Slow Horses Season 5 Ending Explained: The Twist That Seals Tara's Fate
Slow Horses Season 5 explodes into chaos as Tara blindsides MI5, triggers a shutdown code that plunges the agency into darkness, then bolts to the Libyan Embassy to demand ransom by targeting a place of worship. Lamb and his misfits race to foil the plot—until the endgame twists one last time.
Heads up: full-on spoilers for Slow Horses Season 5, Episode 6, 'Scars', ahead. The finale lights the fuse on MI5, drags the Slow Horses into another mess, and still finds time to set the table for the next two seasons. It is a lot.
The short version: Tara breaks MI5, then runs into her own mess
Tara starts the hour by pulling a nasty trick: she manipulates MI5 into triggering a code that bricks their systems, plunging the office into chaos. While everyone scrambles, she bolts to the Libyan Embassy and takes the ambassador at gunpoint. Her ask is specific and bold: 100 million pounds paid into a Cayman trust called Albion Holdings, plus safe passage out of the country. The plan is the capper to a wider destabilization play that ends with a terrorist attack on a place of worship.
Here is where her supposed masterstroke cracks: Diana Taverner signs off on the payout and even dispatches the Dogs to escort Tara to an airport. But Tara’s partners, Farouk and Kamal, refuse to stand down after the money hits. They keep the attack on, which strands Tara in the embassy, surrounded and suddenly very dispensable.
Jackson Lamb, obviously, stays three steps ahead. He maneuvers the whole affair so Tara ends up back in MI5’s hands. She is the only member of her cell taken alive. The rest do not walk away: Farouk and Kamal are killed during the Abbotsfield attack, and Sami is shot by River Cartwright while trying to assassinate Claude Whelan. The Horses manage to stop the attack and save the mayor, but it is ugly getting there.
One curveball: Standish briefly helps Tara slip the leash, which does not exactly play like standard operating procedure, but it is a thing that happens amid the chaos. In the aftermath, Whelan is pushed into a humiliating retirement, while Slough House remains open for business — which in this universe means more dead drops, more disasters, and more of Lamb’s world-class insults. And for what it is worth, Tara earns her reputation here as a legit, terrifying operator, even if her grand design detonates in her face.
What the finale sets up
'S6 of SLOW HORSES to be first to combine 2 Books - JOE COUNTRY & SLOUGH HOUSE. Concerns as so much happens in both, stories will need to be cut. Major plot line of SLOUGH HOUSE is the return of Sid Baker, yet I see no sign of my girl Olivia Cooke in the S6 preview.'
- a fan observation, Oct 29, 2025
Apple already locked in more chaos: Season 6 and Season 7 are both a go. A few behind-the-scenes notes worth flagging, because they matter for what comes next:
- Status and timing: Season 6 has finished filming, with release set for Fall 2026, and Season 7 is expected to shoot soon after for a 2027 window. As of October 2025, new episodes and story arcs were already in post. There is even a Season 6 teaser floating around.
- Source material: Season 6 adapts two Mick Herron novels at once — 'Joe Country' and 'Slough House' — which is ambitious. That likely means compressions and cuts. One big book plot is Sid Baker’s return; fans have noticed no obvious Olivia Cooke sighting in early preview footage.
- Premise for Season 6: A classified file with the Horses’ real identities goes missing, turning them into targets and forcing Slough House fully underground. Diana Taverner mounts a revenge play while the wider political weather — Brexit-level turbulence — rumbles in the background.
- Cast: Expect the core crew back — Gary Oldman (Jackson Lamb), Jack Lowden (River Cartwright), and Kristin Scott Thomas (Diana Taverner). Hugo Weaving is on board as a recurring guest.
- Format: Both upcoming seasons stick with the six-episode structure.
Quick primer if you are catching up
'Slow Horses' is a British spy thriller with a darkly funny mean streak, created by Will Smith (the writer, not that one) and based on Mick Herron’s Slough House novels. It launched on Apple TV+ on April 1, 2022, and has rolled through five seasons so far, with a sixth and seventh locked in.
The ensemble is stacked: Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, and Kristin Scott Thomas lead, alongside Sophie Okonedo, Jonathan Pryce, Saskia Reeves, Rosalind Eleazar, Christopher Chung, and Aimee-Ffion Edwards. The show’s racked up hardware too — two Emmys in 2024 and 2025, including Outstanding Writing and Drama Series — and sits on 16 wins with 87 total nominations. Oldman has nabbed top-actor honors along the way. Critics keep praising the grounded spycraft and the performances, and the fanbase shows up every season because the show rarely misses.
What did you make of the finale? I am torn between admiring Tara’s audacity and wanting Lamb to nap for a month. 'Slow Horses' is streaming now on Apple TV+ in the U.S.