The 'Footprints' of 'Slow Horses' Season 3 Finale Ring Hollow

For the loyal viewers who’ve watched three seasons of Slow Horses secretly pining for all our characters to get embroiled in a life-or-death gun battle, Season 3’s finale, “Footprints,” certainly delivers. For everyone else who’s enjoyed the back alley, rough-around-the-edges spy work, and volatile character dynamics, “Footprints” is a bit of a hollow endnote. The consequences of sanding off all the messiness and intrigue of previous seasons have revealed themselves: Season 3 is a tight adventure dedicated to pure thrill, but it feels like an overcorrection. It’s never failed to entertain, but Season 3 wasn’t really about anything. Does this reveal an inherent flaw to Slow Horses on a premise level?

With the goal of not simply describing a series of action sequences: River recovers from the grenade blast, and Sean presses down more return fire on the Chieftain agents who’ve breached the facility’s lower levels – quite effectively, we might add, as Duffy gets the first sign that this isn’t going to be an easy execution job. River, Sean, and Louisa make it out with the Footprint file, but Sean is badly wounded. Meanwhile, Marcus and Shirley are pinned down around the perimeter, unsure how they’re going to rescue their friends.

As Hobbs and the previously-kidnapped Chieftain agent approach the Dunn safehouse, Jackson lays out some Home Alone-style traps (sidenote: the number of serious thrillers I’ve seen deploy what are commonly referred to as “Home Alone traps” makes me think that, in reality, Kevin McCallister was just doing actual guerilla warfare). The Chieftain agent is set alight when he opens the front door; Hobbs slips on the stairs and shoves his hand on a blade hidden on the banister. In my opinion, the rag he uses to bandage his lacerated hand should have been preemptively doused in bleach; it’s a real missed opportunity.