Everything Gary Oldman does on screen is already flawless, but what he’s been doing for the past five years in Slow Horses is almost humiliating for everyone else. For decades, he’s been recognized as an “actor’s actor,” and in Jackson Lamb, he’s found one of the greatest creations of his career. In every small scene with the foul-mouthed, grotesque head of Slough House, the one thing that never fails is surprise.

There’s no predictability in any gesture, look, breath, or line. And in this episode, he delivers a devastating monologue, one that reveals more about Lamb’s past than we ever dared hope for. With Oldman, it’s pure emotion.

The puzzle of the London attacks

The season still hasn’t fully explained the wave of terrorist attacks hitting London — or rather, it has, but the pieces haven’t quite come together yet to reveal who benefits from adopting the Cold War playbook of destabilization.

MI5 is floundering, struggling to contain both a public crisis and an internal one. Many, including Director General Claude Whelan, are caught right in the middle of the storm. What makes the least sense is that trying to kill Roddy Ho could be justified by almost anyone — except terrorists. Even so, he was tracked, manipulated, and used, shaking up the fragile balance at Slough House… and testing Lamb’s famously short fuse.

Unconnected attacks — or so it seems

If the chaos from burning cars seemed like the peak of confusion, it was only the beginning. Contaminated fuel caused vehicles to ignite spontaneously — no fatalities, but widespread panic. MI5 grows more confused, trying to find out who tampered with the system.

Then comes an even stranger shock: a bomb explodes at the London Zoo. A homeless man, paid to throw a thermos flask into the penguin enclosure, becomes an unwitting pawn. The device detonates, killing 22 penguins. London, stunned, wavers between fear and disbelief.

Claude Whelan is in panic mode

Watching London burn isn’t enough to distract Claude Whelan. He’s being blackmailed by a reporter working for Dodie Gimball, the journalist wife of mayoral candidate Dennis Gimball. The revelation about to surface? That Whelan still pays for sex — something he did recently on a business trip to Copenhagen.

This personal and professional bomb leaves him completely adrift. He turns to MI5’s lawyer, Martin, to see what legal action he can take against Dodie. But acting too soon would look like an admission of guilt, and waiting would mean losing credibility altogether.

Meanwhile, Diana Taverner — as always — is the one actually holding things together: managing the intelligence work, the political mess, and her boss’s unraveling sanity. She doesn’t realize it yet, but she’s getting closer to the position she’s always wanted.

The link to the contaminated fuel

Re-election candidate Zafar Jaffrey tries to keep campaigning while everything around him collapses. So obsessed with political optics, he fails to see that the danger is right at home: his own son, Irfan, is involved in the attacks.

Manipulated by extremists, Irfan thought he was fighting the system by contaminating the fuel — not realizing he was actually sabotaging his father. The public fallout is brutal and will almost certainly end Jaffrey’s career.

The destabilization pattern

Thanks to Roddy Ho — now being interrogated at MI5 — the Slough House agents are isolated, but still a few steps ahead, even if cut off from communication.

JK Coe lays it out clearly: first, compromise an agent (Roddy). Then, attack a civilian area (the shopping center). Next, create urban chaos (the car fires). Finally, distract the media — in this case, with public outrage over the penguin massacre.

The next stage, according to Coe, is the assassination of a populist leader. Lamb, who had silently reached the same conclusion, agrees. To River’s frustration, they can’t do anything yet — they’re trapped, and they’ll have to improvise.

A powerful monologue

Even if the “slow horses” are chaotic and far from being a team, we — like them — already know Lamb’s style. And Lamb doesn’t sit still. Not for long, and not for anyone — not even Roddy Ho.

When he’s quiet, he’s strategizing. His agents, frustrated but alert, wait for a signal they don’t know how to recognize. First, Lamb tries twice to use the bathroom, where he had hidden a gun, but the plan fails. Unable to contact HQ, he begins to recall his days in Berlin.

He tells what seems to be a true story about a British agent caught by the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police, who was captured and tortured — forced to watch his pregnant girlfriend murdered before his eyes. The story is brutal, and in Oldman’s hands, devastating.

In the middle of it, Lamb describes how agents improvised weapons — coded instructions for his team. Within minutes, they build a makeshift explosion, overpower their captors, and escape.

Lamb divides the group into pairs to prevent the next attack, while he — as always — goes off alone, following a plan only he understands.

Even when he later tells Standish that the Berlin story was a fabrication, there’s doubt. Lamb was MI5’s best field agent — could he really have invented something so detailed? Or was he telling the truth beneath the mask of a lie?

It feels like one of Lamb’s rare moments of vulnerability — something raw and deeply personal. He knew the misfits would catch the code, even if they missed the emotion. Brilliant. Worth watching twice.

Roddy’s arrogance and the final piece

Meanwhile, at MI5, Diana Taverner faces a different kind of torture — trying to interrogate Roddy Ho. He has no idea of the damage he’s caused or the danger he’s unleashed. Every attempt she makes to reason with him is met with arrogance and denial.

Until, trying to brag, Roddy finally confesses: he hacked into MI5’s database to impress his girlfriend — and left her alone at the computer for a few seconds. Long enough for her to access classified files.

That’s all it took. Tara, his “girlfriend,” was an infiltrator.
Now MI5 must race against time to stop what’s coming. Will they be able to do anything?