Slow Horses Season 6 finale cliffhanger was foreshadowed in an earlier episode, reveals head writer

**Disclaimer: The following article contains spoilers for the Slow Horses Season 6 finale and Mick Herron's Slough House book series. Reader discretion is advised.**

Slow Horses Season 6 turned the action inward after Diana Taverner's off-the-books operation led two dangerous Russian assassins hunting for Jackson Lamb's agents. In the recently released finale, titled Judgement Day, Lamb and his agents put up an impressive fight and wrapped up the Kazan operation for good, while dealing with Frank Harkness and his mercenaries, who attacked the Slough House agents at Diana's safehouse.

In the final moments of the finale, River, Lamb and the agents were safe, but Emma Flyte was fatally shot by Frank while trying to take down his men. Once the chaos wrapped up and the agents were gathered in a church to honour their dead, Standish delivered good news to River. One of his grandfather's neighbors had noticed a light turned on in the house, hinting that Sid was honouring her promise made in Episode 5.

River raced to his grandfather's house in the Slow Horses Season 6 finale to meet up with Sid. As River prepared a romantic setup for the couple, he felt a twitch in his palm and collapsed on the ground, seemingly breathless.

While the Season 6 finale did not confirm River's fate in the series, head writer Gaby Chiappe confirmed in an interview with Gold Derby that the 'groundwork' for the cliffhanger was laid in an earlier episode.

River was likely poisoned by a nerve agent in the Slow Horses Season 6 finale

In her latest interview with Gold Derby, Chiappe (who also penned the Slow Horses Season 6 finale) revealed that the groundwork for the shocking cliffhanger about River's fate was laid in Episode 2. When Jim and Jane, the assassin duo, were hunting for River and Sid in Episode 2, Jim came across a bottle and River's crowbar on the table. The head writer teased that Jim likely poisoned River's crowbar with a nerve agent:

"You see Jim looking around, and there's a little bottle lying on the table. He looks around and sees the crowbar that River brought in with him, and we have to assume that he paints it with what's in the bottle, which — given that there have been nerve agent attacks elsewhere — it’s a Novichok attack."

During an earlier episode, Diana Taverner confirmed that her Kazan operation was in response to a string of nerve attacks, connecting River's fate to the larger conspiracy:

“We responded to nerve attacks on British soil with an action in Russia.”

While River and Sid drowned Jim during a confrontation in Slow Horses Season 6 Episode 5, the assassin had already poisoned the crowbar with the toxic nerve agent, which likely transferred to River's hand, leading to his collapse in the final moments of the Season 6 finale.

What happened to River in the Slough House books?

For the uninitiated, the Slow Horses Season 6 finale cliffhanger is adapted directly from Mick Herron's Slough House book, where the assassin laced the doorknob of David Cartwright's house with the toxic nerve agent. At the end of the book, River accidentally exposed himself to the contaminated doorknob, collapsed on the floor, and was left unconscious.

Chiappe even addressed the twist from the book and revealed the writers debated before adapting it in the Slow Horses Season 6 finale:

"We had a lot of debate about that. Will people know what it is and what's happening? It's taken from the book, but in the book it's left on a doorknob, which is slightly different. It's still the idea that something happened in the corner of your eye, but you didn't quite know what it was. And the assassin who laid it is long dead now."

While it remains to be seen what will happen to River in Season 7, he survived the attack and returned in the eighth book, titled Bad Actors. The eighth book revealed that while River survived the near-death experience, he was placed on a long medical leave and was largely absent from the main action. The nerve agent left River with many side effects, including fatigue, vision problems, and bouts of vertigo.

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