Michael McElhatton hasn’t even made his Slow Horses debut yet, and he’s already causing ripples within the show’s fan community.
With season six recently concluding on Apple TV+ and the show’s seventh outing already “in the can”, the former Game Of Thrones star has announced he’ll be joining the cast of its eighth iteration.
Slow Horses’ eighth season will be based on the ninth of Mick Herron’s Slough House novels which, at the time of writing, is the last in the series.
Per The Times, the Irish actor indicated that season eight – filming on which is already underway in London – may also be Slow Horses’ last outing.
“It’s a fantastic show but it’s had its time too,” he said, apparently comparing it to Game Of Thrones, which also ended after eight seasons, the difference being that the final seasons of the fantasy TV drama surpassed the story laid out in George R R Martin’s source material.
He continued: “I think there’s only so much you can get out of a story, even though the books will keep coming. Most series kind of fold after maybe three or four seasons. To go beyond that, I think generally they have to be based on books.”
HuffPost UK has contacted Apple TV+ for comment.
Speaking to Screen Rant last month, Slow Horses star Christopher Chung admitted he wasn’t sure what the future held for the Bafta- and Emmy-winning series past its eighth run, which is expected to air in 2028.
“We’re in production for season eight now,” Christopher said towards the end of September. “Season seven is in the can, season eight is in production, and then who knows what happens next? I don’t! They literally don’t tell me.”
Last week, season six ended on what Christopher previously described as the biggest cliffhanger in Slow Horses’ history, although some fans reckon they’ve already worked out what happens next for the characters they know and love.
The first six seasons of Slow Horses are now streaming on Apple TV+.
