Season 4 of Slow Horses ended with action, drama, and a death in the Slough House family. But Episode 6 was an anti-climax too focused on setting up future instalments. Apple TV+ hit Slow Horses is a spy thriller about a group of MI5 rejects battling terrorists and national security threats, under the auspices of their hard-drinking and frequently farting leader Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman).
The Season 4 antagonist was Frank Harkness (Hugo Weaving), a former CIA Operative turned mercenary, who knows where the MI5 bodies are buried. But his storyline ends in unsatisfying fashion, making it feel like Slow Horses is more concerned with Season 5 and beyond than the end of Season 4. We’re about to detail that finale, so SPOILERS AHEAD .
.. Slow Horses does Heat Episode 4 kicks off with River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) brought to Frank Harkness to reveal what we’d all figured out; that Frank is his father.
Sitting across from each other in a restaurant – in a scene reminiscent of the diner scene between Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Heat – the two men discuss their lives, careers, and broken familial bonds, and you can cut the tension with a knife. Harkness tries to justify his actions, and offers River a job, while Cartwright is having none of it, secretly messaging his team under the table, which leads to a standoff by Regent’s Canal. Frank escapes by sticking a grenade in the hood of River’s jacket, which Cartwright manages to throw in the water just before it explodes.
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