Slow Horses Star Is Just As Devastated By Their Season 6 Death As Fans Are

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This article contains spoilers for "Slow Horses" Season 6, Episode 4, "Lost and Found."

"Slow Horses" Season 6 killed off one of its best characters when it said goodbye to Thomas Brooke's J.K. Coe in Episode 4. The mysterious agent, who joined Slough House back in Season 4, was dispatched by Russian assassin Jim (Kyle Soller) in a service station bathroom brawl that we never actually get to see. Needless to say, the death of this fan-favorite character comes as quite a shock to fans who haven't yet read Mick Herron's books, on which the series is based. Brooke, however, actually had read the books and thought he was prepared to bid Coe farewell. But it turns out he wasn't quite as ready as he thought.

In an interview with Town and Country, the actor talked about saying goodbye to the show that hosted him for three seasons. "It was lovely to leave," he said. "Actually, I thought I was all right about it until I picked up 'Clown Town.'" This is book number nine in Herron's "Slough House" series, and the third novel in which Coe doesn't appear following his death in book number six, "Joe Country." "Slow Horses" Season 6 adapts both "Joe Country" and the seventh novel "Slough House," while Season 7 will cover the eighth novel, "Bad Actors." Regardless, Coe is long gone by the time "Clown Town" comes around. 

When Brooke started to read that novel after picking it up at the airport, he suddenly found himself becoming emotional. "I read two pages of it," he continued. "I wouldn't want to say I burst into tears, but I was like, 'I can't read this. I cannot engage with this world again because I'm not part of it.' And then I was like, 'Oh, maybe I'm not all right about it.'" Same, Tom. Same.

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J.K. Coe dies after confronting hitman Jim in a service station bathroom. "You FSB?" he asks. "GRU," replies Jim, confirming he's a member of Russia's military intelligence service. Coe then comments on how he must have a good pension, in a classic "Slow Horses" moment that contains all the understated brilliance of Mick Herron's prose. Later, Jack Lowden's River Cartwright enters the bathroom to find Coe fatally injured.

We never actually see the fight, but we do see Coe brandish his trusty push knife — a weapon that Thomas Brooke suggested to former showrunner Will Smith when he first joined the show. The "Slow Horses" head writer left after Season 5, with Gaby Chiappe ("The Level") taking over for Season 6 and ultimately overseeing Coe's farewell. But it seems she was just as open to Brooke's suggestions, agreeing to rework the scene between Jim and Coe to include what Brooke referred to as "the mundaneness" of Herron's version. "He talks about mortgages with the mercenary," recalled the actor. "How to get a mortgage self-employed, all of this sort of stuff. And it struck me as there's such a logic to it that is so Coe because it's so crazy."

Clearly Brooke cared about his character enough to ensure he got a fitting farewell, and it seems he ultimately feels as though that's what the Coe of the TV series got. "If I was watching it, I'd be expecting a scene at some point where he goes, 'This is what happened, this is why I am the way I am,'" he said. "And so to have that sort of promise without actually promising it and to just get rid of him, that's cool. Got to be happy with that ending."

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"Slow Horses" Season 6 showrunner Gaby Chiappe spoke to /Film about Coe's death, saying she "hope[s] that death will count for people." It certainly counted for Thomas Brooke, who was aware of his character's fate when he first signed on for the series. "I read the books when I got the job," he told Town and Country, "and the job was an offer of a three-season contract. So that was fine, but it was such a good death scene in the book that it was the first thing I talked about with the showrunner [Will Smith]." Evidently, Smith promised Brooke the series would be heading towards a fitting death scene for his character.

That worked out, and Coe died a hero, but there is a sense that he should have been allowed to stick around. Of course, that was never going to happen, given his death was pre-determined by the novels. But as Brooke alluded to in his Town and Country interview, we never really did get to know who he was. Perhaps it's better that way, but more than a few fans will surely have felt he deserved to come out on top in that battle with Jim.

Still, there may be hope for Brooke's return. As the also actor noted in his interview, "There's a couple of prequel books where you get to see what happened to [Coe], and it is so awful." Herron's novellas "The List" and "Nobody Walks," the standalone "Slow Horses"-connected novel that would make a great Apple TV movie, do indeed provide an insight into Coe's tragic background, so perhaps when the show runs out of full novels to adapt, we might get to see Brooke as Coe again.