Slow Horses season 5 episode 5 recap: Tara and the Piccadilly Circus showdown
'Name someone with a grudge against penguins? Batman'Slow Horses season 5 episode 5 sets us up for what promises to be a thrilling finale.
The penultimate episode of Slow Horses season 5 ended with a perfectly executed plot twist – and just when you thought it couldn’t top episode 4’s darkly comic cliffhanger.
After five episodes we finally learned more about this season’s villains: who they are, their motive for revenge and how clever they can be. Playing MI5 at their own game and winning so far, these terrorists seem unstoppable. But can the Slow Horses save the day?
Here’s everything that went down in episode 5 and all the plot points to remember, so you’re completely clued up ahead of the anticipated season finale.
***Warning: spoilers from Slow Horses season 5 episode 5 ahead***
Slow Horses season 5 episode 5 recap:
Episode 5 began with the terrorists re-grouping after their failed assassination of Zahar Jaffrey (Nick Mohammed). The three men argued that their plan was over, until one spotted the news that Dennis Gimball had died. His death meant that step 5 of the destabilisation strategy was complete: the assassination of a populist leader. “Now let’s blind them,” concluded the leader.
Following their failure to protect Gimball, River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) and Coe (Tom Brooke) were summoned to meet Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) at their usual meeting spot: “Piss alley”. The two stopped to get themselves cleaned up first.
Meanwhile, Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) and Standish (Saskia Reeves) returned to Slough House. They filled Lamb in on how they successfully stopped Jaffrey from being assassinated. Lamb told them it didn’t matter now that Gimball was dead.
River and Coe relayed to Lamb what happened to Gimball. Coe handed over Gimball’s dictaphone to Lamb as proof of their innocence. Lamb lambasted the pair and headed to the Park to fill Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) in on recent events.
Destabilisation strategy: The next step revealed
Taverner and first chair Claude Whelan (James Callis) met with Lamb. He informed them that the terrorists were carrying out an old MI5 tactic called the destabilisation strategy, which was now being used against them.
“Abbotsfield, the traffic disruption, the bomb at the zoo, Gimball,” he said, which translated to: “Attack the village, disrupt the transport, seize the media, whack a populist leader.”
Whelan wasn’t convinced but Tavener was intrigued. She asked Lamb who he thought the enemy was and he shared his theory that the terrorists were Libyans. He believed they wanted payback after the UK pulled out of Libya and left them to fend for themselves after the death of Colonel Gaddafi.
Jackson also provided the Park with the number plate of the terrorists’ white van. Devon confirmed that the van had been tracked to a car park at London City airport. Lamb then confirmed the next step of the destabilisation strategy: Blind your enemy.
Whelan rubbished Lamb’s theory and claimed he was only at the park to check in with MI5 archivist Molly Doran. He informed Lamb that Molly had been let go by MI5. However, Taverner was more trusting of Lamb’s theory. She briefed Emma Flyte (Ruth Bradley) to ask Tara (Hiba Bennani) about the destabilisation strategy during her continued interrogation.
Tara’s interrogation
Throughout the episode, MI5 had been continuing to question Roddy’s fake girlfriend Tara. They now knew that Tara was a 28-year-old Libyan who fled the country after the 2011 coup and had settled in Paris. She then returned to the UK a year ago as a student
During Flyte’s interrogation, Tara told her that she was threatened to honeytrap Roddy (Christopher Chung) by four masked men. She also confirmed that when left unattended with Roddy’s laptop, when he had hacked the MI5 database, she had typed in a code that the terrorists gave her. She proceeded to give the code to Flyte for IT to look into.
When Flyte brought up the destabilisation strategy, Tara confirmed the terrorists were following it. “If I meet them again, they’re going to kill me,” she said. She told Flyte that she met the terrorists while wanting to learn more about her heritage and that things escalated into terror activities as the men wanted revenge for Britain’s wrongdoing against Libya.
