Review: Slow Horses, "Scars" | Season 5, Episode 6

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After finishing “Scars,” I went back to the fourth season finale.

This is one of the novelties of Slow Horses’ production schedule: because the seasons are filming a full two years ahead of their debut, the following season has long finished production when a season airs. This has led to “Next Season” previews unlike anything else in television, with fully formed teaser trailers for Slough House’s next misadventure.

While binging through the first four seasons, these felt somewhat unnecessary, as they were trailers for what I was going to start watching the next day. But this marks the first time when it really is a distant preview of scenes I won’t see for another year, which is how those of you who have kept up with the series have experienced them throughout its run. And so I went back to explore the question of how accurate that preview was to the fifth season we just finished.

In some ways, the preview offers clarity the season itself withholds: we actively see Flyte explaining the destabilization strategy, something the show itself took a couple episodes to articulate. In other cases, though, the trailer suggests storylines that don’t really manifest, like River and Louisa’s kiss that ended up writing the latter out of the show entirely. And then you have moments like River and Coe in the aftermath of Gimball’s death which show us enough to know something has gone terribly wrong, but leave the actual details for us to find out later.

The previews have an effect of reinforcing Slow Horses’ other distinctive quality, which is its narrative turnover each year. Even as we’re finishing one story, we’re reminded that there’s just going to be another one that resets our characters into a new conflict. It would be a lie to say the show lacks seriality, but it’s hard to ignore that a season which started out exploring the PTSD from last season ended up mostly ignoring it by the time we reached this finale. The opening to “Scars” is notable in that it doesn’t involve Slough House at all, with Ho the only team member present as MI5 deals with the terrorists. While the episode as a whole is still the story of Lamb and Slough House one step ahead of the Park in foiling the Libyan dissidents’ last gasp efforts, it’s hard to say that it ties into meaningful character arcs for characters like Shirley or River—even Ho doesn’t really get much in the way of resolution here.