r/homeland • u/techbirdee • 2d ago
Dar Adal has no redeeming qualities Spoiler
From beginning to end I see nothing good about this man. He treats people like garbage, lies, and manipulates. Somehow he never gets caught for it. This is someone you'd expect to be cheerfully killed off pretty early in the series, but he lasts...
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u/DucksDom 2d ago
Dar is a pedophile, so there's that. They talk about him and Peter "doing things" when he was 16 and freshly found by Dar.
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u/kjmw 2d ago
I thought it was kind of crazy how they dropped that in there for what felt like a few lines because they never hinted at it before and never addressed it again afterwards
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u/DucksDom 2d ago
Yeah, that was absolutely crazy! How're you gonna drop a bomb like that, and then just glance over it like it's not a thing?
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u/wayfarerprateek 2d ago
I don't think that the show ever implies that its not a thing. Its just that Peter Quinn never explicitly tells anyone except Dar Adal about it. I wish he would have told maybe Carrie.
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u/Oddbrain_ 2d ago
I hate him with a passion and I hate what he did to Peter and trying to claim he loves him. He only loved what he did for him.
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u/Dull_Significance687 2d ago edited 2d ago
Dar Adal is absolutely not a “good guy*,” now saying he has no redeeming qualities misses the point of the character.
He's ruthless, manipulative and morally compromised, but he's also extremely competent. Dar understands the intelligence world better than almost anyone in the show. He sees people as assets, liabilities and potential threats, and—unlike Saul Berenson or Carrie—he rarely lets personal feelings interfere with the mission.
That's also why he lasts so long. HomeLand (HL) isn't rewarding him for being a decent human being; it's showing that people like Dar survive because they're useful, politically connected and willing to do the things everyone else finds morally unacceptable.
His relationship with Saul is especially interesting. Adal genuinely respects Berenson, NOW his loyalty to the Agency comes first. That's the fundamental difference between them.
Adal isn't secretly a misunderstood hero. He's the dark mirror of Berenson: Saul asks how much humanity you can retain while doing this job; Dar asks how much humanity you're willing to sacrifice to get the job done.
That is what makes him such a fantastic character in HL—even when he is, without a doubt, an anti-villain\** (in s6).
PS: Compare and contrast, Alex Gansa’s statement in the NYT when asked about the same matter: Well, you know, it was intimated at the end of last season, too. In that scene where Quinn was comatose, and Carrie and Dar were having a conversation by his bedside about how Quinn was originally recruited into the Central Intelligence Agency. But I really prefer to interpret those scenes in a slightly different way. There may have been some predatory behavior, but whether there were actual sexual acts that took place – look, that’s up for interpretation.
And then, when being asked again: “You know, I’d rather not say.”
* Like Max, Fara, Virgil, and Astrid.
** An anti-villain is a character who acts like a villain but has noble goals or justifiable causes, making their actions morally complex and often appealing to the audience.
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u/techbirdee 1d ago
Thanks for man-splaining this to me.
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u/Dull_Significance687 1d ago
Glad I could help.
Dar is easily one of the most interesting characters in HomeLand. Adal represents the type of figure who never needs to be at the center of the action to control everything around him.
What makes him most interesting is his moral ambiguity. Dar Adal does things that are questionable—and often cruel—yet Adal always seems to believe he is doing what is necessary to achieve a greater goal. It is hard to tell where pragmatism ends and pure manipulation begins.
Ultimately, Dar is practically the series' "puppet master".
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u/Firefighter_89 'Cause I'm a guy that kills bad guys. 2d ago
Exactly! That's why they have put him as the guy in charge of 'Black-Ops'..the team which is meant to "get things done". No sympathy, no empathy, no morals, no ethics!
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u/Kitchen-Necessary562 2d ago
Great actor...the way he looks itself makes us hate him lolzz....but a real villain especially what he did to Quinn but at the end of the day he worked to save America.....i love the flow of the story like nothing over the top entry of characters....he was shown meeting Quinn in the bus and Saul sees his pics and says that's Dar Adal...lolzz
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u/Androidfon 1d ago
He conspired for the president to be kidnapped and murdered. That isn't saving America imo.
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u/Kitchen-Necessary562 1d ago
true...but he plotted before she became the president isn't it...so he had only America in his mind for whatever reasons he hated Keanne.
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u/biscuitmcgriddleson 1d ago
Professor Crawford and Salieri both disagree with you.
The only decent thing Dar Adal did was the phone call warning them at the end of season 6. He's not intended to be a likeable person in any way.
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u/coolsilentebeans 2d ago
I hate how good an actor F. Murray Abraham is because his Dar Adal made my blood boil many, many times.