With the computer system down, an ominous countdown clock up, and chaos reigning at the Park in the middle of a terrorist crisis, Whelan is shown in the opening scene of the first-rate Slow Horses finale holding court from a couch, as if in his therapist’s office. “I have three questions,” he tells Taverner, who disrespects him too much to say a word: “How, why, and what the living fuck is next? And no answers! Afraid heads are going to have to roll.”

It is supremely satisfying that the only head that rolls at the end of season five is Whelan’s, whose cravenness and stupidity finally catches up to the shameless opportunism that had brought him all the way to First Desk. He’s like a much dimmer version of Paul Reiser’s corporate sleaze in Aliens , smugly conniving and conspiring agains

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