Whether Olivia Cooke's Sid died or not in Slow Horses is still a major question amongst fans of the series.
The award-winning Apple TV+ series has become well-known for its stellar cast, led by the likes of Gary Oldman and Jack Lowden (read more about the Slow Horses cast).
One of the biggest names attached to the show in its four-season run so far has been Cooke (best known for playing Alicent Hightower in House of the Dragon). In the series, Cooke played the role of Sid Baker, a fellow agent banished alongside the rest of MI5's leftovers to the division known as Slough House.
Did Sid Die in Slow Horses?
those who may be watching Slow Horses Season 4, may be confused as to where Olivia Cooke's character, Sid Baker has gone.
Cooke appeared as the disgraced MI5 agent in Season 1 of the show, being the biggest question mark for Jack Lowden's River Cartwright for how she ended up in the division known for being the intelligence agency's dumping ground.
Her character is quickly taken off the board though. Sid is shot in Season 1, Episode 2 by a masked man aiding the far-right journalist, Robert Hobden (Paul Hilton), whom she was tailing at the time.
This leaves Sid in critical condition as the rest of Slough House grapples with the potential loss of one of their own.
Audiences (along with the show's cast of characters) are told in Episode 5 of that first season that Sid sadly succumbed to her gunshot wounds and died in her hospital bed.
While that usually would be enough to confirm a character's fate, the future of Sid is a little more complicated than that.
At no point in Slow Horses Season 1 do they show Sid's dead body, making some wonder if she may, in fact, have survived her brush with death and has gone into deep cover somewhere.
In the time since her death, there have been a few clues potentially alluding to the character's survival as well.
At the end of Season 1, it was revealed that all of Sid's information had been wiped from existence, with MI5 outright denying she was ever a part of the team.
This sort of caginess surrounding what exactly happened to the former Slough House agent has kept both the characters in the series and those watching it hot on the case of Sid's on-screen fate.
Will Sid Ever Return in Slow Horses?
With Olivia Cooke's Sid being presumed dead in Slow Horses, her potential return may be confusing to some. There is some precedent to say that her time in the hit streaming drama is not over.
In the Slough House series of novels by Mick Herron, the Sid character does eventually come back into the fray, being revealed in Book 7 (titled The Drop) to be alive.
The novella centers on Sid popping back up into the life of River Cartwright (played by Jack Lowden) and looking for help.
Throughout the story, what exactly happened to Sid is laid out for the reader. After being shot she was evacuated to a Secret Service facility in the Lake District of Northern England (via I Read Therefore I Blog).
While her return is a little shocking, it is not the first time in the franchise a character has strategically faked their death. An ongoing plot point in Season 4 of the Apple TV+ adaptation has seen Jack Lowden's River Cartwright fake his death to pursue a mission without the oversight of MI5 and the Slough House leadership.
Seeing as the Slow Horses series has followed the books fairly closely, it would not be all that surprising if Sid were to turn up in future seasons.
If the series continues at the pace it has, Season 4 (which is ongoing at the time of writing) should cover up to the end of Herron's Spook Street novel. The next book to be adapted in the series is London Rules, which directly teases the return of Sid.
That means one could likely expect Olivia Cooke's take on the character to come back from the dead at some point either late into Season 5 or to start Season 6.
Slow Horses is now streaming on Apple TV+.
