open/close all folders
Carrie
Carrie Mathison
"Everyone's not me."
Played By: Claire Danes
A bipolar CIA-Agent.- The Ace: Carrie is extremely good at seeing through plans and conspiracies, and has the reputation as one of the best analysts at CIA because of it.
- Action Girl: When things get heated, she knows her combat prowess and how to use firearms.
- Action Survivor: Knows when to run and hide when the odds are against her.
- All There in the Manual: A tie-in prequel novel reveals her full name: Caroline Anne Mathison.
- The Atoner: Her primary desire is to avoid another 9/11, which she failed to predict.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: She is highly intelligent and her bipolar disirder makes her extremely good at connecting dots and seeing patterns which comes in handy at revealing terrorist plans.
- Broken Bird: Very beautiful but tragic.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Deconstructed. Her bunny-ears traits make her brilliant, but not reliable, and while she's capable of working miracles under the right circumstances, she also can't follow proper procedures or properly explain herself to her bosses.
- The Cassandra: Carrie has two traits. The first is that she is right about absolutely everything. The second is that absolutely no one believes her.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Known as one in the CIA.
- Deconstructed Trope as well. Whether or not you're brilliant at your job, you still have to make sense to your boss. Her antics makes her career in the CIA as stable as an egg on a horn.
- Cowboy Cop: Cowgirl Case Officer: She breaks CIA regulations on a customary basis, what leads her superiors to terminate her career, although she hopes for a 10-Minute Retirement.
- Cool Aunt: Is well-liked by her nieces.
- Cool Teacher: …and her students.
- Crazy-Prepared: "My mom taught me to save for a rainy day." She has an "insurance policy" briefcase containing cash and fake identification stashed away, and a detailed escape route to go with it.
- Dark Secret: At least for season 1, she has a hidden case of bipolar disorder. Her doctor sister was giving her prescriptions under the table.
- Dating Catwoman: Despite the fact that she is convinced Brody has been turned, she starts falling for him.
- Deadpan Snarker: During her more sedate moments.
- Defective Detective: In the first season at least. While she does sleep around alot, she doesn't have any significant other in her life and often comes home with only a bottle of wine waiting for her.
- Despair Event Horizon: Two so far. The first is at the end of season 1 when she loses her job and believes herself insane causing her to resort to electroshock therapy. The second is in season 2 after the Beirut arc, when Estes makes clear that she can never get her job back and she attempts suicide.
- Determinator: She has a reputation for never giving up.
- Driven to Suicide: Subverted. She attempted suicide once through OD-ing her meds but threw them up the last minute.
- Fearless Fool: Zigzagged. Sometimes her fearlessness bears fruit, sometimes it doesn't, but never does she escape reprimands from her boss.
- A Father to His Men: Whatever her flaws, she does care deeply for her agents, and is willing to take great risks to protect them.
- Gibbering Genius: If she's off her meds *and* under stress, expect this.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: While she does some morally questionable things at times, she is still very caring and understanding of others and is genuinely concerned with the well-beings of her assets and co-workers. She was forgiving of Brody in spite of what he did to her and was understanding of the struggles he had gone through (trauma, personal loss and manipulations) that made him the way he was, and actually managed to turn him good again.
- Heroic Seductress: She's sexy and she knows it. She often uses her looks and sexuality to get closer to a potential enemy or asset.
- Deconstructed in Season 1 as she tries to do this approach with Brody who she knows was turned by Al-Qaeda to find out more info about him, but it goes awry as she instead falls in love with him and gets heart-broken when he gets her fired.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: Has very little self esteem to begin with, and the Trauma Conga Line she goes through in the second half of season 1 destroys even that.
- Heroic BSoD: When she is fired from her job at the end of Season 1.
- Hero with Bad Publicity:
- When she managed to stop Brody from blowing himself and Walden up but lost her job and got arrested because of it.
- Hauled Before a Senate Subcommittee and then blamed for the attack on Langley.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Often reasons like this when she does more questionable stuff. She even says this word-by-word when Saul questions her having sex with Brody after he almost quit as an undercover due to his stress and family drama.Carrie: He was running of the rails. I Did What I Had to Do.
- Idiot Hero: Sure she is good at connecting the dots, but she is absolutely abysmal at following orders, which is the point of being a government employee. You can count with fingers the episodes in which she doesn't let her emotions cloud her judgment and does what her bosses tell her to. Her recklessness is such that in season 3 Quinn has to shoot her when she is about to burn an ongoing mission.
- Immodest Orgasm: Tells her lover Jonas that the sex gets better when she's off her meds and thus moans louder.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Downplayed with the "Jerk" part. She sometimes gives off snarky comments or angry outbursts and occationally does morally questionable things but she is genuinely concerned with the well-being of others.
- Jumped at the Call: Presumably with Carrie when she became the CIA's point person on investigating Abu Nazir. She followed her intuition to the point where she was seen by other characters as a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
- Knight in Sour Armor: Gets the nickname The Drone Queen for a reason.
- Lady Swears A Lot: Carrie's filthy mouth would make even Nomad of Ghost Recon Wildlands envious. It's like if Tony Montana were a CIA agent.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: In the season 1 finale. A rare plausible case, as it is a result of electroshock therapy. It causes her to forget that she realized a connection between Brody and Abu Nazir, that Brody was calling out the name of Nazir's son in his sleep.
- Like Father, Like Son:
- A very lousy and neglectful parent, just like her mommy.
