How the Slow Horses Finale Draws Inspiration From Home Alone

[Note: This post contains spoilers for the Slow Horses Season 3 finale, “Footprints.”]

’Tis the season for watching and taking inspiration from Home Alone as Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) is far from alone in using dangerous booby traps to ward off a threat. Fargo embraces this method throughout its fifth season with Juno Temple’s Minnesota housewife Dot taking valuable lessons from Kevin and the Looney Toons universe to outsmart the lackeys intent on kidnapping her.

Slow Horses also opts for a dark comedy take on this goofy form of defense. Unlike the fate of the Wet Bandits, who live to scam another day, the results of using household items are far deadlier during a showdown in the Season 3 finale of Slow Horses. The undesirable MI5 agents working out of Slough House face an assault at an isolated farmhouse and a government archive facility. The odds are stacked against the screwups in both situations, making for a suspenseful conclusion to another thrilling outing.

The Apple TV+ spy series based on the novels by Mick Herron typically eschews James Bond-type flashy gadgets for scrappy spycraft and quick thinking. Even a recent foot chase involving wannabe hotshot River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) through a London tube station lacks the stylized panache of Daniel Craig’s 007, making it all the more enjoyable — and amusing.

Everything about the head of the dysfunctional Slough House, Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), suggests his espionage glory days are long behind him, and the lank hair, dirty overcoat, and diet of cigarettes, whisky, and greasy takeout only add to this impression. While his appearance has seen better days, Lamb doesn’t need gadgets to get him out of a pickle. A can of body spray, a lighter, scotch tape, an overpriced smart mug, and a vegetable knife will do.

“Have you got anything that blows up?” Lamb asks as the penultimate episode nears its climax. Between this and the actual grenade explosion at the archive facility, it is a delicious cliffhanger that Apple TV+ takes full advantage of, making viewers wait until after Christmas Day to deliver the goods. The reason for this question? The Slow Horses are caught in the deadly crosshairs of an internal power struggle at the top of the MI5 food chain. For Ingrid Tearney (Sophie Okonedo) to keep the First Desk top spot, she sends the loyal Dogs (MI5’s internal security team) along with the private contractor firm that is at the heart of this blunder to “clear the board.”

Lamb has gone to the farmhouse to rescue his office administrator, Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves), from a hostage situation and finds her having a lovely game of Scrabble and a cup of tea with the woman who is no longer her captor. Just a few steps behind are Dog antagonist Hobbs (Chris Coghill) and security contractor Sturges (Nick Blood), following orders to kill Standish and Sarah Dunn (Eliot Salt), giving Lamb little time to formulate a plan in this unfamiliar location. Years of having his back against the wall put him in good stead, and in these precious few minutes, Lamb does away with the sarcasm and insults while he gets to work. First, he sets up a flammable welcome for whoever comes through the front door using the aforementioned body spray, lighter, and scotch tape.

It is a munitions-heavy finale, and they have two guns between the three of them, giving better odds of survival even if Sarah is a novice. A tube of off-brand Pringles gives Lamb a much-needed snack and a bargain basement alarm system, scattering loose chips on the stairs as a way for Sarah to know when a threat approaches her hiding spot. It is a large home with several floors, and Lamb takes the blade of a small kitchen knife to sneakily protrude out of a handrail for a nasty surprise. None of this is particularly sophisticated, but the beauty is the simplicity of these methods that comes from decades of experience.

“He’s a wily old f*cker,” Hobbs cautions Sturges about Lamb before they enter. Hobbs has previously been on the receiving end of Lamb’s surprising dexterity, and he doesn’t want to make the same mistake twice — not after River managed to get the better of him (again) earlier this season. Sturges pays no attention, resulting in an arm on fire thanks to Lamb’s special welcome. Other than his expensive jacket, the only thing burned is Sturges’ ego, and this initial ambush effectively increases his fury, clouding his ability to be level-headed. While the two men get increasingly annoyed going from room to room, Lamb proves he is more agile than anyone expects as he heads onto the roof to draw Hobbs up the stairs via the sound of breaking glass. Lamb has patience on his side, and the longer this game of hide and seek takes, the more agitated the hunters get.

