'Slow Horses' Brought One of Its Most Powerful Characters Low

AppleTV’s Slow Horses excels at telling chaotic shaggy-dog spy stories in which nothing, absolutely nothing, goes according to plan. Havoc reigns, whether it’s the slapstick mistakes of the titular Horses or the clownish misleadership at Regent’s Park. The series structures its chaos with a handful of constants, elements that stay largely unchanged and lend a little stability to the proceedings. This season, the show seems to be knocking its pillars down and throwing its characters into new territory. Grandpa David is dead, taking all the comfort and guidance with him. River is adrift in his grief, introducing a new level of sincerity to the show. And as of the most recent episode (“Sayonara”), another pillar has fallen. Diana Taverner, the icy operator supreme, has found herself in over her head. Humbling a character so powerful is a gutsy move, and it’s one of the best choices the series has made this season.

As played by the absolutely divine Kristin Scott Thomas, Taverner has been Slough House’s most consistent and consistently watchable antagonist. Lady Di is a poised, elegant, and ruthless power player who climbed the leadership ladder through deliciously mean chicanery and guile. She’s made mistakes and overplayed her hand before, but still retained an aura of unflappable competence and resolve. She’s the ideal foil for Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), and their rivalry is one of the great engines of the show. So what happens when Taverner gets everything she wants, but she’s worse off than ever?

Taverner’s time as First Desk has blown up in her face. The Cantor interview made her look uncharacteristically sloppy and mealy-mouthed, not to mention the questionable decision to sit for Cantor in the first place. Taverner’s off-book assassination of Russian asset Kazan was messy enough to incur the wrath of her bureaucratic superior. To top it all off, her vacation home has become the increasingly messy safehouse for the surviving Horses, who have helped themselves to her extensive liquor cabinet for improvised Molotov cocktails.

As low as she’s been laid, Taverner isn’t defeated just yet. When she’s dragged before the Home Secretary’s committee, she fires back about how she’s “expected to manage the safety of this country with the funds of a village fête. It’s like being sent into a gunfight with a pencil. A pencil that requires a subcommittee’s approval.” The conflict suggests that the ceiling is quite low over Regent’s Park, to the point that even apex predators like Taverner chafe against it. It also prompts me to look back at the First Desk dweebs before her, like Claude Whelan. He was a clown who couldn’t stop falling on his face, but would competence have mattered that much if not even Taverner can overcome the bureaucratic nightmare?

Even when Taverner appears to be in over her head, her survival instinct won’t let her drown. Selling Sid to the Russians to settle the Kazan mess is a classically ruthless move. Taverner will pay any price to survive. Even so, putting her back against the wall and watching her fight out of it is thrilling. Seeing this seemingly untouchable figure be brought down to Slough House’s level gives the season a feral energy I can’t get enough of. This bold willingness to knock their characters low is Slow Horses’ finest feat.