© Apple TV+
Apple TV+’s Slow Horses gets seriously nasty in Episode 4, “Lost and Found.” The episode kills off one of the Slough House regulars and leaves another member of the team in a very bad situation, while the Russian hit squad continues closing in around them. What starts as another frantic attempt to stay alive quickly turns into something much bigger, with the agents realizing that somebody inside MI5 may be feeding information to the people trying to kill them. And considering how much Jackson Lamb already hates Regent’s Park, that’s really saying something.
JK Coe’s Final Fight Ends in a Public Restroom
One of the episode’s most brutal moments happens in a place that feels almost absurdly ordinary for a Slow Horses death: a public restroom. As the Slough House team tries to stay ahead of Russian assassins Jim and Jane, JK Coe, played by Tom Brooke, spots Jim going into the bathroom and follows him. What happens next is mostly kept off-screen, but it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out how bad the fight gets.
River Cartwright arrives soon after looking for Coe and finds him dead, propped against the wall with his abdomen cut open. It’s a horrible way for the character to go, made worse by how suddenly it happens. Coe has carried plenty of trauma throughout the series, and now there won’t be any neat resolution to that part of his story. Tom Brooke’s time on Slow Horses ends here, and the show makes sure his death feels less like a heroic sacrifice and more like the ugly reality of being hunted by people who really know what they’re doing.
Sid Baker Is Captured Before River Can Help
Sid Baker, played by Olivia Cooke, has already been one of the season’s biggest questions. She was presumed dead after being shot back in Season 1, only to turn up alive years later, and her return has left River and the rest of Slough House trying to figure out what actually happened to her. For a moment, it looks like Sid might make it through the latest attack with River and Coe.
Then Coe is killed, and everything falls apart again. The Russian operatives get to Sid and take her at gunpoint before she can escape. River reaches the parking lot just in time to see Coe’s car speeding away with Sid inside. He can’t do much about it either. He’s left without a car, a phone or even a weapon, basically standing there and watching another member of the team disappear. For River, who has spent so much of the season trying to make sense of Sid’s return, that has to be a particularly brutal moment.
Is Diana Taverner Behind More Than We Thought?
The more the season reveals about Sid, the harder it becomes to ignore Diana Taverner’s involvement. Kristin Scott Thomas’ MI5 deputy director previously erased Sid from the official system after she survived the shooting in Season 1, effectively allowing her to disappear and live quietly in a rural village. At the time, that could be viewed as Taverner protecting her.
Now it looks a lot more suspicious.
The Russian assassins aren’t just random killers who happened to stumble onto Sid and the Slough House team. They know where to find them, and they seem to have access to information that shouldn’t be available to outsiders. That makes it increasingly difficult to believe that nobody inside Regent’s Park is helping them. Taverner’s past decisions put her right in the middle of the question, especially if Sid was never as safe as she was led to believe.
And if Taverner really did make some kind of deal or pass along information, then this isn’t simply another MI5 operation that went wrong. It means somebody near the top may have deliberately put Sid, River and the rest of Slough House in danger.
What Happens to Slough House Now?
Coe’s death changes the situation for Jackson Lamb’s team in a way that the usual Slough House disasters don’t. These agents are used to being treated like MI5 rejects, but they’re not usually being picked off by professional assassins. With Coe dead, Sid in Russian custody and River suddenly stranded on his own, the team is running out of people and options at exactly the wrong time.
That also leaves Jackson Lamb, played by Gary Oldman, with another problem to solve. He now has to figure out who is leaking information from Regent’s Park while dealing with a team that has almost no reason left to trust the people above them. The whole point of Slough House has always been that these agents are underestimated, but Episode 4 pushes that idea into much darker territory. They’re going to have to survive this one largely on their own.
With only two episodes left in the season, the biggest question isn’t just whether Sid can be rescued or whether the Russians can be stopped. It’s how deep the betrayal inside MI5 actually goes. And given how Slow Horses usually handles these things, the answer probably isn’t going to make Jackson Lamb any happier with his employers.