{"id":663379,"date":"2026-10-23T19:42:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T19:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/663379\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T19:42:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T19:42:11","slug":"slow-horses-director-on-jack-lowdens-fakeout-death-alternate-ending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/663379\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Slow Horses’ Director on Jack Lowden’s Fakeout Death, Alternate Ending"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers for \u201cSlow Horses<\/a>\u201d Season 6, now streaming on Apple TV<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSlow Horses\u201d Season 6 ended with lots of bangs and a whimper, as a key character appeared to take his last breath. <\/p>\n

\n\tFirst, the body count: Over the course of the season, the Slough House team, led by Gary Oldman\u2019s Jackson Lamb, lost the psychotic yet endearing Coe (played by Tom Brooke) and honorary Slow Horse Emma Flyte (Ruth Bradley), while numerous of their nemeses also came to sticky endings, including two Russian assassins and a couple of British hired hands who found themselves on the same job.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeason 6 also saw the return of Olivia Cooke\u2019s character Sid Baker<\/a>, who was presumed dead after Season 1 (although fans of the book have long been expecting her return), and the blossoming of her romantic relationship with River Cartwright (Jack Lowden<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\n\tBut given \u201cSlow Horses\u201d has yet to showcase one functioning romantic relationship beyond Lamb\u2019s love of fast food, viewers knew better than to expect Baker and Cartwright would get a night of passion let alone a happy ending. As Season 6 director Adam Randall tells Variety below, the actors did shoot a happier ending for the couple, which ultimately wasn\u2019t used.<\/p>\n

\n\tInstead, Cartwright returns to his deceased grandfather\u2019s home thrilled to see that Baker has successfully evaded both the Russian assassins and MI5\u2019s own rabid dogs. As Baker showers upstairs, Cartwright faffs about in the kitchen, debating whether it\u2019s better to woo her with tea or wine, before suddenly collapsing, having been poisoned. The episode ends with him on the floor, struggling to breathe.<\/p>\n

\n\tA teaser for the already-wrapped Season 7, in which Lamb refers to Cartwright as sending a postcard from \u201cthe afterlife,\u201d has fueled rumors that Cartwright has been killed off, especially with Lowden said to be in the running for the next James Bond<\/a>. But as fans of Mick Herron\u2019s book series know by now, things are rarely as they seem where Slough House is involved.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo dissect the explosive last episode, director Adam Randall, who is also returning to direct Season 8, sat down with Variety to talk spoilers, rumors and more.<\/p>\n

\t\tWhat was it like to film those climactic scenes on the beach?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was difficult. Trying to make sense of the geography onscreen was the main thing. It\u2019s all well and good on paper, and then you can never find a location that\u2019s going to fit and make sense in the way that someone\u2019s imagination can. So we needed to rewrite the sequence based on the location. But even then, you get to the location, and it\u2019s still like, \u201cWell, I don\u2019t understand, because surely Frank would just see them over there, and why are they hiding in a pipe over there?\u201d And there\u2019s all these sort of complications that come with it.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo there\u2019s a huge amount of that which was solved with lots of different trickery, and then some VFX. We ended up having to put cliffs in and adding lots of tall grass and things like that, because I just had to sort of make sense as to why they don\u2019t just run off. Why is nobody actually escaping? Why are they stuck there? And actually, Moira falling down that hill and ending up with a sprained ankle, the morning of, or the day before, [we] suddenly came up with that, thinking \u201cI\u2019ve really got to slow them down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tTo slow the Slow Horses down even further\u2026\t<\/p>\n

\n\tExactly.<\/p>\n

\t\tThere were some really beautiful scenes with the camera filming inside the pipe looking out onto the beach. How did you get the cameras in there?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWe created that pipe, so that was another little trick. You\u2019re very, very limited in how you can shoot inside that pipe, because you can only really shoot into it and out of it. It\u2019s very hard to do any coverage in there. The other thing is that the sun is just constantly moving, obviously. So when you\u2019re looking out, the way the light is hitting the beach in front of it, and the way the light is hitting into the pipe, changes so dramatically that it really forces how you\u2019re going to shoot it and when you can shoot it.<\/p>\n

