Apple TV+ has dropped the first trailer for the sixth season of Slow Horses, and it brings back a character fans thought was gone for good. The Emmy- and BAFTA-winning spy thriller premieres Wednesday, Sept. 16, with new episodes rolling out weekly through Oct. 21.
Gary Oldman’s irascible MI5 boss Jackson Lamb is trying to get to the bottom of who keeps killing off his Slough House agents. The trailer opens with Lamb antagonizing his own boss, MI5 First Desk Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas), before asking why current and former members of his division keep turning up dead. It also confirms the return of Olivia Cooke as Sid Baker, the agent who was shot in the head in season one and was believed to have died.
A Bloodbath
The team pieces together that they are being targeted.
“It’s a bloodbath,” Lamb says.
Everyone connected to Slough House is rounded up at a safe house and told to go off the grid — “Stay dark. No phones.” — an order several characters ignore, including tech expert Roddy (Christopher Cho), who answers his phone anyway. Hugo Weaving’s Frank Harkness, the nefarious birth father of agent River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), also makes an appearance, and the trailer previews plenty of explosions, shootouts and hand-to-hand combat.
Who Is Sid Baker?
Sid, a talented spy who confessed to River that Taverner sent her to Slough House to keep an eye on him, spent time in intensive care before the team was told she’d died. But in the season one finale, Roddy discovered her MI5 records had been erased — a hint she might be alive after all. At the end of the trailer, Lamb tells his assistant Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves), “Oh come on, we’re spies. We’ve all faked our death at one time or another.” It then cuts to River coming face-to-face with Sid.
Apple describes the new season as one where “the Slow Horses [are] on the run as Diana Taverner embroils them all in a fatally high-stakes game of retaliation and revenge.” This season adapts Mick Herron’s novels Joe Country and Slough House, with Gaby Chiappe taking over as showrunner from Will Smith. Adam Randall returns to direct.
Why It Matters
Slow Horses is one of Apple TV+‘s signature hits, and season five left the future of the team hanging in the balance. Bringing back a character fans mourned is the kind of twist that fuels water-cooler and social conversation heading into awards season. With a new showrunner and the source novels’ darkest stretch ahead, the pressure is on for season six to land the landing.
