Slow Horses ends season 2 with betrayal, reveals, and (a bit of) heart

Gold stars for everyone who worked out last week that River’s captors left him alive and near a phone for a reason. I’d written in my notes for the previous episode that Alex’s turn as a master spy felt rinky-dink, lazily tying up an MI5 agent with twine exactly where he’s definitely about to be found by the two people in Upshott looking for him. Turns out they needed River to call in the bomb threat since—surprise!—there’s no bomb on Alex’s plane. Just bad vibes.

So that’s one mystery checked off for the finale in short order. We now know Louisa and Marcus aren’t in imminent plane-based danger, that Roddy’s bitten off more than he can chew by following Chernitsky, and that Katinsky sits atop this frustratingly convoluted conspiracy. “I’m sorry to blow your element of surprise,” Lamb says over his own voicemail with Katinsky sitting at his Slough House desk in wait, “but would you mind picking up?” It’s more good work from Lamb, who uses his casual crassness as a smokescreen for his competence even if he can’t help it being his personality. Lamb suggests a change in scenery for their Big Bad standoff for the sake of “the maid” (Catherine) and tells Katinsky to meet him at Katinsky’s place since “whichever way this goes, you won’t be renewing the lease.”

Over at the Glasshouse, Louisa can finally let the mask slip and goes all in on torturing the left-behind Pashkin goon before he bleeds out. It’s ostensibly to find out why they needed to shut down Glasshouse in the first place (to drain Nevsky’s accounts) but obviously she finally has the chance to vent some rage over Min’s needlessly violent murder.

And that’s really what this season of Slow Horses, so late in the day, has revealed itself to be: a journey of personal revenge and pride. Katinsky has been happy to use Nevsky and Pashkin, locked in their own little game, as sideshows while he goes after the big one: Jackson Lamb, the man who killed Charles Partner, his “Joe” or man on the inside. There’s a healthy respect running under Lamb and Katinsky’s back-and-forth, even if there’s no real suspense over the outcome (seasons three and four of Slow Horses starring Gary Oldman, coming soon!). And there’s more than a little regret in each man’s voice as they finally tell the truth to one another, regret that things even got to this point.

About that revenge: Chernitsky also knows Lamb didn’t act alone when he killed Partner and after a fun little action movie sequence where he tries to kill Roddy, who hides in the commuter train toilet, he steps off at Tunbridge Wells and heads for River’s grandfather’s house. River is already on his way there, and Roddy, thank god, has been taken down a peg or two in the process. Everybody wins.

Well, I say everybody. Catherine, after her standout piece of subterfuge last week playing the part of a mousy chess novice, gets less of a dynamic storyline in the finale, spending most of it in a stairwell. Pashkin, too, is wiped off the board pretty effectively by Marcus and Louisa before he can escape, and—sigh— yes, Webb is still alive to smirk another day.

Slow Horses is by no means a blockbuster spy story, though, and I appreciate its insistence that, yeah, the easiest and dumbest explanation is usually the right one. Even Chernitsky’s death happens offscreen. The hulking Russian cast a shadow over much of season two and was simply undone by a call from River to his granddad. Fitting stuff.

There also wasn’t a big twist like in the final few minutes of the first season, which saw renewed hope in Sid being out there somewhere and an explosive flashback to Partner’s murder. Instead, we get an epilogue of sorts with the Slough House crew breaking into St. Leonards church, where the funerals of “officers in good standing” take place. Lamb installs a tasteful stick-on plaque for Harper that simply reads “served his country”. River puts his arm around Louisa, and the Slough House team heads back out to the streets of London.

Stray observations

• I have to admit, I was suspicious of a late-in-the-day twist that either Kelly or Duncan was working with Alex, especially after they both paid such close attention to his reciting (and then re-reciting) his clearance code over the phone.
• If I’ve learned anything from this season of Slow Horses, it’s to never cross a Russian spy. When they kill you, they kill you.
• Deciding a trial would be too public and embarrassing, Alex is released and re-embedded with her family. Bet that’s gonna be quite the reunion breakfast conversation.
• That’s it for Slow Horses season two! Thanks for watching and reading along with me. I have absolutely zero knowledge of the books that serve as the source material, so I’m eager to see what kind of bullshit the gang finds themselves in next time.