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This recap contains spoilers for Homeland Season 6,Complete Series Archives episode 3, "The Covenant." Refresh your memory with our recap of episode 602 here.

The third episode of HomelandSeason 6, "The Covenant," made the first two episodes look like they were operating at a positively breakneck pace by comparison.

Pieces are moving into place to launch the season's plot, but so far, not much is happening. By episode three, shouldn't we have launched already?

Redemption

In what is no surprise, the judge in Sekou's (J. Mallory McCree) case is none too happy with Carrie (Claire Danes) defying her order to leave Saad Masoud (Leo Manzari) alone, which means Sekou's plea deal is now off the table and they're headed to trial.

But Carrie calls in a favor from a friend, Roger (Ian Kahn), and gets a recording of a call between Conlin (Dominic Fumusa) and Masoud in which Conlin makes it pretty obvious he's going to frame Sekou for something. She tells Conlin to drop the charges or she's taking the recording to the attorney general.

Which... seemingly wraps up Sekou's storyline? This being Homeland,there will probably end up being more to it than that, but the storyline wraps up so abruptly -- with Carrie walking out of Conlin's office with a slight smile on her face -- that it's hard to tell if it's going anywhere else.

Revenge

In a slightly more interesting plot, Quinn (Rupert Friend) is having nightmares now that he's seen the video of himself being tortured and poisoned. He's also extremely paranoid -- but you know what they say: "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you."

Quinn suspects there's someone watching Carrie's apartment from across the street and he takes it upon himself to start acting as guard dog. In order to get a gun, he exacts some extremely satisfying revenge on the dirtbag who robbed him in the first episode, but now he's a paranoid, PTSD-suffering torture survivor with a gun, living in the basement of an apartment with a young girl.

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That should end well. No, we don't think Homelandis going to kill Franny or something, but... let's just say Quinn is an unstable guy right now and a loaded weapon is probably the last thing he should be carrying around.

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Reconnaisance

In easily the most interesting storyline of Season 6 -- seriously, can Carrie and Quinn just figure out a way to get back to Saul (Mandy Patinkin) and Dar (F. Murray Abraham), please? -- Saul goes to Abu Dhabi to question Iranian bagman Farhad Nafisi (Bernard White).

Citing a plane that Nafisi was on that flew from Iran to (eventually) North Korea, Saul believes the Iranians may be developing nuclear weapons with the North Koreans after negotiating with the U.S. not to. But Saul isn't 100 percent convinced, based on the evidence they have.

That doesn't stop Dar from telling President-elect Keane (Elizabeth Marvel) that Saul has found "conclusive" evidence, recommending the U.S. institute immediate sanctions on Iran for violating the nuclear deal.

Luckily, Keane knows better than to not at least run this all by Carrie and Carrie tells her that she needs to double-check Saul's report, not simply take Dar's word for it, and also reach out to the current president to at least coordinate their thoughts.

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Dar eavesdrops on all of this, of course, because he's a sneaky SOB who actually bugged the president-elect.

Saul, meanwhile, uses a trip to visit his sister in the West Bank as cover to sneak off in the dead of night with a Palestinian police officer. We aren't made privy to what he's up to just yet, but Saul has definitely gone a little rogue on his trip to the United Arab Emirates.

What does this all boil down to? Honestly... not much, so far.

Homelandhas us champing at the bit for them to get to the good stuff this season. We don't know what that is, exactly -- the show is playing things pretty close to the vest.

Here's hoping they start cluing us in sooner rather than later -- we can't take many more of these disjointed, wheel-spinning episodes.

Homelandairs Sundays at 9 p.m. on Showtime.

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