The popular spy drama brought on its largest and most complex antagonist to date for its fourth season. After the conclusion, this is where he is now.
Hugo Weaving is one of the best individuals to call if you need a fantastic villain to sneak into your television show. In high-profile Hollywood films like The Matrix, Captain America, and Transformers, the 64-year-old Australian actor has played superhuman evildoers; in dystopian political thrillers like V for Vendetta and Mortal Engines; and, the scariest of them all, a landlord in the psychological thriller The Royal Hotel from the previous year.
Therefore, choosing Weaving to be the next merciless worldwide villain on Apple TV+’s Slow Horses was a simple choice for show creator and executive producer Will Smith. Oh, and the fact that Weaving and Smith are second cousins didn’t hurt either. Weaving remarks, “Having a family connection on set was lovely.” “I thought the proposal was fantastic.”
Weaving came to understand that his character Frank Harkness was not your typical spook after binge-watching the first three seasons of the program, reading the new scripts, and starting the Mick Herron novels the series is based on. Former Special Forces and CIA agent Harkness established Les Arbes, a complex near Lavande, France, and spent decades fathering children there, raising them to become his own devoted mercenaries and assassins.
In order to act with plausible deniability, he has established a career out of brokering covert contracts with different government agencies using his own covert assassination squad.
But, Frank spends most of season 4 managing damage management and digging for answers regarding his involvement in the attack after a blast at a London shopping center triggers an MI5 inquiry. That entails going for River Cartwright from Slough House (Jack Lowden) and his former MI5 grandpa (Jonathan Pryce), as they are the only ones who can bring him to justice and reveal his covert operation.
This week’s season finale reveals two of Frank’s biggest secrets to the audience: his relationship with MI5, his old client, and River, his son, as his gory cleanup plan comes to an end. In true Slow Horses style, there’s also a trademark chase sequence. Following the conclusion of this season, Weaving was interviewed by Men’s Health about the process of perfecting his American accent, how he embodies complicated antagonists, and the foreshadowing that lead to Frank and River’s big reveal.
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