'Slow Horses' Shot a Happy Ending for River — and Threw It Away

“Slow Horses” shot two endings for Season 6. One of them was happy. Director Adam Randall told Variety: “We had two endings and one of them was happy, and it was a really lovely ending. Had it been the end of the series, it would have been just a magical end for River’s journey.”

The other ending aired Wednesday. River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), back in his dead grandfather's house, faffs over tea versus wine while Sid Baker (Olivia Cooke) showers upstairs. Then he collapses. The episode closes with him on the kitchen floor, struggling to breathe.

Who died in Season 6?

Plenty. The Slough House team, led by Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb, lost Coe (Tom Brooke), the psychotic yet endearing fixer, and honorary Slow Horse Emma Flyte (Ruth Bradley). Their enemies fared worse: two Russian assassins and a couple of British hired hands, all dispatched over the season.

Cooke's Sid Baker also returned, presumed dead since Season 1, and her romance with River blossomed. On a show that has never staged one functioning relationship beyond Lamb's love of fast food, optimism was always misplaced.

How did Coe die — and why the sandwich?

Coe went into a knife fight against a Russian agent (Kyle Soller) armed with, well, a knife. Randall defended the choice: “It's a courageous thing to do. He's going in to try and stop this villain who's been hunting them down relentlessly.”

The staging was pure “Slow Horses.” Randall intercut the fatal fight with River slowly wrestling open a sandwich packet and a bag of crisps — a deliberate dodge of what he called the “Mission Impossible” toilet fight. Tom Brooke got the last word on his character's exit: the script killed Coe on a toilet, and the actor pleaded, “Please don't let me die on the toilet.” They found him another spot. Brooke was reportedly emotional and delighted watching the final cut.

Was Lamb's church toast about Flyte?

The church scene, where the surviving Slow Horses raise a drink “for Coe,” originally ran longer. The script had them toast every fallen Horse — eight shots for Lamb, which nobody filmed. “It just felt sort of ridiculous,” Randall said. Shirley's line “For Coe” was added in post-production. Lamb's longer drink isn't subliminal, per the director; he's simply “had a lot of death — and liked the whiskey a lot.”

What about that beach and Diana's glass house?

The climactic beach shootout fought the geography. Randall added VFX cliffs and tall grass to explain why nobody simply ran away, and invented Moira's sprained-ankle tumble the morning before shooting. The pipe the characters hide in was built for the cameras, since real coverage inside one is nearly impossible.

Diana's house was real, hunted for across the country, then gutted and refitted — the glass replaced so it could be smashed. Randall loved its doll's-house look: “There's a version of this story where no one comes, there's no bullets fired, and they just kill each other anyway.”

The Shake Shack scene, where Lamb and Reece (Lenny Rush) escape Frank Harkness (Hugo Weaving) amid shouted accusations, grew organically. Writers Mark Denton and Jonny Stockwood wrote a list of insults for Rush to pick from; supporting artists shouted back at Oldman in their faces.

Is River dead?

Unlikely. Lowden is reported to be in the running for James Bond, and the Season 7 teaser has Lamb describing River as posting from “the afterlife.” But Randall confirmed Lowden was shooting Season 8 in Walthstow last week: “I don't think we can keep that secret.” Randall, who also directs Season 8, stayed coy on new characters — in Mick Herron's books, Slow Horses like Lech Wicinski and Ashley Khan recur. River's odds look better than Coe's did.