Warning: Spoilers follow for Slow Horses season 5.
Claude Whelan was forced out of the job of first desk at the end of the fifth season’s finale episode after a series of mishaps during the handling of several terrorist attacks, becoming the second boss to leave the role after Ingrid Tearney resigned at the end of season 3.
Claude’s dramatic ending in Slow Horses season 5 suggests that might be the last we see of the incompetent bureaucrat, but if you’ve read Mick Herron’s ‘Slough House’ novel series that the show is based on, then you’ll know that the character does return again in the eighth book, ‘Bad Actors’.
But the Apple TV spy show isn’t directly lifted from the books’ pages, which means there’s no certainty that the screenplays for seasons 6 and 7 (both of which have been greenlit) will follow the corresponding book’s stories directly, especially with Will Smith stepping down as screenplay writer, and passing the baton to Gaby Chiappe for season 6 and Ben Vanstone for season 7.
Speaking to James Callis about Claude’s future in the show, the Battlestar Galactica and Castlevania star said that “the jury’s out”. “I know what happens in the books, but the television show isn’t necessarily the books,” he added.
While that doesn’t give too much away, when asked about the upcoming seasons, Callis did entertain the idea, theorizing how his character might react to the events of the finale episode, which could lend itself as an explanation for any gaps we see between the character’s next appearance.
“One imagines a very different person emerging from all this. I don’t quite know if it would be a phoenix rising from the ashes, but there are certainly a lot of ashes,” Callis said.
Does this mean he might know more about whether Whelan returns in Slow Horses season 6 or future seasons beyond? Probably not, or at least, certainly not yet. Callis said as much when he confirmed: “Future Claude? I can’t talk about, because I don’t know.”
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