Coe’s Death & Changes From Book, Explained (Exclusive)

The thing about Slow Horses is that you know the major beats that are coming because it does follow Mick Herron‘s novels on which it’s based closely. Such is the case for a major death in the latest Season 6 episode, but the star reveals there was a moment they’d been hoping it included since Season 4. Warning: Spoilers for Slow Horses Season 6 Episode 4 ahead!

Slow Horses Season 6 is based on two of Herron’s novels, Joe Country and Slough House, and in the former, Coe (Tom Brooke) does die — albeit a bit differently than it plays out onscreen. For example, the setting is different and he does kill his opponent. In the series, assassin Jim (Kyle Soller) survives. Brooke tells us in the video interview above that he knew it was coming, and he’d brought it up to then-showrunner Will Smith in Season 4.

“It was the first thing I asked the showrunner about. I said, ‘I want to do the speech about mortgages and being self-employed as a hitman.’ And he was like, ‘OK, chill. This is Season 4. We will get to that.’ I was like, ‘OK, but we got to do it. We got to do it,’” Brooke says. “It was great to finally get there because I really wanted to try and make it an arc, like a story where he changes a bit each season, but it was such a good ending to his character. I was like, ‘I want to do that. It has to be like that.’”

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The death comes as the slow horses have separated with assassins taking out former members and Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) telling everyone to go dark. Coe, at this point, has met up with River (Jack Lowden) and Sid (Olivia Cooke), and the three know the assassins are following them. Coe sits on the sink in the men’s room waiting for Jim, and after a bit of small talk about who he’s working for, the fight begins. Coe does manage to hold his own as best he can, but by the time River gets there, it’s too late, and Coe is dead.

“I think if he knew it was coming, he’d be happy with it,” Brooke admits. “I think he’d be disappointed that he didn’t get the guy. I think he might be disappointed that he didn’t get to hang out with Shirley Dander [Aimee-Ffion Edwards] anymore. I feel like that’s something that could have gone somewhere. But yeah, I think basically he’d probably give himself a seven out of 10.”

Co-executive producer Gaby Chiappe calls Coe’s death “a really important one.” She adds, “I mean, all deaths are important, but I think Tom had a very clear idea of how he wanted that to feel for the audience. And in the book, it’s got a very particular flavor to it, that scene, that conversation. It’s two people who do the same thing. They’re both in the same game, and it’s like there’s no judgment between them. They both know one of them is going to kill the other and that they’re going to have to see this through, but it’s oddly companionable, and we really, really wanted to keep that.”

She continues, “Also that in the way that Slow Horses does so brilliantly, as the song says, they’re all misfits and losers, but it’s heroic. He dies fighting to save — I mean, he dies fighting to save his own life, but he’s fighting to save the other slow horses as well. There’s a heroism in it, and it’s really unexpected, I think, that they’re both those two guys in that bathroom trying to kill each other, but without any sort of personal animosity. In fact, the opposite. I loved it. I thought that was beautiful, that scene.”

When it comes to changing the fate of his opponent, Chiappe attributes that to this season adapting two books. “There were changes which were made mechanically so that we could tell the story the way we felt it needed to be told,” she explains.

Looking ahead to how the others feel about his death, Shirley’s likely to be affected, but Christopher Chung doesn’t think Roddy will be grieving too much. “He sees it more as par for the course,” he says.

But for the actor, “Any time a cast mate leaves on this show, it’s devastating because everyone becomes such a part of the tapestry of Slow Horses. They really bring themselves into the piece. And even when they’ve left, with Kadiff [Kirwan] who played Marcus, they are still so present within the world and the set, and it’s like they’ve kind of never left,” Chung shares. “Gary always is referencing Dustin [Demri-Burns] who played Min in Season 2. He was the first one to really go. And it’s always really hard when you read a script and you’re like, ‘Oh, they have to die,’ but it’s actually a really good death. And I think that’s kind of what’s great about Slow Horses in that Game of Thrones kind of way. No one is really safe. Anyone could go at any moment.”

Elsewhere in the episode, Sid is determined to reach Diana (Kristin Scott Thomas) even as River protests it’s not a good idea to call First Desk. But when it comes to Sid trusting Diana, who does make a deal to give up Sid to the assassins, Chiappe points out that that agent has a different perspective of the other woman than the others.

“River, like us, has had five more seasons of Diana being a piece of work. So our mistrust of Diana is like River’s, but we have had season after season showing us, ‘We really don’t trust her; don’t trust this woman.’ Whereas Sid was picked out in Season 1 to do a really special job for Diana Taverner. She was probably proud of the fact that she was picked out. And then when she was hurt, she was looked after by Diana Tavener. So her experience of Diana Taverner is not the same as River’s, and it’s not the same as us,” the co-executive producer says.

She continues, “So it might appear naive to us, but I think we’ve got to remember that Diana’s a really brilliant operator, and she has been something different to Sid. The Diana that Sid knows is not the Diana that me and River have experienced. So I would say it’s a mixture. It’s not just coming from Sid, it’s also that Diana has earned our mistrust and River’s mistrust big time, and Sid hasn’t been part of that.”

Watch the video interview above for much more from Tom Brooke about Coe’s death, then let us know what you thought of how it played out onscreen in the comments section below.

Slow Horses, Wednesdays, Apple TV