Showtime’s Homeland has always drawn from real-world events to inform its counter-terrorism narrative, though Season 5's efforts to shift focus from Middle-Eastern countries to Europe grew especially topical in the wake of 2015's Paris attacks. Now, Season 6 producers explain that the New York relocation will shy away from terrorist acts or cells altogether, instead focusing on “do-it-yourself” threats.

Where the climax of Homeland Season 5 saw the threat of Berlin terror attacks taking place within weeks of November 2015 strikes on Paris, France, Homeland producer Alex Gansa claims that Season 6 shouldn’t run the risk of such topical parallels in its stateside move. Talking to Entertainment Weekly, the former 24 writer says Season 6 will focus more on isolated radicalization than any organized group, or attack:

Last season, world events tragically caught up to the story we were telling. We knew we were going to New York and back to the United States. And didn’t want to dramatize any threats to the United States — and to New York specifically — that don’t actually exist. That was our first karmic principle this year. We’re not going to posit that there are vast ISIS or Al Qaeda cells or networks in the United States like there are in Europe, because according to all our intelligence officers, there aren’t any.

The threat we’re facing right now are these do-it-yourself self-radicalized individuals — and that’s a very different risk than another plot like 9/11. So we made a very conscious choice to not tell a ‘New York threatened by suitcase nuclear bomb’ story. We just weren’t going to do that. The thriller exists in a much more psychological way this year, and we’re curious to see how people respond to it.

Perhaps not unironically, Season 5 also derived its hacking focus from existing threats of “the Islamic State, Vladimir Putin, and what’s happening in Ukraine,” as well as news of Edward Snowden, while Season 6 will feature the divergence of a female President-Elect starting to take power.

In the meantime, you can check out the first Homeland Season 6 trailers below, and stay tuned for the January 15 premiere.

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