Summary
Masterful as ever, Slow Horses closes out Season 6 with a little bit of everything the show does well. It’s funny, oddly moving, tense, and surprising, and luckily, it isn’t going away any time soon.
It’s always a pleasure to watch a Slow Horses finale. The show’s masterful all the time, of course, and Season 6 has been no different, but it’s particularly good at closing out a season. Episode 6, “Judgment Day”, is funny, tense, surprising, has real stakes, and sets up the next season admirably. It’s the kind of hour so rich with character-driven little details that you could watch it several times and notice something new with each viewing.
But once is enough for our purposes. After River annoys the Dogs so much that they throw him out of the car at the airfield and leave him to walk back to London on his own, he calls Lamb to fill him in on the latest, including Coe’s death, which kicks everything into gear. We’ve got Lamb’s efforts to cut the problem off at the source, and the rest of the Slow Horses trying to defend themselves against Frank Harkness and his mercenaries when they turn up at Lady Di’s Suffolk safehouse. So, a little bit of something for everyone.
Old Clown, No Tricks
Lamb’s first stop is, naturally, Diana Taverner, whom he asks about Natasha Carrington after deducing her involvement last week. As it turns out, she’s the daughter of an oligarch — what else? — whom Diana thinks is unimportant, but Lamb has correctly determined has been running the entire GRU clean-up operation at the behest of Vasilly Rasnokov.
Diana is, apparently, planning on turning herself in to the Home Secretary after her treasonous actions have put the entire British state at risk, but Lamb won’t let her until she sorts out the small matter of all his joes getting killed. So, he heads off to antagonise Natasha’s security team at her daughter’s birthday party, while Diana confronts Cantor at a restaurant to pretend that Lamb is on to them and a quick getaway is required.
The party scenes are hysterical. Lamb makes the most of it by tucking into the buffet and getting involved in the games, but he also sells Natasha on the idea of offering Russia the “double agent mastermind” behind the whole enterprise. Of course, there isn’t one. But that doesn’t mean that one can’t be made to fit the bill, which is what Lady Di is doing with Cantor. Instead of giving Vassily Sid Baker, he can have Cantor instead.
A Bad Day At the Beach
A good chunk of “Judgment Day” takes place on the Suffolk coast, where Frank and his mercenaries descend on Diana’s holiday home shortly after River’s arrival, prompting a protracted action sequence in which the Slow Horses, plus Moira, Emma Flyte, and hilariously Reece Nesmith, fight back with Molotov cocktails, handguns, and eventually a harpoon.
The fact that Season 6 of Slow Horses was adapting two novels at once kind of spoils this sequence for those in the know, since it’s obvious that if someone has to die, it has to be Emma, who, like Coe, died in Joe Country. And so it is here. She manages to save Roddy, Reece, and Shirley, but ends up being shot by Frank. She’s at least able to take down one of the attackers, and Reece skewers the other with a harpoon, leaving only Frank alive.
While this is happening, Jane arrives after having glued her face back together in a public toilet, so she’s understandably not in the best of moods. She shoots Louisa — nonfatally, it turns out, but it’s touch and go — and almost kills River before Frank, sat grumpily at the kitchen table, shoots her in the head as she’s coming down the stairs.
Like Father
By this point, Frank, wounded, has been stood down. Lamb managed to frighten a kidnapped Cantor into calling him off, and he listened, leaving the others alive at the beach. He and River sit at the table and have a reflective chat about whether he could have been a normal dad before a helicopter full of Dogs arrives, since Lamb also called Diana and told her to send backup.
River can’t bring himself to shoot his father, so Frank once again escapes. Maybe he’ll show up again in a subsequent season. For now, he’s the least of River’s concerns. Cantor, meanwhile, is handed over to the Russians, so presumably as far as Vassily is concerned, this particular debt has been settled.
See You Next Time
Lady Di does go to see the Home Secretary after all, but not to confess to any wrongdoing. Instead, she sells out Peter Judd, and even takes a little swipe at Oliver Nash for good measure. Once again, she has landed on her feet.
The Slow Horses, meanwhile, convene in a church to honour the dead, joined by an alive but injured Louisa, who still has no interest in coming back. They drink in Coe’s memory, though curiously not in Flyte’s, perhaps because she wasn’t an official part of the gang. This scene is wonderfully awkward. It concludes with Catherine passing on a message to River from his grandfather’s neighbour, who’s worried about a light being left on…
Naturally, River rushes home in anticipation of a warm welcome, but he gets much more than he bargained for. Sid is there, of course, but so is a hunk of metal on the draining board that he picks up and puts to one side. And then he takes a turn. The hand he touched it with begins to bother him, and he eventually collapses, breathless, and seems to die.
We’ll see you next season.
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