In a Season 3 finale interview with Decider, Slow Horses showrunner Will Smith promised that after letting River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) and Louisa Guy (Rosalind Eleazar) flirt with the friends to lovers trope a bit, the show would, in fact, answer the question of whether or not the two are romantically compatible. “It’ll be in a Slow Horses way,” he teased. “And it will be messy.” And messy it was!
While some fans started shipping River and Louisa after Min Harper’s (Dustin Demri-Burns) Season 2 death, other viewers — particularly those who’ve read Mick Herron’s books — hoped the colleagues and friends would never cross that delicate line. But in Season 5, Episode 1, after quite the build-up, River and Louisa shared a long-awaited kiss. And trust and believe, it was gloriously awkward!
Another hit drama — especially one with adrenaline and stakes as high as they are in Slow Horses — would likely have explored a more serious physical and romantic connection between two single, fan-favorite characters. But as Smith told Decider ahead of Season 4, “I think people would want to see them together, but we’re going to be true to the character dynamics of the books.” So instead of swooning post-smooch, the friends instantly regretted the move and recovered in a spectacularly awkward fashion.
After River tried (and failed) to throw Louisa an office goodbye party ahead of her leave, the two friends found themselves drinking beers and having a deep chat about life and work by the water. After reading River’s message in her goodbye card, “I will miss the only sane person in the office. Hurry back,” Louisa told River he was “so cute” and he emphasized just how much he’d miss her while she was gone. Initially, River was under the impression that Louisa was taking a six-month break, but after clocking his hope, she revealed she was leaving Slough House and the service all together.
As Louisa explained her decision, talked about the loss of Min, and called River a mess for not allowing himself to fully feel emotions — especially after his dad tried to kill him — our boy properly spiraled. “I just want to feel things again, you know what I mean?” Louisa asked. In response, River went in for the kiss! Louisa’s eyes grew wide! And when their lips unlocked, she asked, “What the fuck was that?!”
“Feeling things…I thought you wanted me to feel things,” a confused River replied. “No. I was just telling you that I couldn’t cope with the loss… How are you making this about you? Oh my god. What the hell is wrong with men? A woman opens up about their feelings and the first thing they think is, ‘Now I can fuck them.’ Wow,” a frustrated Louisa said.
After River denied there were any ill intentions behind the kiss, he told Louisa, “I should be pissed off with you, by the way. What were you gonna do, just gonna sneak off and leave? Never telling me?” Sadly, a phone call to River cut the scene short, but the two left on a positive, albeit slightly somber note, with River reluctantly agreeing to give Louisa space.
“Don’t call me, I’ll call you,” Louisa told him. “I’ll see you when I see you, then,” he replied.
While River and Louisa’s kiss didn’t lead to something more, as scene partners, Lowden and Eleazar have undeniable chemistry, in heartfelt and hilariously cringey moments alike. The two are so in touch with one another on-screen that one of their characters’ most memorable scenes, which featured a delightfully awkward car hug in Season 3, was improvised!
“I think that’s one of my favorite scenes [we’ve] ever done, and full credit and praise to Rosalind Eleazar and Jack Lowden for that, because the original version, they pushed. They were like, ‘Oh, we think it could go deeper and it could be messier,” Smith told Decider ahead of Season 4. “And so we just went back at it, and then they loved it. I mean, that hug was Jack. Because I remember I was actually there that day, and I remember Jack texted me going, ‘Yeah, I think it I think was alright. And I went for a hug. I’m not sure if it worked.'”
Much like the kiss scene, Smith said the car hug worked so well because the two navigated so much in such a short period of time. “There’s his clumsiness. And there’s humor — there’s sort of cringe humor. ‘Oh my god, River. What are you doing?’ And then the way she breaks down, you just feel her trauma and her grief and then they come back together at the end and you just think that’s such a swirl of emotions to go through in a relatively short scene,” Smith said. “I just love that we can do that, and I watched them and said, ‘Oh god, you’re just a different league, you two.’ They’re just fabulous.”
Whether you were shipping River and Louisa or not, I think we can all agree that Eleazar and Lowden’s compelling dynamic will surely be missed this season. So here’s hoping we haven’t seen the last of these two sharing the screen.
New episodes of Slow Horses premiere Wednesdays on Apple TV+.