{"id":637733,"date":"2026-10-22T06:28:28","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T06:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/637733\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T06:28:28","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T06:28:28","slug":"slow-horses-season-6-episode-6-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/637733\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Slow Horses’ Season 6 Episode 6 Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/p>\n

Masterful as ever,\u00a0Slow Horses\u00a0closes out Season 6 with a little bit of everything the show does well. It\u2019s funny, oddly moving, tense, and surprising, and luckily, it isn\u2019t going away any time soon.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always a pleasure to watch a\u00a0Slow Horses<\/a>\u00a0finale. The show\u2019s masterful all the time, of course, and Season 6 has been no different, but it\u2019s particularly good at closing out a season. Episode 6, \u201cJudgment Day\u201d, is funny, tense, surprising, has real stakes, and sets up the next season admirably. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s death, which kicks everything into gear. We\u2019ve got Lamb\u2019s 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\u2019s Suffolk safehouse. So, a little bit of something for everyone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Old Clown, No Tricks<\/p>\n

Lamb\u2019s first stop is, naturally, Diana Taverner, whom he asks about Natasha Carrington after deducing her involvement last week<\/a>. As it turns out, she\u2019s the daughter of an oligarch \u2014 what else? \u2014 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019t let her until she sorts out the small matter of all his joes getting killed. So, he heads off to antagonise Natasha\u2019s security team at her daughter\u2019s birthday party, while Diana confronts Cantor at a restaurant to pretend that Lamb is on to them and a quick getaway is required.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 \u201cdouble agent mastermind\u201d behind the whole enterprise. Of course, there isn\u2019t one. But that doesn\u2019t mean that one can\u2019t 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Bad Day At the Beach<\/p>\n

A good chunk of \u201cJudgment Day\u201d takes place on the Suffolk coast, where Frank and his mercenaries descend on Diana\u2019s holiday home shortly after River\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fact that Season 6 of Slow Horses was adapting two novels at once<\/a> kind of spoils this sequence for those in the know, since it\u2019s 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\u2019s at least able to take down one of the attackers, and Reece skewers the other with a harpoon, leaving only Frank alive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While this is happening, Jane arrives after having glued her face back together in a public toilet, so she\u2019s understandably not in the best of moods. She shoots Louisa \u2014 nonfatally, it turns out, but it\u2019s touch and go \u2014 and almost kills River before Frank, sat grumpily at the kitchen table, shoots her in the head as she\u2019s coming down the stairs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like Father<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

River can\u2019t bring himself to shoot his father, so Frank once again escapes. Maybe he\u2019ll show up again in a subsequent season. For now, he\u2019s the least of River\u2019s concerns. Cantor, meanwhile, is handed over to the Russians, so presumably as far as Vassily is concerned, this particular debt has been settled.<\/p>\n

See You Next Time<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019s memory, though curiously not in Flyte\u2019s, perhaps because she wasn\u2019t an official part of the gang. This scene is wonderfully awkward. It concludes with Catherine passing on a message to River from his grandfather\u2019s neighbour, who\u2019s worried about a light being left on\u2026<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll see you next season.<\/p>\n

RELATED:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Summary Masterful as ever,\u00a0Slow Horses\u00a0closes out Season 6 with a little bit of everything the show does well.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6147,5136,156,56160,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-637733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-crime","tag-drama","tag-entertainment","tag-mystery-thriller","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}