“Slow Horses” season 4 finale: Marcus dies, Frank escapes

SPOILER ALERT: The following story contains plot details from “Hello Goodbye,” the Season 4 finale of Slow Horses.

“Slow Horses” is not generally a sentimental show. Deceptively disheveled spymaster Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman)'s idea of ​​caring for his “friends” is to negotiate their severance pay if they die on active duty for bureaucratic reasons. But the fourth season of the Emmy-winning Apple show, which ended Wednesday, was the most personal yet. River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) – a former MI5 golden boy whose banishment to the eponymous box of broken toys formed the basis of the series in Season 1 – began his latest misadventure by trying to save his dementia-stricken grandfather David (Jonathan Pryce). save – and ended with him confronting his father, a sociopathic American mercenary named Frank Harkness (Hugo Weaving).

“What I love about Series 4 is this personal story,” says creator and showrunner Will Smith (not that one!), a comedian and frequent collaborator of Armando Iannucci. “It's a rawer, more brutal, harder season.” And he knew exactly who to call the face of this new brutality: Weaving, Smith's first cousin once removed.

Despite the family connection, Weaving – who had previously played an iconic villain in The Matrix series' Agent Smith – had not yet seen “Slow Horses” when the scripts were sent to him. The series is an adaptation of British author Mick Herron's spy novel series of the same name, with each tightly structured six-episode season corresponding to a specific book. Season 4 is based on “Spook Street,” the Herron volume that introduces Frank as what Weaving calls “a Moriarty figure”: a nemesis who can transcend individual storylines and serve as a recurring adversary, the “Slow Horses.” had previously been missing. (Unless you count the callous bureaucracy of MI5 itself, as symbolized by Kristin Scott Thomas's icy Diana Taverner.)

As a former CIA agent, Harkness has developed a unique approach to recruiting his private militia. He fathered sons from different women and raised them from birth to be perfect killing machines on a compound in Lavandes, France. River's own mother was tricked into pressuring Frank against David, a former MI5 superior; To negotiate the release of his pregnant daughter, David gave Frank a supply of real British passports issued to false identities, also known as “cold bodies.” One of these cold bodies was behind the season-opening shopping mall bombing – not an ideologically motivated act of terrorism, but a deadly form of action by a son against his father.

“He’s usually one step ahead,” Weaving says of his character. “But obviously there was a huge glitch with the bombing.” It just wouldn't be very “Slow Horses” for anyone to be too competent, including a great evil. Weaving compares Frank to Saturn Devouring His Sons, the classic myth in which a Titan eats his young to prevent them from replacing him. “If we say that everyone has a fatal flaw, what would Frank’s be?” He’s a father,” Weaving said. “So in some ways he has to be both an educator and a teacher and a discipliner.”

Weaving emphasizes that he didn't want Frank to come across as a “terrible, inhuman beast.” On some level, the actor insists, Frank does love his sons. “It was important to me that we maintain humanity even in extreme situations,” he says. “We need to maintain a sense of Frank as a human being and as a real father, even as his sons do extreme things and kill people in his name.” When Frank offers River a job in the middle of a crowded restaurant, it is both “completely absurd.” also followed by a death threat. “But you have to feel that there is a real human need for Frank.”

This one-on-one conversation is immediately followed by a spectacular chase through the legendary St. Pancras train station in London, directed by the season's director, Adam Randall, and secured by location manager Ian Pollington. “Originally the book says it’s on the Thames and the river flows into the Thames,” says Smith. Dunking River in the Thames is a nice opportunity for a pun, he adds, “but it's hugely expensive and also dangerous.” So the production revolved around a scene in which River internalized Frank's advice to stay still when being chased . He finds his father sitting quietly in a cabin, where he is peacefully arrested – although not for long. When MI5 brass discovers that he has put together a compromise across the board, Frank is released offscreen, a typical Pyrrhic victory for the Slough House crew.

Meanwhile, River takes David to an assisted care facility, which leaves David very upset and upset. The scene is a painfully common form of familial strife, but with an extraordinary twist: the facility itself is owned by MI5 and is full of retired secret agents. “I just like the idea – and I'm pretty sure it's in the book – that it's safer for them when they're all together. “So if they just start chatting, it doesn’t really matter,” Smith says. Pryce will continue to be a part of the series, opening up an intriguing new possibility for subplots.

Slow Horses is produced at a rapid pace to channel the spirit of compelling genre fiction. “I set up the room for Series 5 while we were preparing and starting filming for Series 4 and as the edits for Series 3 arrived,” says Smith, using the British term for TV seasons. This pace allows “Slow Horses” to maintain a regular release schedule that is at odds with the more relaxed rhythms of modern prestige television.

This means that season 5 is already in the works. Smith won't give away too many details, but promises that the next few episodes will trace the impact of the events of season four on River and Shirley (Aimee Ffion-Edwards), as they struggle with the loss of their frequent mission partner Marcus Longridge (Kadiff Kirwan). ), who is killed by one of Frank's son soldiers during a tense shootout at Slough House headquarters. “That’s what I love about what Mick does,” Smith says of killing off characters. “He doesn’t do it lightly, and he has an eye for the effects of death.”

As for Frank, Weaving doesn't play his cards seriously. “Suffice to say, Frank is coming back in another book and I’m in London right now,” he says.