What's next for 'Homeland'?

After suffering the slings, arrows, barbs and -- worse -- dismissal of the critical horde and that horde that hands out awards (though in the case of the Golden Globes, forget about seeking rhyme or reason), "Homeland" ended the third season Sunday night proving all of them wrong. Moving ...and provocative -- or provoking at least this question: Where now? -- the finale was a classic reset.

But first, the obligatory spoiler alert: Don't bother reading on if you want to know nothing.

But to preserve some element of surprise for those who have yet to see, and really, all "Homeland" fans have no choice but to see, we'll proceed here as vaguely as possible. On Sunday night -- besides providing a certain degree of closure that could have worked in a series finale -- "Homeland" gave itself somthing of real value: the promise and prospect of reinvention.

Certainly not a complete reinvention, but one that will now set "Homeland" free of the constraints that bound it -- notably the genesis series "Hatufim," which set the original course and which "Homeland" struggled to free itself from, unsuccessfully, over the second season.

How "Homeland" chooses to reinvent itself in the fourth season will be the great off-season guessing game, and a lively one because there are so many possible options -- all of them involving Carrie and Saul in some permutation. In that regard, "Homeland" gets back to exactly where it wanted to be all along -- or least be where the possibility of a "franchise" series that would last many seasons existed: The Carrie and Saul Show.

The first three seasons, we know now, were essentially close-ended, and if this were British TV, it'd be all over -- three seasons and out. But American TV, usually to its detriment, unspools endlessly into the future, or cleaves itself -- the "CSI" model -- until nothing of the original exists, and whatever made it exciting in the first place becomes some sort of sad ghost image on the screen. "Homeland" last season, or at least part of last season, seemed destined to that fate: unclear where the story was going, other than the fact that it had to go somewhere with Carrie and Brody, it loped messily along.

This season, "Homeland's" creative team decided it had to destroy that story in order to save the series. Last night, mission accomplished. Now, on to the next mission.

(Hope this was all sufficiently vague; now you can watch the finale.)