The name of the excellent show Slow Horses is an oxymoron. Nothing about the program is slow, and that has been proven all over again in the first two episodes of season 6. The Apple TV series began its latest season with multiple deaths, a mystery about who is deciding that a couple of those people should no longer be living, and how it all relates to Slough House.
After all, those being targeted were former employees of Jackson Lamb's (played wonderfully by Gary Oldman) band of MI5 misfits. To further complicate matters, the current employees at Slough House found out they hadn't been paid. Seemingly, someone high up the food chain no longer wanted Slough House to exist. Literally.
Did episode 2 of the sixth season give fans answers to the questions asked in the opening episode? To be fair, did we really expect the episode to reveal much? No. But we still learned quite a bit.
Slow Horses keep getting killed
Let's just say this episode unveils that a lot of bad people are connected, but we are not quite sure how. Yet. River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) is still emotionally a mess, but his situation is helped by the return of his father, Frank Harkness (played by the excellent Hugo Weaving — he might as well say "Mr. Anderson" during the entire episode, and it would be fitting), being a horrible person.
The episode, which is titled "Daddy Issues," begins with Harkness killing a former MI5 agent, known as Dogs, for stealing a file with all the names of those who have ever worked in Slough House. Why there is such hatred toward the group is unknown so far, but what is known is that someone wants them all dead.
The problem Harkness has when killing the agent, Andrew Nesmith, is that, in doing so, there is a struggle, and viewers assume that Nesmith's young son saw the whole deed go down. The boy, who is under 10 years old, is later seen on CCTV fleeing the apartment by Cartwright. Harkness isn't seen, though, so the Slow Horses, except for Lamb, don't know to connect Harkness to the murder.
Frank Harkness's connection and mistake
Harkness stages the scene to look like a suicide, which Lamb and Cartwright later discover when they go to examine the apartment. At that point, Lamb tells Cartwright that he believes Harkness is the killer, though Cartwright isn't sure because he can't see the connection.
We later find out that Harkness is working with right-wing media guru Damien Cantor, who we also saw briefly in the first episode. Harkness visits Cantor in his lair and explains the issue of the boy leaving the scene while Harkness is killing Nesmith, and Harkness asks for permission to kill the boy too. Cantor tells Harkness that he is the "expert," which, of course, implies bad things will follow.
It is Cantor who hired Harkness, who in turn hired Nesmith to steal the file with the Slow Horse agents' names. The reason Harkness kills Nesmith is that, while stealing the file, Nesmith is discovered in the file room by the gatekeeper, Molly Doran, and Doran reports Nesmith, who is fired for being in the wrong place, but not for stealing the file.
The missing file and Blake's Grave
The theft isn't discovered until later, when Lamb comes to see it for himself. Realizing that his agents and former agents are being murdered, and that the electronic file of the Slough House had already disappeared in episode 1, and now the hard file is gone, Lamb tells his current team to shut down under the code name "Blake's Grave."
The team meets in a cemetery; only Cartwright isn't there. He was riding in a car with Roddy Ho to the cemetery while Ho was trying to determine where a call that Cartwright kept getting was coming from. On the drive, Ho finds that the call came from inside Cartwright's recently deceased grandfather's (David Cartwright, played by Jonathan Pryce) house.
Assuming the call is coming from Frank Harkness, Cartwright dumps Ho on the side of the street and heads for the house. Learning this, Lamb goes to pick up Ho while also learning where Cartwright is going.
The episode ends with Cartwright entering the house looking for Harkness, only to find Sidonie Baker, played by Olivia Cooke, at the top of the stairs saying hello.
Longtime fans of Slow Horses will recall that Baker, a former MI5 agent in Slough House, was last seen in season 1 when she was shot in the head and left for dead. She is clearly very much alive.
Damien Cantor owns Diana Taverner (for now)
Damien Cantor's presence in the episode isn't limited to his meeting with Harkness, however. He clearly has a bigger part to play the rest of the season. In a previous season, politician Peter Judd (played by Samuel West, who plays a completely different kind of character on Masterpiece's All Things Great and Small) had given money to First Desk Diana Taverner for political favors.
As it turns out, that money was coming from Cantor. Now Taverner must do Cantor a favor or be exposed for taking the money. While MI5 has a "no media" policy, Taverner is forced to do an on-air interview on Cantor's channel.
During the interview, Taverner is asked about things that no one should know about (nerve gas attacks on British soil and former First Desks being in the pocket of foreign countries). In other words, Cantor has that information. But how? We don't yet know.
Stay tuned for more news about Slow Horses season 6!
Add us as a preferred source on Google