Is Famously Salty Jackson Lamb Going Soft in Season Four of 'Slow Horses'?

The finale episode of Slow Horses fourth season was less explosive than the end of season three. No one crashed a bus into a house or got into a firefight in an archive building. Some people seem to think it’s a step-down, but I liked it. One of the problems I see with shows like Slow Horses is this drive to constantly up the stakes until they become nearly meaningless. Season four’s mystery shopping mall bomber/assassin after David Cartwright mystery did uncover a sprawling, decades-long covert assassination squad run by (and fathered by) Hugo Weaving’s Frank Harkness, but in a way that was pretty focused on actual espionage work involving covert identities and agency secrets intertwined with family secrets.

(Spoilers for Season Four of Slow Horses)

River has to grapple with learning that violent mercenary Frank Harkness is his father and that his half-brothers have been murdering across Europe while he’s been trying to be a legitimate spy. He also has to face up to the fact that his grandfather’s memory is failing to the point where he has to break the promise not to put him in a nursing home. The season ends with him sharing a drink with Jackson Lamb, who has not been shown to socialize with his agents outside the office. It might make you wonder if Lamb is going soft, especially as it comes on the heels of him arguing with Taverner to ensure that Marcus’s family gets the death payout for an active field agent rather than one on desk duty.

However, I don’t think that’s what’s happening. Lamb has always had an interesting relationship with his agents, because he holds the job in utmost respect even as he is deeply suspicious and critical of anyone actually attempting to execute it. Still, he has shown a certain amount of managerial instinct before; one of my favorite lines of the third season was his reaction to Roddy crashing a party bus into a house in an attempt to rescue Lamb and Standish, to which Lamb replies “Can you talk me through your thinking here?” Lamb gets the payout for Marcus because Marcus was on the job when he died, he lets River sit next to him and enjoy a drink because River actually did manage some tricky spycraft with little to no guidance or backup. Jackson Lamb has a soft underbelly for people practicing espionage to his standards that’s exactly 1 inch square and we do occasionally get to see it.

We know there’s a fifth season coming. There was a promo for it shown after the season four finale, so maybe I’ll be proven wrong, and Jackson will start having the whole team over for barbeques and beers. Or maybe he’ll just feign friendship to get people close enough to smell one of his really rank farts. I’m betting on the second option.