I was underwhelmed by the writing. I did think they were going to kill Brody off, as tbh, I couldn't think what the writers could do with him, but it could have been handled better and in a less cliched way - the scenes in the safe house before Brody is captured were pure soap opera, especially the exchanges about the baby and the future.
And I hated the fact that we are clearly supposed to think that Javadi is right, that Carrie has been motivated all along by her love for Brody, not the fact that she's a brilliant CIA agent. I think it's pretty anti-feminist. Carrie is surrounded by brilliant careerist male CIA types, all motivated by desires for political power/ world peace/ what have you, but Ickle Carrie did it because she fell for a cute redhead terrorist....? Please.
I assume we got all those nasty close ups of Brodie's last moments so that there were no suspicions Javadi substituted a lookalike or something, but it did look awfully fake. Being hanged like that, hoisted up rather than being thrown down off something so the neck breaks immediately, would have been an appalling matter of slow suffocation, not anywhere near so composed..
And it seems as if a lot of threads were just dropped. Quinn's burnout after shooting the child and having to take the blame for Javadi's two murders, Dana and the rest of the Brodies, whose side Dar Adal is really on, Farah, why Carrie has managed to remain highly functional off her meds and unwillingly pregnant etc etc.....?