\t\tWas Diana Taverner\u2019s (Kristin Scott Thomas) house real, or was that a set that you trashed?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s a real house. We spent so long trying to find this house, because not only did we need a house, but we needed the whole environment around it. So we looked all over the country for that house, and then we did a lot of work to the house. We changed a lot of the interiors. We brought in all our own furniture. We replaced the glass, obviously, so that we could smash it.<\/p>\n

\t\tIt maybe wasn\u2019t the most sensible hiding place for the Slow Horses, given how many windows it has.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt always felt like it was Lamb\u2019s revenge on her for everything she\u2019d done to send them over there, stick the Slow Horses in there. In terms of the glass, it was partly down to finding a good location, and it was partly down to how cinematic we can make it. I remember getting there the first time, and as I\u2019m looking at it, loving the sort of doll\u2019s house [look], because you put all these characters in it, and a lot of our experience in this house is just watching the Slow Horses rip each other apart before anything happens. You know, there\u2019s a version of this story where no one comes, there\u2019s no bullets fired, and they just kill each other anyway because they\u2019re all so frustrated with each other, and so I really love that.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt just felt a great location for a set piece. Sometimes it\u2019s a sort of logic versus cinematic-ness and that\u2019s a struggle.<\/p>\n

\t\tOne of my favorite scenes this season was the Shake Shack scene, where Lamb and Reece (Lenny Rush) manage to escape Frank Harkness (Hugo Weaving) by accusing him of being a child molester. What was that like to film?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was actually one of the harder sequences to film, because it needed to create such a sense of chaos that you completely bought that Lamb and and Reece could just walk out of there. And that relied on not only Gary being brilliant and kicking off, [but] then it was \u201cOK, well, we need more mayhem.\u201d I remember talking to Lenny and saying, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you shout some things out?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLuckily, on that day, a couple of our writers were there, Mark [Denton] and Jonny [Stockwood], and I asked them to write a list of pedophile insults, and I gave them all to Lenny, and I said, \u201cPick your favorites\u201d and he was just launching into them. And then the SAs [supporting artists] who were the people eating in the restaurant, they were just incredible. Gary was going up to them, screaming in their faces, and they were all shouting back. So it was just this sort of slow ramp. You had this lovely, long dialogue scene with two incredible actors, really quiet, and then it was just like, how high can we turn this up? How much mayhem can we cause?<\/p>\n

