“Slow Horses” season 5 wastes no time getting into the action with a mass shooting that immediately manages to compel and disturb with its visceral imagery. The opening scenes follow the radicalized Rob Trew (Edward Davis), a supporter of Conservative MP Dennis Gimball (Christopher Villiers), who’s had his mind warped by incel forums and the reactionary views of his political idol. In a shopping center outside Trew’s flat, a campaigner for the incumbent London mayor Zafar Jaffrey (Nick Mohammed), who might look familiar to many “Slow Horses” viewers, attempts to engage Trew in a conversation before the troubled youngster pulls out an automatic rifle and fires on the crowds, killing multiple civilians, including the Jaffrey campaigner. “Slow Horses” has depicted disturbing scenes before, but there’s something about this mass shooting that’s particularly horrifying, both in the way it was shot and its obvious parallels to recent events.
According to showrunner Will Smith, however, the scene wasn’t envisioned as a way to comment on the state of society in 2025. The actual genesis of the scene is Mick Herron’s book “London Rules,” on which season 5 of “Slow Horses” is based. /Film’s Ben Pearson asked Smith, who’s been with the show since its first season and who wrote season 5, episode 1, about the stomach-churning opening scene in an interview about season 5. According to the showrunner, the writers thought “very carefully” about how to create their version of the shooting, with Smith explaining that the reason why it appears in the show is simply because it’s in the novel. “It’s the kickoff [in the book],” he said. “So we always want to honor what Mick does and we love what Mick does, so we were always going to do it.”
The book, “London Rules,” was published in 2018 in the wake of the Brexit vote and the attendant rise in populist isolationist politics.
This shocking opening scene certainly felt more visceral than previous mass casualty incidents depicted in the series, especially because it involved the deaths of several civilians, which immediately linked its unsettling scenes to real-world events. Repeated mass shootings in the United States have kept this issue at the forefront of cultural and political discourse in 2025, and the opening of “Slow Horses” season 5 seemed engineered to tap into that discourse, even if it wasn’t.
Still, Will Smith isn’t necessarily against “Slow Horses” staying topical. “Obviously it does echo horrific events in the real world,” he said. “But again, it feels like a new thing for the show to do, which, it’s important the show goes to new areas and it doesn’t repeat. That’s the main thing.”
Asked about how the shooting scene felt like a much more sobering depiction of a mass casualty event than we’ve yet seen on “Slow Horses,” Smith said, “That’s a really good observation,” before comparing the sequence to similar events in the show’s history. “I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re completely right because Stansted [the airport in season 1] is enclosed. Dickie Bow in series 2 is just one person who nobody really knows. And then, Istanbul [from season 3] is its own thing.” Smith did point out that season 4 opened with a suicide bomb detonating in a shopping mall, but noted that this particular event was “so deep background, you don’t feel that in the way that [the mass shooting] was very visceral.”
Indeed, the massacre that kicks off season 5 is shot in such a way that it feels much more immediately upsetting than anything seen in the series thus far. As soon as Rob Trew fires his opening shot, the music completely falls away and we’re left to hear every agonizing scream as the shooter unloads round after round. The camera also stays oddly composed while the chaos unfolds, remaining eerily still as Trew rampages through shots that seem incongruously cognizant of the rule of thirds. Several angles show the victims being hit and falling to the ground, again all depicted in a strangely removed way, sans musical cues.
According to Smith, the audience could have experienced a different version of the scene. “We did have a version where it cut out as he starts firing,” explained the showrunner. “But that felt … it didn’t quite go far enough to … it just didn’t give you enough, but we didn’t want it to be horrific or upsetting, so you’re staying with the gunman. But that makes it feel even colder, and his blankness is just really, really disturbing.” Whether Smith and his writers realized it or not, it also serves as a jolt to those who may have gotten too used to mass shootings becoming a political talking point rather than the horrific events they actually are.
The shock factor of “Slow Horses” season 5 doesn’t let up after Rob Trew empties the clip of his rifle. Soon after he shoots his final round, he’s taken out by an unseen shooter with a surprise headshot, killing Trew and immediately making things even more confusing for viewers. That was by design. Will Smith spoke about the grizzly conclusion to this already disturbing scene, saying:
“You have the moment [when] something happens that you think, ‘What the hell’s this?’ But that just felt like a really good twist that the audience don’t see coming and are confused in a good way. They’re like, ‘What’s happening?’ and hopefully they trust that we will explain. So we were very, very mindful of that.”
As much as the “Slow Horses” writers had the show and its effectiveness in mind when crafting this opening scene, the real-world parallels are inescapable — especially in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death. The temporary suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” by ABC was bad news for all American media and represented just how fraught modern day politics has become. While Kimmel has since been reinstated, the shock waves from the original shooting continue to reverberate, most obviously in a heavily politicized way as affiliate group Sinclair Broadcasting announced it would continue to pre-empt Kimmel’s show on all its stations. Watching such a raw depiction of gun violence on “Slow Horses” at this time, then, feels simultaneously hard to sit through and sort of necessary, in that it reminds us all what we’re actually talking about when we talk about gun violence. That might not have necessarily been by design, but much like River Cartwright and his band of Slough House outcasts, the writers managed to pull off something quite crucial and timely with season 5, episode 1, maintaining the series’ standing as one of the best shows on Apple TV+.