Who dies in Slow Horses season 6? The full list, including one death that isn't in Mick Herron's books
The deadliest person in Slow Horses season 6 isn't either of the Russian assassins sent to wipe out Slough House.
Season 6 ran on Apple TV+ from September 16 to October 21, six episodes released weekly. Head writer Gaby Chiappe and director Adam Randall built it from two novels at once, Joe Country and Slough House, the sixth and seventh books in Herron's series. Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb is back, along with Jack Lowden as River Cartwright and Olivia Cooke as Sid Baker, the Slough House agent the team had believed was dead. Hugo Weaving plays Frank Harkness, River's father. Kyle Soller and MyAnna Buring play Jim and Jane, a pair of Russian killers working through a list of former Slow Horses.
Every death, in order
The season kills its first two people in the premiere and saves three for the finale:
- Episode 1, "Circle of Life" — River's grandfather, David Cartwright, played by Jonathan Pryce, dies after his long decline with dementia. Former Slow Horse Struan Loy, played by Paul Higgins, is lured into a shipping container by two fake customers, locked in and burned alive.
- Episode 2, "Daddy Issues" — Andrew Nesmith, an MI5 "Dog" who stole files from the Park for Harkness, tries to squeeze more money out of him. Harkness strangles him in his own home.
- Episode 4, "Lost & Found" — J.K. Coe, played by Tom Brooke, confronts Jim in the bathroom of a service station. River finds him slumped against the wall with a fatal stomach wound.
- Episode 5, "Sayonara" — Jim nearly chokes Sid at a lake. She hits him with a rock and drags him back into the water, and she and River drown him.
- Episode 6, "Judgment Day" — in the firefight that ends the season, Emma Flyte, played by Ruth Bradley, takes down a mercenary, then Harkness shoots her in the back and guns her down on the sand. Later, he shoots Jane in the head to end her fight with River.
Episode 3, "Resurrection," is the only one with no death on screen. It's the episode that explains why Sid isn't dead.
Count the killers and Harkness comes out ahead: Nesmith, Flyte and Jane are his. Jim, the professional, accounts for Coe.
The death that isn't in the books
Andrew Nesmith's. In Herron's Slough House, Reece Nesmith is an adult who comes to Lamb after his partner dies. The show cast Lenny Rush instead and made Reece a teenager, which meant he needed a different loss. The series gave him a father, made that father a Dog on the take, and had Harkness kill him.
Herron never wrote that murder. The show needed a teenage witness, and it built him a dead father.
The deaths the show moved
Everyone else on the list dies in the books too, but rarely the same way:
- Coe — in Joe Country, he's stabbed in a barn, but he cuts his attacker's throat before he goes down. On the show, Jim walks away from the bathroom alive.
- Jim — in Slough House, Sid kills him in a car by driving a stiletto letter opener, once owned by Lavrentiy Beria, through his jaw. On the show, he drowns.
- Jane — in the book, she's the one River and Sid hold under the water at the lake. On the show, Harkness shoots her.
- Flyte — in Joe Country, she's shot on a wooded track by Lars Becker, wearing Louisa's white ski jacket after the two traded coats. On the show, her killer is Harkness.
- Struan Loy — the same in both: locked in a shipping container and burned alive.
- David Cartwright — the same in both: a quiet death, not a violent one.
So the lake scene survived the adaptation, with a different victim in the water. Jim died Jane's book death, and Jane went to Harkness.
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Flyte's death, at least, was already in the book.
"I cried when she died in 'Joe Country,'" Chiappe told SlashFilm.
The one still open
River ends the finale on the floor of his grandfather's house. He has been stabbed in one hand and shot in the other, and he collapses after noticing residue on his wounded hands: a Russian nerve agent. Sid is there. The episode cuts out before anyone says whether he survives.
The book ends the same way, on River collapsed on the O.B.'s kitchen floor with Sid calling for help. In Herron's version, he survives it. Season 7, already ordered, adapts the next novel, Bad Actors, with Ben Vanstone as head writer.
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