\t\tAnother standout scene this season was Coe\u2019s death. There has been some discussion about why he would go in solo armed with just a knife to face a Russian agent (Kyle Soller). Were there other ways you considered killing him off?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI don\u2019t know if there were other options. In the original book, which is in a completely different location, he has a conversation with one of the hitmen, and then they have a knife fight. It\u2019s very similar in that way. There was never a question about \u201cWhy would [Coe] follow him in?\u201d Because I think it\u2019s a courageous thing to do. He\u2019s going in to try and stop this villain who\u2019s been hunting them down relentlessly. But I love Coe, and the hardest thing was now the show\u2019s not going to have Coe in it, which just seems such shame. I\u2019m feeling that in Season 8 \u2014 like, I wish Coe was here, because he\u2019s just such an interesting, unique character. I had so much fun with Tom.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen we had the fight with Coe, I had this thought: \u201cWould it be interesting to intercut that with Jack eating a sandwich really slowly?\u201d It felt like quite a \u201cSlow Horses\u201d way of doing it. So rather than doing the sort of \u201cMission Impossible\u201d toilet fight, [while] most of the fight takes place you\u2019re actually with River trying to open a sandwich packet and a packet of crisps. So the edit was doing all of these things, but still trying to make sure that Coe had the ending that he deserves, and I feel really proud of it. Tom was really, really emotional watching it, and was really happy. A lot of the great little gems from it came from Tom. The smile when Jim says, \u201cIs that a push knife?\u201d And I think it was scripted that Coe dies on a toilet, and Tom was like, \u201cPlease don\u2019t let me die on the toilet, please.\u201d So it was like, \u201cOK, fine, we\u2019ll find another spot for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tThere\u2019s also been some discussion about the scene in the church, where the surviving Slow Horses raise a drink to Coe and not to Flyte or their other dead colleagues, and then Lamb takes a longer drink. Was Lamb\u2019s a subliminal reference to Flyte or are fans reading into that too much?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tOriginally in the script they did a drink for every fallen Horse, and it went on for ages. In fact, we didn\u2019t even film it. We got there, and it was like, \u201cWhat, Lamb\u2019s going to have like eight shots?\u201d It just felt sort of ridiculous. And then we said, it\u2019s not about naming any of them. It\u2019s just about: This is a drink, and it was actually in post-production where it felt like Shirley should say \u201cFor Coe,\u201d because she had built up this relationship with Coe. But they\u2019re not specifying \u201cthis one\u2019s for Coe,\u201d they\u2019re doing it for everyone that\u2019s fallen. I mean, that\u2019s what they say [in the scene]. And then Lamb\u2019s obviously experienced more of that than the rest of them. He\u2019s had a lot of death \u2014 and liked the whiskey a lot.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Flyte dying was horrible as well, because she\u2019s such a great character, and Ruth is so brilliant to work with. And just in terms of the characters, I think it would have a massive impact, especially on Roddy.<\/p>\n

\t\tSpeaking of deaths, the season ends with Cartwright collapsing because of the nerve agent he\u2019d touched on the crowbar earlier. There\u2019s been a lot of speculation online he\u2019s been killed off because Jack has been cast as James Bond, but there are photos on social media of him shooting Season 8 in London just last week. And we know in the books River comes back. Can you talk about that at all?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI don\u2019t know. I mean, it\u2019s difficult to, isn\u2019t it, because it\u2019s supposed to be \u2014 it\u2019s frustrating. I mean, I was there shooting [last week], it was in Walthamstow, and we\u2019re out everywhere shooting. I was amazed no one saw Olivia when we were shooting Season 6, but we got away with that. But this one is much more public. We\u2019re really out and about, and we\u2019re about to go even wider out in London, so there\u2019ll be a lot more spottings of Jack. So I don\u2019t think we can keep that secret.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat I can say is that we had two endings [for Season 6], and one of them was happy, and it was a really lovely ending. Had it been the end of the series, it would have been just a magical end for River\u2019s journey. It was almost like Spielberg-ian, the happy version of it. And we played with that for a while, but we knew, from the book and the next story to tell in Season 7, that we needed the other version of it. It\u2019s difficult because it\u2019s such a dark season and there\u2019s so much death and tragedy in it then to end in such a dark way. I just was like, I hope we don\u2019t lose everybody, really.<\/p>\n

\t\tCan you comment about Jack and Bond?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI only genuinely know what everybody else knows, which is that he\u2019d be great, and that I think he\u2019s in contention, but I don\u2019t really know, and he can\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n

\t\tAre you allowed to say which other characters we might see in Season 8?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI don\u2019t know. In the books, you know that there are new Slow Horses. You know, Lech [Wicinski] and Ashley [Khan] and whatever. So there are recurring characters. There are characters that are story-specific. So I\u2019ve got no idea what I\u2019m allowed to say. Probably nothing.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis interview has been edited and condensed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers for \u201cSlow Horses\u201d Season 6, now streaming on Apple TV. \u201cSlow…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[3288,93,61,60,31351,199542,282],"class_list":["post-663379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-apple-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jack-lowden","tag-slow-horses","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}