The Slow Horses Season 4 premiere may have given fans whiplash after seemingly killing off Jack Lowden River Cartwright and then making them wonder if he was dead at all.
The Apple TV+ spy thriller, starring the likes of Gary Oldman and Jonathan Pryce, made its triumphant return to streaming on Wednesday, September 4 to critical acclaim (debuting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes).
This season, subtitled Spook Street, continues to recount the dramatic ins and outs of a dysfunctional team of MI5 agents who seem to be working at the bottom of the international intelligence ladder.
[ Full Cast of Slow Horses Season 3 - Every Main Actor & Character In New Episodes (Photos) ]
Did River Cartwright Die in Slow Horses?
Season 4, Episode 1 of Slow Horses centered on the supposed death of a longtime character, River Cartwhire, but whether he is actually dead remains a major conversation point.
The Season 4 premiere (aka "Identity Theft") partly focuses on Jack Lowden's MI5 agent and his ailing grandfather, David (played by acting icon Jonathan Pryce).
Pryce's Slow Horses, who is a retired MI5 officer, has started to lose his memory in the Apple TV+ drama and has developed a delusion that he may be on a kill list with a bounty potentially hanging on his head.
This seemingly complicates River's visit to his grandfather. As the young intelligence agent seemingly arrives at David's door, the elderly Cartwright questions whether it is his grandson at all.
The show cleverly never shows the face of the man arriving at David's apartment, but the audience is made to assume it is River and he is there to help.
This sequence comes to a head when David's mental lapses get the better of him, assuming the man said to be River to be an intruder and shooting him in the forehead.
The rest of the episode is focused on the rest of the MI5 team trying to uncover if the man who David shot was, in fact, his grandson, with some members of the team believing River is dead.
One key member of the Slough House team, Gary Oldman's Jackson lamb, is notably unshaken by the entire affair though.
Even though the body found slumped in David's bathtub had River's ID and wallet on him, Oldman's Lamb is unfazed by the whole thing, giving the impression that he may know more than he is leading on.
The episode comes to an end with Lamb visiting/confronting his former office assistant and River's former mentee, Catherine Standish (played by Saskia Reeves).
He claims Standish has seen both David and River since the supposed murder, which she denies. He continues to press her, finally learning that River had staged his death and is very much alive but is now living off the grid somewhere in Europe.
Fans get one last small scene in the Season 4 premiere, proving that River is, in fact, alive. He is seen in the French countryside traipsing about the landscape. This sets up a mystery that will surely be addressed later in the season: why did River want everyone to think he was dead?
Slow Horses is now streaming on Apple TV+.
