“Slow Horses” Season 4 Recap and Finale Explained

Spoilers for Slow horses Fourth season finale “Hello, goodbye” consequences.

It's amazing that more TV shows haven't adopted this Slow horses Model of storytelling. Years ago, when cable platforms and premium channels first began to differentiate themselves from the 22-episode network season, the Slow horses Structure seemed to be the future of television. It uses short, self-contained seasons that drag out multiple storylines, and eventually they all collide in a catastrophic slugfest. Character development progresses over the course of the series, meaning big moments of discovery and murderous power struggles gain momentum as time goes on. Even if one season falters, the next season offers enough for a new beginning. The whole show could be building toward a single big end result, but each installment is so self-contained that its finale doesn't become a defining test for the series.

It's a model that can help a show retain its audience, even if viewers have different opinions about what the show does best. Depending on your wishes season four of Slow horses is either excellent, fun despite some criticisms, or “not my favorite, but still pretty good”. For people who like that Craft cutter With the kind of behind-the-scenes politics and the occasional desperate dash down an alley, season four was a happy return to form. Viewers who prefer the action-thriller mode may have found the fourth season disappointing compared to the third, as there are fewer ticking timers on explosive devices and fewer shootouts with crouching characters behind chest-high walls. But it still checks all the boxes of what a Slow horses Season should be enough. More than once, River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) begins a desperate sprint to either catch someone or avoid someone else. Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) seems to know more than he's saying, especially about something mysterious that happened in the '70s that everyone tried to forget. Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) holds everything together while stabbing a few people in the back. The show is the show – fresh but familiar – and that's exactly what it's about: Even in the worst season of Slow horses is still an absolutely entertaining season Slow horses.

There is a significant change from the previous one Seasons, to be fair. The fourth season not only revolves around a villain's major terrorist attack to destroy the United Kingdom, but also the dramatic revelation of River Cartwright's family history (which, yes, well, is also tied to a villain's major terrorist attack to destroy the United Kingdom ). ). River has been a de facto protagonist from the start, and the life-threatening spy film has always been at least a little more personal than him The spymaster's retired grandfather played a prominent role in the series from the start. But the fourth season's decision to give Cartwright a… The Empire strikes back “Twist” is a change from a series that has previously eschewed obvious hero’s journey storylines. At the end of the season, Hugo Weaving's Frank Harkness is revealed, the series' new mysterious, unstoppable villain River Cartwright's father!! And Cartwright allows himself a few moments of the kind of perplexed introspection that exists Slow horses rarely pauses to provide anything.

Some elements of this plot are completely absurd. The big reveal is easy to spot at least two episodes before the series finally opens, and the underlying mechanics of the whole thing are even worse. Cartwright discovers that his entire life is the result of Harkness's secret paramilitary compound in France, an organization whose goal is to raise children to become super soldiers. Just in case anyone reading this is in the middle of a screenplay, kids being raised to be super soldiers is a premise that needs to be shelved for a while. The trend lately has been more towards science fiction (Umbrella Academy, Stranger Things, The boys, game of Thrones“'s Unsullied”), yes, but the metaphor is so familiar that it's hard to muster the shocked disgust Slow horses seems to be expected as Cartwright pokes around an abandoned schoolroom/military training area.

Despite these distractions, it's still that way Slow horses – It knows its job and does that job well. Another show could easily fall into River Cartwright's identity spiral and limit itself to his increasing despair and crisis of self-doubt to the exclusion of everything else that makes the show work. Instead, Cartwright receives this shocking news with dismay and dismay; Then, within moments, he's frowning again as he jumps over a barricade in a train station. Taverner is at his best and has been demoted to Second Desk, but is still covering up MI5's mistakes by sternly and efficiently putting the goofy new First Desk (James Callis) at the top from below. After all, corruption within the organization is as much a part of the show as Jackson Lamb's sloppy habits and terrible diet. And when Marcus doesn't survive the final firefight, it's just as tragic, surprising and yet bleak as the status quo Slow horses That's always been the case, especially because Marcus and Shirley have now had several seasons to develop their stimulating, supportive, and quirky dating relationship.

The series resolutely refuses to get cozy or cute; Their band of misfit toys will never coalesce into a functioning group of outcast avengers, and when they die, their selfishness and imperfections—their awkward humanity—make their deaths all the more disturbing. It's easy to cry for martyrs who never seem like real people, to weep for them and quickly dismiss them because they were never that real to begin with. The spies of Slough House are too sensitive and vulnerable so easily written off.

And yet, the Slow horses Model has become an exception rather than the rule. Shows how House of the Dragon, The Rings of Power, or The penguin They crowd into the remaining spaces of known IPs, and as a result their stories seem constricted from all sides, stretching and sliding to fill spaces or bypass ground covered elsewhere. Anthology series like the ones that define Ryan Murphy's oeuvre build a show over the course of a season, but lose any of the slow-burn relationship chemistry there is Slow horses its emotional momentum. Few don’t–Emily in ParisNetflix-level shows are given the chance to exist beyond a third season, denying them the opportunity to have a consistent four-season run even if they wanted to. Slow horsesThe success of is not a matter of Apple TV+ either – Apple is showing how with longer runways Ted Lasso And For all humanity had just as uneven and half-baked seasons as long-running series from other channels. But Slow horses It manages to find a comfortable, familiar and proven storytelling formula and executes it well, focusing on character development and cohesion and making every episode count. It's not rocket science, but it's why Slow horsesfour seasons later, is more than solid. For television in 2024, such consistency feels like a miracle.