Even during the intercutting tense sequences, humor is a Slow Horses baseline, which speaks to showrunner Will Smith’s comedy background. Heron’s novels also mix humor with thrills, and the fact that Smith has written multiple episodes of The Thick of It and Veep makes him the ideal candidate to bring this ragtag team to life. Smith also wrote this finale, and wincing and laughing out loud is part of the winning recipe.

Case in point: When Hobbs slips on the smart mug that Lamb has “borrowed” from tech whiz Roddy (Christopher Chung) and then slices his hand open on the cheeky blade when he grabs the stair rail, the £180 price tag suddenly seems worth it — though any takeout mug would do at a fraction of the cost. This injury is equally shudder-worthy and funny because Hobbs has been such a monumental prick throughout, and it fits into the pattern of him getting bested by Lamb and his team.

The booby traps takedown of Hobbs and Sturges is messy and bloody without going too far down the Wile E. Coyote road. Sturges steps on the chips, immediately realizing it is a crude way to alert someone. A clumsy fight to the death follows, which sees the inexperienced Sarah take a bullet but win the tumble down the stairs. Given the nature of this demise, it is impossible not to think of how Min (Dustin Demri-Burns) accidentally broke his disguised colleague’s Jed (Steven Waddington) neck when they fought on the office stairs in Season 1.

Death isn’t a complete laughing matter in this series, and while Lamb typically has a dry retort to most situations (including Jed’s death), he does pull it back when Min was murdered last season. Empathy isn’t his strong suit, but when one of his team members is in danger, Lamb doesn’t sit back. Gallows humor is expected with a long career and body count — whether by his hand or others. This might be a bold statement, but Oscar-winner Oldman has never been better than in this curmudgeonly role that allows room for comedy timing and covert shenanigans.

Rather than tip too far into slapstick humor, Lamb’s ice-cold nerves and ability to work the environment to his benefit speak to his field experience. Yes, he might spend most of his time sleeping in his office, but tactically, his mind is sharp as a tack, and this farmhouse face-off proves his reflexes haven’t been dulled since the Cold War ended. Lamb doesn’t need any sly tricks to kill Hobbs, shooting him from behind as he approaches the closet in which Standish hides.

The sequence is punctuated by Roddy driving a double-decker party bus into the front of the house to “rescue” Lamb and Standish, for which he earns several new insults from an incredulous Lamb (“I don’t think insurance will cover it. Deliberate destruction using a bus driven by a f*cking idiot”). This moment veers into ridiculous territory, even if it fits the Slow Horses tone, but it isn’t as heightened as Fargo’s overt slapstick usage.

Not everyone gets to play at the house that looks ready for another Straw Dogs remake, though the events at the archive facility are considerably more perilous due to the amount of heavily armed men they face. Again, they use everything at their disposal, from metal cages to bootleg Elton John CDs. Thankfully, Smith maintains a dark sense of humor without leaning into the Home Alone booby traps at this second location. Slow Horses isn’t a cartoon or a kids' movie, and despite the jokey banter, the stakes are high for all involved. After all, the spy series isn’t shy in killing off characters, making both sieges a fraught experience. Jokes break the tension, and the finale, “Footprints,” needs these moments of levity so we can all catch our breaths.

Despite how much he (literally) throws at the Wet Bandits across two movies, Kevin McCallister somehow doesn’t end up mortally wounding either man. This is far from the case in Slow Horses, which embraces the chaos, catastrophe, and comedy of a moderately booby-trapped house. With a handful of everyday objects and a couple of guns, Jackson Lamb proves he is still at the top of his spy game — and so is Slow Horses.

Slow Horses Season 3 is streaming on Apple TV+. Join the discussion about the show in our forums. 

Emma Fraser has wanted to write about TV since she first watched My So-Called Life in the mid-90s, finally getting her wish over a decade later. Follow her on Twitter at @frazbelina.