The 'Slow Horses' Season 4 Finale Says "Hello Goodbye"
Season 4's finale, “Hello Goodbye,” would be more aptly titled “The Many Dads of River Cartwright,” as no fewer than three Slow Horses older men are positioned as father figures to River (Jack Lowden) in the Season 4 finale. This paternal trifecta is the key to understanding what works and what doesn’t work about this season's sixth and final episode. It is also, depending on how you look at it, the best illustration of the show's strengths and weaknesses, an illuminating look at the show’s limitations.
After the motorcade ambush, Patrice brings River to a lovely cafe in Granary Square, Kings Cross, where a cool-headed Frank Harkness awaits him. River shares a revelation that we probably should have put together sooner: that he is Frank’s son. His mother is the young woman Chapman rescued from Les Arbres in exchange for MI-5 cold bodies years ago. Lowden and Weaving do fantastic work across the dining table as the growling and smarmy supervillain projects all his patriarchal possessiveness onto a very emotional young man who only now realizes how much of his family's suffering is because of this one man. Both families, really; Yves blew up the shopping mall because he lost control and wanted to lash out against his dad’s insane mercenary program. However, the scene ends with the real reason he brought Jack here: Harkness has lost most of his boys, so he offers River a job.
It’s the one dramatic misstep in an otherwise intense scene. There’s never a sense from Lowden that River is tempted to join Harkness & Sons – except for the fact that otherwise, Harkness will try to kill him.
