Episode 5 of the 5th season of Apple TV+’s spy thriller series Slow Horses reveals more about the synchronized terrorist attack on London and sets up an intense and exciting finale. At the end of the previous episode, JK Coe and River Cartwright had accidentally caused the death of the mayoral candidate, Dennis Gimball, and they fear facing the consequences of this strange mistake. More importantly, Roddy Ho’s supposed girlfriend, Tara, had been arrested by MI5, and she is now being interrogated for more information on involvement in the terrorist attacks.
Spoiler Alert
What is everyone’s reaction to Gimball’s death?
Slow Horses season 5 episode 5 begins with the Libyan terrorists driving to a spot close to the airport, where they have an argument about what had just transpired. Sami is extremely frustrated at their leader, Farouk’s inability to have assassinated Zafar Jaffrey as per the plan, and he now expresses that he no longer wants to play a part in the attacks. In fact, Sami believes that their whole plot has failed, since a crucial step of the destabilization strategy, which they have been following to the t, was skipped over. There can be no more action without the assassination of a populist leader, he states, much to the wrath of Farouk, who is already angry about the Slough House agents having interrupted his assassination attempt.
Farouk simply pulls out his gun and points it at Sami, making it clear that if the latter decides to suddenly leave the group, then he will be instantly killed. It is obvious that the terrorists will have to kill Sami to avoid him talking to the authorities if he decides to walk away. Farouk just wants to state that he will have no hesitation in considering Sami a deserter if he does actually leave, and will therefore not think twice before killing him. The third member, Kamal, has to step in between them to stop the bickering, and this is when they also spot the breaking news flash up on a nearby signboard, which mentions that Dennis Gimball has been found dead.
This strange and unexpected news lifts the group’s spirits, as it helps them continue with their plan. Although they have played no part in Gimball’s death, they can very well claim to have assassinated the populist leader. Being a terrorist group, they do not care whether these claims can ever be proven or not, and Sami has to be convinced some more to bring him back on the same side. Ultimately, the three men decide to go ahead with the next stage of their destabilization strategy, which is to ‘blind your enemy.’ Incidentally, Farouk had even fired the gun in the air to scare Sami, and this gunshot was reported to the authorities, leading to MI5 believing that the next attack was going to take place at the airport, since the terrorists had been having their argument at a parking lot near there.
Meanwhile, River and Coe sit in their car, trying to decide how to cover up their involvement in the politician’s death. Coe manages to buy some new clothes for River, as his old clothes had been smeared with the pink paint from the can that had fallen on Gimball’s head. River soon receives a text message from Jackson Lamb, asking to meet at a spot for an unofficial debrief, and he is tremendously scared about the repercussions of their mistake. He fears that they will be fired from MI5 and might even face charges for having caused the accident, and therefore decides to keep it all a secret from everyone. River makes up his mind to tell Lamb that he and Coe had reached the location late, and Gimball had already died by then. As they meet Lamb at the designated spot, River tries to sell this lie as well, but ends up being suspected by his boss. River repeatedly apologizes for being late to the spot and for being unable to save the politician, but Lamb already has the information that the terrorists had actually targeted Zafar Jaffrey, who had been saved by Catherine and Shirley. Moreover, he suspects why River is being apologetic for failing at a task, as it’s out of character.
As soon as Lamb confronts River, he spills the truth, causing the Slough House boss to be frustrated by this terrible mistake. But Lamb assures him and Coe that he will obviously not be reporting the matter to the Regent Park head office, not because he wants to protect them personally, but because he knows that doing so will lead to Slough House being shut down. Coe believes that they do not need to fear Tyson Bowman telling the authorities about the Slough House agents having been present at the scene, as he must be really pleased with the death of the racist politician. Plus, they also have the only piece of incriminating evidence, which is Gimball’s Dictaphone, which had recorded River and Coe’s conversation, meaning that they do not have to fear being exposed.
As far as the public is concerned, nobody really suspects any serious foul play in Gimball’s death, as it is reported that an accident claimed his life. Certain sections of society are bound to suspect a connection between the attack at Abbotsfield and Gimball’s accidental death, as it looks like a real conspiracy, which Claude Whelan even points out. Even River’s grandfather, David Cartwright, calls him up to tell him how he feels about Dennis Gimball’s death. David states that nobody will care about the death of a bigot like Gimball, who would have lost the election anyway. This suggests that the politician’s death will indeed not create any more fuss for the characters, and most will forget about it in an instant.
What does the interrogation with Tara reveal?
From the beginning of the episode, Tara is interrogated at the Regent Park headquarters by the Dogs’ head, Emma Flyte. Interestingly, Tara’s story keeps changing, as she keeps revealing the truth in parts, seemingly just to protect herself from legal persecution. First, she tries to claim that she is just the innocent girlfriend of Roddy, but when Emma explains how no sane woman would be with Roddy, she changes her story. Tara reveals that four masked men, the Libyan terrorists, had come to her house and forced her to fake an interest in Roddy and get close to him. They had wanted to use Tara to get to Roddy, because of his position as the tech guy at MI5, and threatened to kill her if she did not comply. She claims that she had been approached only because of the fact that she too was a Libyan national, but had been living in the UK much longer than the four terrorists.
Tara Younis is indeed a Libyan national, as confirmed by the background check, and her parents had fled to France following the coup in 2011, which had led to the death of Muammar Gaddafi. The report suggests that Tara had moved to the UK a year ago and that she has been involved in political campaigns like any other educated woman of her age, but there is nothing else about her that immediately sticks out. She states that the terrorists had wanted her to make Roddy open up the MI5 database in front of her so that she could type in a code sneakily. Emma obviously asks Tara to write the code, which she remembers only because of the trauma she had experienced at the hands of the terrorists, and so she writes it down for her interrogator.
