Slow Horses Season 6 Finale Recap: That Shocking Cliffhanger!

Spoiler Alert: Major season finale spoilers ahead.

Slow Horses Season 6 Finale: A Bloody Judgement Day and a Killer Cliffhanger

What a finale! Slow Horses delivered a bloody, violent, and nerve-racking episode that left me wondering who would survive, and whether River Cartwright will live to see Season 7.

Our Slow Horses are still sitting ducks at Diana Taverner’s holiday house, with Frank Harkness and his heavily armed mercenaries closing in. What begins as a surprisingly cheerful spaghetti dinner quickly turns into an all-out assault, with bullets flying, petrol bombs exploding, and glass shattering everywhere.

The team manages to escape to the beach, but there’s nowhere to hide.

Emma Flyte is shot, Louisa Guy takes a bullet to the abdomen, and River arrives just in time to find himself confronting both his father and an assassin who apparently survived her earlier car wreck.

Meanwhile, Jackson Lamb is several steps ahead of everyone. He knows Taverner accepted Russian money from Damien Cantor to finance the Kazan operation, and that her attempt to erase Sid Baker’s connection to Slough House has put every Slow Horse on a Russian hit list. In typical Lamb fashion, he outmaneuvers everyone.

By delivering Damien Cantor to the Russians, he gets him to call off Harkness’s assassination mission. Harkness even saves River from the female assassin before disappearing when MI5 reinforcements arrive.

Somehow, most of our Slow Horses survive. The survivors gather at a church to raise a glass to Coe, and for a brief moment, it feels as though the nightmare is finally over.

But then comes that ending.

River receives a cryptic message and rushes to the house where he and Sid previously sought refuge. There’s music playing, the shower is running, and Sid appears to be upstairs. River heads to the kitchen for wine, moves the crowbar he left behind during their earlier escape, and suddenly begins choking. Within seconds, he’s collapsing onto the floor.

Remember that assassin with the syringe and mysterious vial a few episodes ago? Was the crowbar contaminated with poison? And has River just walked into a trap that was set for him days earlier?

The screen cuts away, leaving us with one enormous question: Is River Cartwright dying?

My Final Thoughts

This was one of the most violent episodes of the season, with relentless action, unexpected casualties, and another masterclass in manipulation from Jackson Lamb. But that final scene was particularly cruel. Just when River seemed to have survived his father’s murderous mission and found his way back to Sid, everything changed.

Questions I’m Still Asking

• Will River survive what appears to be a poisoning?
• Is Sid really upstairs in that shower?
• What consequences, if any, will Diana Taverner face?
• And have we really seen the last of Frank Harkness?

The series is based on the books by Mick Heron. If you haven’t already, you can read Slow Horses while we wait for Season 7. 

Season 7 can’t come soon enough!

Slow Horses is streaming on Apple TV

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