It’s been no secret that Sid (Olivia Cooke) was returning for Season 6 of Apple TV’s spy thriller, Slow Horses. Of course, just because we knew she was coming back doesn’t mean we knew why or how, what her role in the story would be or why she’s stayed MIA (and presumed KIA) for so long.
We don’t learn any of that in tonight’s episode of Slow Horses. Spoilers ahead.
Sid pops up at the very end of the episode, titled “Daddy Issues,” when River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) rushes to his recently deceased grandfather’s house after Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung) traces a mysterious call to that address. River assumes it’s his father, Frank Harkness (Hugo Weaving), calling to mess with his head. But when he arrives, Sid is standing at the top of the stairs. River looks stunned and the credits roll.
But even this brief scene got me thinking, and I’m starting to form a theory—a rather shaky theory—about what exactly is going on. First, we should mention a few big details from tonight’s episode.
There were two more murders. The new killers, Jim (Kyle Soller) and Jane (MyAnna Buring), are at a hardware store buying supplies and next thing we know they’ve shown up at the doorstep of former Slough House secretary Moira Tregorian (Joanna Scanlan). They pretend to be utility workers, and when she leads them down into the basement, they spray her with poison. They then make it look as though she left the gas stove on and died accidentally while drinking wine and watching TV. It’s pretty chilling how casual the pair are, how emotionless they are as they murder and then setup the facade.
There’s a curious pattern to Jim and Jane’s three murders. All three Slough House-connected victims were killed in or around their homes. Struan Loy (Paul Higgins) was killed in his shipping-container home. Kay White was knocked into the water outside her houseboat and drowned. Moira was killed inside her house.
All three deaths were made to look like accidents, but none of them were covered up particularly well. The killers made each one look accidental, but not convincingly enough to fool anyone who bothered looking closely. This seems purposeful rather than simply careless. They’re also clearly taking very specific orders from someone, and I suspect the staged accidents are part of a larger plan. More on that in a moment.
The other murder is Harkness’s kill. He arrives at the home of a former Dog who apparently stole a file for Harkness and the mysterious person Harkness is working for. Harkness brings a bag of money, but when the man demands more after losing his job at MI5, Harkness kills him. During the rather gruesome murder, he spots a young child fleeing the scene. A witness. He stages the murder as a suicide, which I think is a clue that while these are certainly connected, Harkness and Jim and Jane are working independently.
We later learn that Harkness is working for media personality Damien Cantor (played by Game of Thrones alum Harry Lloyd). The plot thickens considerably at this point, since Cantor also arranged a humiliating interview with Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) this episode. Cantor has connections to Peter Judd (Samuel West), and there’s a money trail Taverner would rather not go public, which forces her hand. The interview is a trap and she stammers her way through it, exiting to a string of text messages, including one from Claude Whelan that says, simply, “Ooof.”
While all this is going on, Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) is trying to piece together just what’s happening and why the Slow Horses have been erased from the MI5 database. Once it becomes clear that people connected to Slough House are being targeted in coordinated hits, he orders his joes to Blake’s Grave — as in William Blake’s grave — where they meet when there’s an emergency.
His investigation turns up nothing particularly useful. The Slow Horses haven’t just been deleted from the database; the physical file has gone missing as well.
The Sid Theory
So how does all this tie together? Here’s my theory:
Sid has been working undercover on some big case involving Damien Cantor or people he’s connected to, perhaps in far-right or organized-crime circles. She discovered something that put a target on her back and forced her into hiding.
I think it might have been Sid who deleted the Slough House database in order to protect her friends, which led Cantor to hire Harkness to get the physical file from inside the Park. Harkness used the Dog he later murdered to do that. Meanwhile, Cantor has sent out his assassins to take out people connected to Slough House in order to draw Sid out into the open.
Of course, this doesn’t explain why Moira said the orders to delete the files came “from the very top,” but it’s not unreasonable to think that Moira’s information was faulty. If Sid deleted the files, she could have covered her tracks by making it look as though Taverner ordered it, and we know from Taverner’s reaction at the funeral last week that she appears to have no clue what’s going on.
Why would Sid be out in the cold, though? Why not come in and report back to the Park and to Taverner? Why go to River? And why would Cantor—or whoever is behind the hits—know to kill Slow Horses in order to draw her out?
P.S. A couple more stray observations:
Catherine (Saskia Reeves) almost falls off the wagon. She’s not coping with the revelation that Lamb shot her old boss very well. Lamb stops her by dragging her with him to Blake’s Grave.
I’m also really enjoying Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) and Coe (Tom Brooke) as a dynamic duo this season. When Lamb says nobody likes Coe, Shirley pipes up “I like him!” Roddy is a little toned down from last season but is still getting some of the biggest laughs that aren’t Jackson Lamb related.
All told, another great episode with a really aggravating cliffhanger!
Read my review of the Season 6 premiere here, and watch my video discussion below. Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel as I’ll have more Slow Horses discussions there soon as well.
I could be way off base with my theory and that’s fine. Either way, I’m intrigued. What do you think? Any theories of your own? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
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