However, there is another change in the story some time later, when Jackson Lamb walks into the Regent Park office and tells Diana Taverner and Claude Whelan about the terrorists using the UK’s old destabilization strategy against them. Although Whelan refuses to believe that such a preposterous and strategic plan is in effect against them, Diana decides to investigate the matter by mentioning the different steps of the strategy in front of Tara. Sure enough, Tara recognizes the names of the steps when Emma reads them out to her, and she reveals that there is more to what she had said so far. She states that she was the one who had actually come up with the plan of using the UK’s old destabilization strategy from the Cold War era to attack the country.
Just like many other Libyan youngsters, Tara too had been of the opinion that the lives of millions of their fellow Libyans had been destroyed by the UK’s political decisions during the coup, and so they held the British government and people responsible for their collective misery. During a meeting of a Libyan cultural group, where young people from the country met to discuss their cultural heritage, Tara had met the four terrorists and shared her theoretical plan to use the destabilization strategy. Neither did she have any intentions of actually staging any such attacks, nor did she feel that the four men were serious about launching them. By the time Tara had realized that the four men were actually terrorists who very much wanted to attack London, it was too late. Tara’s efforts to wiggle out of the plan had apparently failed, as she was threatened by the men, who forced her to get close to Roddy and type the code into the MI5 database.
Is there going to be a change in the MI5 hierarchy?
Based on the developments in Slow Horses season 5 episode 5, it seems possible that there will once again be a change in the MI5 hierarchy, with Claude Whelan having to step down from the position of Director. To begin with, Diana Taverner clearly trusts others more than her immediate superior, especially Jackson Lamb, because of his vast experience. Diana literally shushes Whelan when he tries to throw a fit after she chooses to believe in Lamb’s claim about the destabilization strategy. This is also when Whelan decides to take up action and be the proactive and intelligent leader of the MI5 by putting immense faith in Tara Younis. Despite it being proven that Tara is a Libyan national resentful of the British government and people, Whelan chooses to trust her and put her on the ground to get to the terrorists through her.
During her interrogation, Tara states that she is scared to reveal the truth because she knows that the terrorists will kill her when they meet once again. Whelan feels that he is the only one to have noticed how she used the word ‘when,’ instead of ‘if,’ which suggested that Tara is sure to meet the terrorists again. Thus, he has her taken out of the holding cell, and then he personally comforts her to learn that she is indeed supposed to be meeting the terrorists on this very night. Without giving it any serious thought, or crucially, discussing it with Diana, Whelan sets up an operation for the night where Tara, wearing a jacket with a location tracker and a microphone, will go to meet with the terrorists.
As soon as Diana learns of this hasty operation, she realizes how it can all go wrong very easily, as Tara could have been lying about the whole situation. Crucially, Diana starts to lose faith in Claude Whelan, and she can very easily have him removed from office, as it was she who had put him in the position in the first place. Meanwhile, Jackson Lamb sets out to find more information about the identities of current or ex-Libyan security chiefs who have had a long-standing animosity against the British government, since such a person of position is sure to be involved with the terrorist attacks. In order to find the files that might contain this information, Lamb has to visit Molly Doran, the ex-records keeper at Regent Park. This is the first time that Lamb learns how Molly had been fired from MI5, personally by Claude Whelan himself, and so this suggests that a secret plot might have been hatched by the two of them. Lamb desperately needs to know about certain documents that only Molly can lead him to, but on the other side, he has access to Dennis Gimball’s Dictaphone, which has information about Whelan’s frequent habit of hiring sex workers. It is very likely that Lamb will sell out this information to Molly to get to his documents, which will then lead to Whelan being fired from MI5 for the public scandal.
How does Tara fool Claude Whelan and the MI5 authorities?
It is at the very end of Slow Horses season 5 episode 5 that the real truth is revealed, as Tara Younis had actually always been intricately involved with the terrorist attack on London. She was indeed the mastermind behind the whole plan and had even been working very closely with the three other men (the fourth member had been killed by the group earlier) during the operation. After being arrested by MI5, Tara had cleverly come up with an elaborate lie to claim that she was being threatened by the terrorists into working for them, with the intention of gaining their sympathy. She succeeds in winning over Claude Whelan, who chooses to trust her and make her help MI5 nab the terrorists. In reality, Whelan essentially lets Tara free on the street, and then when she pretends to be too scared while outside the tube station, he even tells her how her jacket is fitted with tracking and surveillance devices.
All that Tara needs to do, after she is allowed to walk into the tube station alone, is throw away her jacket and go ahead with her original plan of meeting up with her comrades. But what she intelligently does with the fake code that she gives to the MI5 authorities seems to suggest that Tara had always planned on being arrested, only so that she could sell them the lie about the terrorists forcing her to type in a code into the MI5 database. The code she had told them was not really fake but a crucial part of her plan, as the MI5 hackers needed to type it in themselves to check what it had done to the database. Tara had never entered the code in the database, and she had told this lie only to ensure that the hackers would now type it into the terminal at MI5.
In reality, this code is a powerful program to shut down all the computers and electronic devices connected to a network, and so when it is typed in at Regent Park, it immediately shuts down all the computers and devices, turning the place completely cut off from the outside world. Despite always surveilling everything that happens in England as part of their job, the MI5 authorities are now literally blinded, meaning that this had been the fifth stage of the destabilization strategy all along. Tara had even made up a fake clue about the terrorists mentioning something about death falling from the sky, making the authorities believe that their next step was to attack the airport or hijack airplanes in the sky. However, their plan to blind the enemy had been executed in this precise manner, setting up for an explosive finale next week, when the Slough House agents will be expected to step up and stop the last stage of the attack before it is too late.
