Slow Horses
Created by Will Smith
Based on the Slough House series by Mick Herron
5.06 “Scars”
Written by Will Smith
Directed by Saul Metzstein
Starring Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, Kristin Scott Thomas
All episodes now streaming on Apple TV+
by Del Winters, Staff Writer
This Slow Horses recap has spoilers for 5.06 “Scars”
In “Brown Eyes,” Lady Gaga sings, “If everything was everything, but everything was over,” which is the same level of specificity Slow Horses applied this season to the Libyan terrorist with big sad brown eyes. According to the credits, his name is Farouk (Monty Ben), although he is never addressed by name. Showrunner and writer Will Smith uses Farouk as his mouthpiece to deliver this season’s message—the sins of colonialism and adventurism will return to torment us—but Farouk and the Libyans are denied backstories and personalities. Colonialism is not a wound in and of itself; only its traumatic reverberations back to the imperial core matter here.
As I said in my recap of 5.03, a popcorn television show like Slow Horses is ill-equipped to tackle politics and foreign affairs in a realistic, humane manner. Most seasons feature silly fantastical villains, like the Russian sleeper agents or the cell of River Cartwright’s (Jack Lowden) brothers living in a rundown chateau in France. The white nationalists of the first season feel closer to reality, but I can appreciate a critique of home-grown nationalism far more than I can stomach a critique of adventurism that still creates corpses out of the four Libyan men. The Libyans are framed as the wronged party who radicalized too much. This framing creates the jarring situation in which River, the handsome bumbling hero, unsympathetically shoots dead the Libyan we’re meant to feel sorry for.
This final episode continues the unfortunate leaps in logic and mischaracterizations that marred last week’s episode. Slow Horses has always been silly and reality-defying, but the mischaracterizations and reality-stretches this season have built-up unignorable grievances. First and foremost, Dodie Gimball (Victoria Hamilton) and Tyson Bowman (Abraham Popoola) apparently permanently exited this season in the fourth episode as loose threads sacrificed on the altar of runtime. Diana Taverner’s (Kristin Scott Thomas) personality this season has been as unremarkable and frictionless as her shiny satin blouses. Gone are Taverner’s Machiavellian machinations from the Ingrid Tearney (Sophie Okonedo) days; she apparently just gave up on her higher aspirations and settled for a lot of eye-rolling in Whelan’s direction. She can no longer play by London rules, it seems, so Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) has to play for her.
