The fantastic Apple TV+ spy thriller series, Slow Horses, is back once again, with its 5th season promising to be just as good as all the previous showings. Adapted from Mick Herron’s novel, “London Rules,” this season is all about political conspiracies and violent terrorist attacks, as is clear from the premiere episode. Slow Horses season 5 episode 1 kicks off with an unexpected mass shooting in a public market square, while some of the Slough House agents are still reeling from the horrific incidents from the end of season 4, which had been traumatic, to say the least.
Spoiler Alert
What is the case of the mass shooting?
Slow Horses season 5 episode 1 begins on a usual cloudy morning in London, specifically at the Abbotsfield Shopping Centre, when shops have only just started to open, and a middle-aged gentleman sets up his stand to campaign for one of the candidates in the upcoming mayoral elections. In a residential building overlooking the shopping arcade, another man sits down for his routine breakfast, consisting of milk and cereal, and there is nothing unusual about him until a certain poster on his wall becomes visible. The poster, although out of focus, carries some misogynist message, but it is still not enough for us to suspect the man of any serious crime. As he walks to his kitchen to do the dishes, the honks of a van parked on the backstreet interrupt his actions, and the man then goes down the stairs at the back of his flat to check on the matter.
Turns out, the van had parked down the road only for him and had been trying to alert him through the honks, as they had clearly planned from before. He walks up to the vehicle, opens the door on the back, pulls something out, and is next seen unassumingly walking to the center of the shopping arcade and sitting down on a bench. The man who had been setting up his political campaign stall tries to make some small talk with the younger man, but what follows is truly shocking. The younger man simply gets up from the bunch and pulls out an assault rifle from the bag that he had retrieved from the van just a few minutes ago. He then opens fire on the campaigner first, and then on just about everyone at the arcade. People run around panicking, trying to protect themselves from the seemingly deranged gunman, but most of them are shot before they can get to shelter. The casualty report revealed later in the episode mentions that 11 people have already died in the attack, while a few more have been seriously injured.
Surprisingly, the gunman’s antics are not the only mysterious thing in this case of mass shooting, as he himself is swiftly killed by a second gunman as soon as all the people in the arcade are down. The second gunman, a sniper who had been hiding in one of the nearby towers, quickly kills the mass shooter with a single high-caliber bullet to the side of his head and immediately packs up his things and leaves the scene, clearly to ensure that nobody spots him in the area. Incidentally, the sniper happens to run back to the back street and into the same white van seen earlier, before the vehicle speeds away. This last detail means that the same people who had given the assault rifle and the ammunition to the mass shooter had planned to have him executed by the second shooter, the sniper, with the latter being a part of the same group. Whether the mass shooter had actually been aware of his fate or whether it had been a surprise for him remains to be seen, although more details about the man are revealed in the episode eventually.
What are the Slough House agents up to?
Right after the incidents at Abbotsfield, the Slough House specialist hacker, Roddy Ho, is seen walking towards the office with his usual confidence, loud music blaring through his headphones. As always, Roddy is an absolute nuisance to everyone around him, in this case the helpless pedestrians who walk alongside him, as being a prick has become a central part of his personality by now. But as Roddy carelessly walks onto the narrow road to cross it, a white van speeds towards him and is surely about to hit him when someone runs up to him and pushes him away, narrowly avoiding being hit themselves. This second person happens to be Shirley Dander, another Slough House agent, and Roddy is not at all happy about her intervention, for he refuses to believe that the van would have hit him, and so he sees the whole incident as having only destroyed his perfect pair of headphones.
As the two characters make it back to Slough House, we get an update on each of the agents, and particularly about how they have been dealing with the unexpectedly bloody events from the end of season 4. River Cartwright was undoubtedly the one most affected by the incidents of the previous season, as he had found out that his father was actually a terrorist who had in fact returned to destroy London, and River himself had to stop the man and his multiple sons from doing so. Over the years (and the many seasons of Slow Horses), River has had to accept a number of strange situations and move on, and so he seems to have done the same with these specific incidents as well. The only person he mentions with some endearment is his grandfather, David, who has had to be put up at a retirement home now because of his failing memory.
Catherine Standish has also seen her fair share of violence and deaths in her career with MI5, because of which she does not seem to have been affected much by the incidents. Catherine continues to be her usual self, caring more about her peers than most others but also in particular about rules and protocol. But it is Shirley who has been rocked to her core by recent incidents, especially because of the death of agent Marcus Longridge, whom she had become very close friends with, as the two of them always stopped each other from indulging in their addictions. Shirley is clearly carrying her trauma still, which makes her fear, or suspect, that someone or other is still out to get the Slough House agents. Thus, she is also absolutely convinced that the white van, which was about to hit Roddy on the road, had specifically targeted him because he was a Slough House agent. However, Shirley’s suspicions are not taken seriously by anyone, and although Jackson Lamb later reveals that he does see merit in her hunch, the Slough House head does not show his concern to anyone.
How is the mass shooting seemingly politically linked?
What makes the case of the mass shooting much more complex than it originally seemed is the fact that it looks to have political links and a real conspiracy behind it. When Emma Flyte, the current Head of Dogs (the tactical unit of MI5), begins her investigation at the crime scene, one of her first moves is to check the apartment of the shooter, identified as Rob Trew, and as soon as she steps into the place, it becomes apparent that the man must have had some specific intentions. At the time, London is preparing for the mayoral elections, and the two most favorite candidates have already been decided. On one side is Dennis Gimball, a Conservative politician who intends to make Britain clean and crime-free again, by which he means to drive away all immigrants and people of color, and therefore he obviously has a strong base of supporters who consider him the only real candidate. On the other side is Zafar Jaffrey, a popular leader among the oppressed, who actually seems to care about the well-being of people facing hate and discrimination, or at least pretends very well to do so.