Flyte then asked Tara what the next step of their plan was and she replied that they talked about “bodies raining from the sky”. Checking in with Devon, who had found the white van, Flyte learned that they had recovered guns from the van. They had also found a map circling all the major airports in London: Gatwick, Heathrow, City and Luton.
As MI5 amped up security at the airports, IT provided Taverner and Flyte an update on Tara’s code. They said that the code needed to be run on the original device it was intended for: Roddy’s laptop. Roddy was subsequently released from his cell and asked to run the code for them.
Whelan’s plan
Back at Slough House, River received a call from his grandad David (Jonathan Pryce) who had pieced together the destabilisation strategy based on recent news reports. David, who has been diagnosed with dementia, couldn’t remember the whole strategy and kept repeating the word honey. River replied that he was referring to Tara the honey trapper. He calmed his grandad down and agreed to see him for lunch on Sunday.
Meanwhile Lamb, post-Park visit sought out former archivist Molly (Naomi Wirthner) at her flat. She confirmed that she’d been let go, under Whelan’s orders. Lamb filled her in on the destabilisation strategy and his suspicions that the terrorists might be Libyan. She told him to check the files, but Lamb was sure she’d taken and kept the particular file he was after.
Next we saw Tara and Whelan walking in a London park flanked by security. Whelan confronted Tara over her previous comment about being killed if she met the terrorists again. He deduced that she had plans to meet them. She confessed this was true, with it arranged that she was to meet them at midnight tonight at Piccadilly Circus.
Whelan convinced her to go ahead with the meeting, promising MI5 agents would be trailing her and that they would arrest the terrorists after she met them.
Back at the park, Taverner warned Whelan that it was a risk to put Tara in the field as she’s not a trained agent. But Whelan was resolute: “I’ll handle Tara, you focus on the code.”
Piccadilly Circus showdown
Flyte arrived with Tara at Piccadilly Circus ready for her to go ahead with the meet. Tara then panicked and said she couldn’t do it, so Flyte called Whelan. He reassured Tara by confirming that MI5 had her protected, with a tracking device and microphone on her jacket and a team following her from a safe distance behind. Tara then agreed to go ahead with the meet.
Back at Slough House, Shirley had found Roddy’s keepsake box of his relationship with Tara. Shirley, Standish and Coe were going through it and noticed a ticket from city hall, the same venue where Zahar Jaffrey’s rally was held. They also found a fridge magnet for Regent’s Park Zoo, the same place where the bomb killed the penguins. They deduced that Tara had been scoping out all the locations that made up the destabilisation strategy and must be in on it all.
The action returned to Tara, who was headed to Piccadilly Circus underground station as part of the meet. MI5 watched her descend the steps and then turned to the tracking device to follow her due to the station being a CCTV dark spot. Tara removed the coat and left it for a busker, continuing on her way.
Blind the Enemy
Back at MI5, Roddy had successfully inputted Tara’s code into his computer. He noticed that she had copied a file about Claude Whelan over when she had gained access to the database previously. The code then started performing other actions that the IT team were unable to control or stop.
With the tracking device stationary, a panicked Whelan ordered Flyte and her team to find Tara. Flyte ran down and saw the abandoned jacket. In the meantime, Tara was seen exiting the underground station. Smiling, she hopped into a car, reuniting with her fellow terrorists and escaped.
Ending the episode at M15, the code had overpowered the Park’s IT software and had completely shut down their system. It was only then that Whelan caught on. “Blind your enemy,” he said defeated.
How many episodes of Slow Horses season 5?
There are a total of six episodes in Slow Horses season 5. This follows the same episode number as previous series.
Apple TV+ has released five episodes of season 5 now, with the sixth and final episode landing on the streaming service on Wednesday 29 October.
The titles of the episodes in season 5 are as follows:
1: Bad Dates
2: Incommunicado
3: Tall Tales
4: Missiles
5: Circus
6: Scars
