This article contains major spoilers for the latest season of Slow Horses.
Slow Horses writer Gaby Chiappe is lifting the lid on the discussions she and the show’s creative team had while putting together the season six finale.
Those who’ve already watched the latest season of the Apple TV+ spy drama – and if you’re reading this, we hope that means you – will know that it ended on an absolutely massive cliffhanger, with Jack Lowden’s character’s life hanging in the balance.
In the final moments of the episode, River Cartwright was seen dropping to the floor after seemingly being poisoned by a nerve agent left on a crowbar.
“The groundwork is laid in episode two when Jim and Jane come knocking on the door and River and Sid are hiding,” Gaby told Gold Derby during a recent interview.
“You see Jim looking around and there’s a little bottle lying on the table. He looks around and sees the crowbar that River brought in with him, and we have to assume that he paints it with what’s in the bottle, which — given that there have been nerve agent attacks elsewhere — it’s a Novichok attack.”
Gaby went on to share that he and her fellow writers “had a lot of debate” about this detail, and whether or not “people know what it is and what’s happening”.
“It’s taken from the book, but in the book it’s left on a doorknob, which is slightly different,” she pointed out. “It’s still the idea that something happened in the corner of your eye, but you didn’t quite know what it was. And the assassin who laid it is long dead now.”
While details about the resolution of this cliffhanger are being kept deliberately under wraps for now, many Slow Horses fans reckon they’ve already pieced together River’s fate.
Director Adam Randall also recently opened up about the fact that there were actually two possible endings for season six – with the team eventually opting for the “dark” one over another, which would have been more “happy” and “lovely”.
Slow Horses will return for its seventh season next year, with an eighth already in production in London.
