Slow Horses creator explains what the two major deaths in season 6 mean for River Cartwright

Slow Horses season 6 begins with two major deaths, David Cartwright and former Slow Horse Struan Loy, so what do they mean, and why is River Cartwright connected to them? Here’s what the creator said.

The season 6 premiere wastes no time putting River in a difficult position. David dies after his long battle with dementia, while the episode also opens with the brutal murder of former Slough House member Struan Loy.

So, what does David’s death mean for River Cartwright?

Speaking to TV Insider, co-executive producer Gaby Chiappe explained that David’s death leaves River more vulnerable than he realises.

“He’s been losing his grandfather slowly, hasn’t he, over the past couple of seasons, to dementia?” she said. “And with his grandfather gone, his mother’s never really been part of his life very much, she left him with his grandparents, he’s unanchored and he is vulnerable.”

She continued, “He probably wouldn’t think of himself in that way, but I think we can see it, that he’s someone who’s trying to keep on keeping on, and he’s alone. He’s so alone.”

That becomes particularly important because River’s father, Frank Harkness, turns up at the funeral. For Chiappe, River is now trying to work out who he is without the person who has anchored him for so long.

She said, “Who is he now that his grandfather’s dead?”

She added, “And his grandfather is such an ambiguous character morally. We know Jackson Lamb hates his grandfather. And so River’s left with nothing really at the beginning of this, nothing anchoring him to anyone else.”

Chiappe said even River’s connection to the other Slow Horses is affected by David’s death. “And even the Slow Horses family, I think, he’s sort of apart from that at the very beginning.”

That is where Sid Baker and Frank Harkness become important, according to Chiappe. She explained, “Sid coming back and Frank Harkness being around, they’re characters who he can sort of, he needs to find himself in relation to other people.”

River is therefore dealing with a very personal loss at exactly the same time that something much bigger is happening around Slough House.

Struan Loy’s death is ‘the first tremor on the spiderweb that Jackson Lamb feels’

The premiere opens with the murder of Struan Loy, a former member of Slough House. He is lured into a trap by two people posing as potential customers for his shipping-container business before being locked inside a container and burned alive.

For Chiappe, Struan’s death is deliberately the first sign that something is wrong. “It’s very arresting, and it felt like it’s the first tremor on the spiderweb that Jackson Lamb feels,” she explained. “This happens; it might be nothing, but it’s Jackson Lamb, so he’s never going to think it’s nothing.”

Obviously, Struan is not simply a random victim. “It felt like a really exciting way to, because it feels like a million miles from anything. But you know that Struan Loy used to work at Slough House. And as the episode and then the season progresses, those tremors on the spider’s web get stronger and stronger until it’s revealed what’s actually happening,” Chiappe said.

So the connection is not that David and Struan were killed for the same reason. Rather, their deaths put River and the wider Slough House story in very different kinds of danger.

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