- Her father Frank is also Bipolar.
- Lima Syndrome: Carrie falls in love with Brody over the course of her surveillance, despite the fact that she believes he's a terrorist.
- Married to the Job: She's not happy about it, but is starting to become resigned. Double Subverted in the season 2 finale when she puts her personal life before her career but the circumstances and events undo this choice.
- Missing Mom: Her mom left after Frank's refusal to deal with his condition became too much for her. Carrie understands why she left, but the lack of any reaching out since then is harder to deal with.
- My Greatest Failure: Two, not seeing 9/11 coming and again with the attack on Langley.
- Only Sane Man: Carrie thinks she is this, and as of Season 1 she turns out to be right about Brody all along, but the twist of it is that she's not psychologically a sane person either.
- The Ophelia: She's a gorgeous woman who suffers from Bipolar Disorder.
- Plucky Girl: Can become this during her episodes.
- Properly Paranoid: In particular when regarding her theory that Brody is a terrorist working for Abu Nazir which only we the audience knew she was right about. Nobody believes her until Brody's confession video is found.
- Really Gets Around: If stuff doesn't work her way one of her first cures is to fuck with it. On the pilot, when her illegal surveillance is discovered and about to be shut down, she tries to do it with Saul. Later she puts on nice clothes and tries to look for a one night stand. In season three, after Carrie figures out she might be made the patsy for the terrorist attack, she's shown during a scene getting into a conversation with a guy about beer while shopping at a grocery store. The next scene shows them both having sex at her house on the stairs. In trying to turn the terrorist's son Aayan, despite his Vague Age and possibility of being underage, Carrie seduces him repeatedly. This makes sense given her bipolar disorder and tendency towards mania - a heightened sex drive and promiscuity are often symptoms of an oncoming bout of mania for people with mood disorders, and promiscuity itself is sometimes a symptom of some mental illnesses.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives a harsh one to a more villainous Brody at the end of "New Car Smell".
- The Redeemer: Only she knew how to redeem Brody when he was being interrogated. In spite of all he did and how he hurt her, she knows he is a troubled soul and tells him that his actions were a result of personal loss, tragedy and manipulations but that he at his core is a good person misguided by said things. After that Brody officially commits a Heel–Face Turn and helps the CIA to catch Nazir.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: She often does things without her superiors approval because she is certain in that she knows she is right on a matter and seeking approval would just slow down the process.
- Serial Home Wrecker: She is no stranger to sleeping with even married men, including David Estes and Nick Brody. Estes even had to divorce his wife after she found out.
- Sex for Solace:
- A way for her to deal with too much stress is to look for one-night stands.
- She also does this to Brody who, after having become an undercover for the CIA, has a nervous breakdown due to stress and family-drama and almost quits his mission. Carrie takes him out to a motel and comforts him. The two then have loud, passionate sex that night. Unknowing to them, Saul managed to track them down and heard the whole incident and, while understanding Carrie had to get their only asset back-on-track, gets concerned about her feelings for Brody again.
- Stalker with a Crush: A rare hero example. She seems to have developed feelings for Brody during her surveillance of him and even approaches him personally after her FISA-warrant for her surveillance expires. While it is part of her investigation of him, there is also some emotions mixed in there.
- The Tease: She plays this to Brody to find out more about him and his connection to Abu Nazir's plan. It causes the two to have sex and even develop feelings for each other.
- Trauma Conga Line: Season one finale has her loosing her job, get arrested and demoted to ECT.
- Too Clever by Half: Carrie is indeed a brilliant analyst, but nearly all the early clues she picked up that she thought pointed to Brody being connected to Abu Nazir, while good theories, turned out to be Red Herrings or merely coincidences. However, in the Season 1 finale, when she is actually 100% correct in her complex theory that Brody will commit a Suicide Bombing, nobody believes her even though she managed to stop the bombing she thinks she was wrong once again when Brody and everyone else tells her how delusional she was, making her question her own sanity even though she was right.
- Unscrupulous Hero: Her intent is to protect the country but her methods are controversial. Her main intent is to protect the U.S. from terrorists. Her methods to accomplish it include blackmailing, OKing a drone strike that killed 40 people, sleeping with possibly underage terrorist sons, and using illegal surveillance.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: In a way. She is perfectly aware of the rotten game she's been playing, and the stake of it, but in the end she still wants to trust in the goodness of her colleagues, and even Brody.
- You Have to Believe Me!: Her attitude when her theories are too complicated to explain.
Maggie
Maggie Mathison
- Played By: Amy Hargreaves
- Alliterative Name: Maggie Mathison
- Genre Savvy: Shows this in "Clarity." Maggie knows Carrie is locked into her life at the CIA and can't be "normal"Maggie: In six weeks, the ECT will wear off, and Saul will come knocking with some new crisis, and the whole crazy orchestra will start playing again.
- The Resenter: "Clarity" has Maggie explain she was jealous of how fearless and special Carrie was when they were kids.
Frank
Frank Mathison
- Played By: James Rebhorn
-
Character Outlives Actor: Confirmed to be alive in the Season 4 premiere despite James Rebhorn's death.- The Character Died with Him: Dies of a stroke during the penultimate episode.
- It Runs in the Family: Like his daughter Carrie, he had bipolar disorder.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Sandwiches (possibly a compulsion in the same way Carrie listens to nothing but jazz).
Frannie
