searching for Saul's Russian asset, Carrie tracks down Andrei Kuznetsov, a man Saul had exfiltrated from East Berlin in 1987. Kuznetsov informs her that Saul used red leather books to communicate with him. Flashbacks reveal that Saul's asset is Anna Pomerantseva, a former English teacher for the KGB who volunteered to turn against the Kremlin after her entire class was executed because their classmate, Kuznetsov, defected. In the present, Anna is the GRU's head interpreter, joining them at a United Nations summit. Carrie discovers notes tucked in the bindings of the red leather books in Saul's collection, which correspond to various American intelligence coups. She arranges a meeting with Yevgeny to report her findings, still unable to identify the asset. Yevgeny proposes an alternative way to neutralize the asset: eliminate Saul.

12. Prisoners of War

Carrie admits her deal with Yevgeny to Saul, who refuses to name his asset. Carrie has GRU agents sedate Saul, then flies to the West Bank and tells Saul's sister Dorit that Saul is dead, as a ruse to enact Saul's "legacy plan" to pass his asset onto Carrie in the event of his death. Dorit gives Carrie a USB drive containing a video message from Saul identifying Anna as his asset. Carrie shows it to Yevgeny, who reports it to his superiors at the UN summit. Anna kills herself to avoid capture by the Russians. With the asset's identity in their possession, Russia publicly plays the contents of the flight recorder, successfully averting nuclear war between the U.S. and Pakistan. Two years later, Carrie and Yevgeny live together in Moscow. Saul receives a package containing an advance copy of a book Carrie has written denouncing the U.S. He finds a note in the binding – mirroring Anna's tradecraft – with a note from Moscow indicating how to defeat the Russians' missile defense system. He realizes it is from Carrie, who has become his new Russian asset.