Warning! This article contains SPOILERS for Slow Horses season 5, episode 4.
The Slough House team usually get an unfairly negative reputation in Slow Horses, but in season 5, episode 4, they definitely earned their reject status. Season 5 had a slightly slower start than previous seasons as the hit Apple TV series introduced a new threat in the heart of London.
The team at Slough House have made some big moves to find the source of the threat and neutralize it. In order to do that, they had to escape the MI5-imposed lockdown, and now the team is free to investigate. But with how things turned out in episode 4, maybe they should have never left the office.
The Agents At Slough House Are MI5 Rejects
While everyone in Slough House is technically employed by MI5, they have all been exiled from the HQ, and forced to work in a remote unit that is tasked with carrying out the most menial and unimportant tasks for MI5. Whether that’s organizing old files or picking up packages, the Slow Horses are rejects.
In some cases, this seems to be a fairly reasonable response to past actions of the team, as they have fallen into bad habits such as drug use or gambling addictions, but for others, like River Cartwright, he was simply disliked and then set up by his allies in order to get him out of the way.
And then there’s Jackson Lamb, who is by all accounts a legend in the service, but when given his pick of where to serve next, he surprisingly chose to go to Slough House citing that he hoped for a quiet place to run out the clock of his employment.
Despite Their Positions, The Slow Horses Are Generally An Effective Team
Clearly, the Slow Horses are not the pick of the litter, but as has been shown throughout the last 5 seasons of the show, they are surprisingly capable. In numerous operations, the team has been instrumental in capturing major terrorists, and uncovering shady secrets across London and beyond.
While Lamb pretends to be disinterested in his team, the man clearly has a lot of loyalty to them, and tries to protect them from the fallout that MI5 would gladly let destroy them. Cartwright is also an adept agent who has some confidence issues and a lack of training, but he has shown promise.
And more broadly, despite their flaws, the team has been able to do a lot with almost no resources or support from the organization that employs them. However, in the latest episode of Slow Horses, the team may have made a mess that even the infamous Jackson Lamb won’t be able to clean up.
River Cartwright & J.K. Coe Have Created Their Worst Problem Yet
After escaping the lockdown, Lamb quickly assigned members of his team to go and survey the speaking events of the two mayoral candidates, standing Mayor Zafar Jaffrey, and the competition, the right-wing Dennis Gimball. While Shirley Dander and Catherine Standish went to Jaffrey’s event, Cartwright and J.K. Coe went to Gimball’s.
Now, Cartwright and Coe had every reason to believe Gimball would be the target of the terrorist attack, but the two agents appear to have been preoccupied with one-upping each other, which led to some substantial mistakes.
Coe mistakenly identified a large man who approached Gimball in an alley as the assassin, and River Cartwright came running in to defend Gimball from what he thought was imminent danger. As it turns out, this was just Jaffrey’s campaign manager asking Gimball to avoid targeting his family in his campaign.
At this point, Coe decided to casually descend from his perch above, but on the way, he knocked over some loose building materials that triggered a chain reaction. And since Coe is rarely seen without his headphones in, he was unable to hear the disastrous chain reaction unraveling on his descent.
A large paint can fell from several floors above Gimball, landing squarely on his head, and immediately killing the mayoral candidate. But this is just the start of the trouble that this will cause for the team at Slough House.
Slough House Is In Serious Trouble
River Cartwright was present in the alley with a gun fighting the opposing campaign manager minutes earlier, which means there is a witness to him being present in the final moments of Gimball’s life.
Beyond that, Cartwright and Coe were trying to protect Gimball to avoid the would-be assassins from harming him and progressing their masterplan, but now, through their actions, they have killed a mayoral candidate.
Dander and Standish successfully rebuffed the assassin who was present at Jaffrey’s event, but now, London could descend into chaos anyway as the popular right-wing candidate has been mysteriously murdered in an alleyway ahead of the election.
All things considered, the situation is incredibly complicated for the Slow Horses, and Lamb will not be happy when he finds out the mess his agents have gotten into. In addition, they are now in possession of evidence that incriminates themselves, and the head of MI5, Claude Whelan, setting up some major consequences in the next episodes of Slow Horses.