One of the first noticeable items at Rob Trew’s apartment happens to be a photograph of him with Dennis Gimball, taken at some public convention, along with a number of books by the politician. It seemed obvious the mass shooter must have been influenced by Gimball’s political vision, which was often very violent against the so-called intruders and immigrants in the country. To make matters even more apparent, the very first man whom Trew shot at the arcade had been campaigning for Zafar Jaffrey, Gimball’s direct rival not just in the mayoral elections but also ideologically. This situation makes it apparent that the political world will feature prominently in this season of Slow Horses, as the Director General of MI5, Claude Whelan, already meets with the two politicians before their mayoral debate, warning them about possible repercussions to the tragic incident.
However, it is also very clear that Rob Trew had been framed, at least to a certain degree, because of the way in which he himself had been shot dead by the sniper, who had belonged to the same group as him. Therefore, it is also possible that Gimball, and his political beliefs, are being framed by someone, as placing the books and the photograph inside the shooter’s apartment would have been possible for just about anyone. Perhaps someone higher in the political rungs of England does not want Gimball to be elected, and therefore wants to remove him through some political scandal. Whether the mastermind is a supporter of Jaffrey or whether there is some other mystery to the situation remains to be seen, though.
What more can be found about the shooter’s background?
After the initial stage of the investigation carried out by MI5, some significant details about Rob Trew’s background are found. The man surprisingly did not have any prior criminal record and was a loner after having become estranged from his family. His neighbors remember him as a cold and distant person who never got involved with anybody. This characteristic of Trew is also confirmed by the fact that he had been an active member of ‘The Unseen,’ a website specifically designed for disaffected males, as a sort of message board where they could talk about their woes and beliefs. On the site, Trew actively posted about how he was ignored and hated by women and society in general, and how he believed that his British identity was also under attack because of the outsiders and immigrants living in England. His misogynistic ideology was in fact evident from the very poster on the wall of his apartment, and it is now finally confirmed.
Interestingly, another user had been egging Trew to take action to address his miseries and had essentially pushed him towards committing the mass shooting, not just by giving him the idea but also seemingly by giving him the money and the weapons to do so. All data of this user had been wiped from the website before the attack, although Trew’s side of the chat clearly shows that the latter had told the former about his crusade against the tyranny he had been facing. Incidentally, the name of this second user, in the records of the website, is Sniper762, and as Emma Flyte clarifies, Trew had been ultimately shot dead by a sniper, using a 7.62 caliber bullet. Thus, all signs point to the fact that this second user had convinced Rob Trew, an ignorant and hateful man gullible enough to sacrifice his own life, and is now also playing a cat-and-mouse game with MI5. Flyte is confident that the perpetrator had intentionally left the bullet casing at the tower, which has led to the developments in the investigation so far, meaning that we can expect an intense competition between the two sides in the episodes to come.
Are River and Louisa going to get romantically involved?
Amidst all this, River also tries to romantically approach Louisa and ends up kissing her as well, as we had seen in the teaser at the end of season 4. After having experienced and endured a range of emotions at Slough House, Louisa Guy has now decided to take a break from the job, being granted a leave of 6 months as well. However, as she herself reveals towards the end of the episode, Louisa intends to quit the job permanently and never return to Slough House, which is apparent to every other member except for River. In fact, River is extremely disappointed and bitter at the fact that she will not be returning because of how close they had become in recent times.
At one point of the conversation, he completely misunderstands Louisa and lands a kiss on her lips, making it obvious that he had recently developed romantic attraction towards her. However, she is even more convinced that she needs distance from everyone at Slough House, including River. Therefore, at the end of Slow Horses episode 1, Louisa tells River that she does not want him to contact her and that she will call up herself if she feels like they can be friends again. Although a romantic relationship between the two is totally out of the question as of now, it is possible that they might team up once again because of Louisa’s extreme interest in solving crimes still.
Is Shirley’s suspicion about Roddy being in danger true?
Throughout Slow Horses season 5 episode 1, Shirley remains convinced that someone had intentionally tried to run over Roddy, and she even goes to the length of watching through the security camera footage from around the area and tracking down the white van. Incidentally, the van that almost caused the accident looked exactly like the one used by Trew’s killer to get away, meaning that these two cases will soon be connected to each other. In all probability, the Slough House members will eventually find the real perpetrators through Shirley’s intense search for the van that had tried to kill her colleague. However, at the very end of the episode, it is confirmed that Shirley’s suspicion about Roddy being in danger is very much true.
Roddy turns out to be dating a woman, which in itself is unbelievable and quite suspicious to all his colleagues, as it is indeed difficult to believe that any woman of sane mind would want to be with the obnoxious fellow. Therefore, they keep following the couple throughout the night, leading to Shirley mistaking someone carrying a bottle for an attacker armed with a knife and causing a ruckus at the nightclub. Although the colleagues end their pursuit for the truth midway, Roddy’s date is revealed to be surely up to something, as she is seen texting someone about the man returning to his apartment by himself right after dropping him. Whether the woman is in cahoots with some other power, or whether she is just trying to get Roddy robbed, remains to be seen, but this too is clearly going to be a subplot to follow in season 5.
