We start The Copenhagen Test season 1 episode 3 two years in the past. However, the episode soon picks up with a sacrifice that Alexander needs to come to terms with.
Caution: This post contains SPOILERS from The Copenhagen Test season 1 episode 3.
Two years earlier, we see St. George in a garden. It looks like it’s her home, and she’s digging out a book from the dirt. However, a woman shows up by the house with a gun in her hand, threatening to shoot and saying that her husband will be home.
St. George asks if they can wait inside for her husband, and then we start to see what’s really going on. St. George and this woman are married, and the woman is suffering with dementia. There are signs all over with reminders, and there are photos all over of the two of them together with a reminder of who people are and where the photos were taken.
Suddenly, there’s a moment of lucidity from St. George’s wife, and we can see that while this is clearly taking a toll, St. George loves her wife to the end. However, when the wife sees the book that St. George pulled out of the garden, she starts to freak and leaves the room. It’s only then that we see the book has a list of names, places, and dates on individual pages, and St. George turns to a fresh page to write “Alexander Hale.”
Sacrificing a project on The Copenhagen Test season 1 episode 3
The Orphanage has worked out how the hack has happened. It’s all in the pills that Alexander’s ex-fiancee, Rachel, gave him. Throughout the episode, the team needs to figure out whether Rachel knows what the pills are, or whether she’s just accidentally given them the way in.
Meanwhile, The Orphanage knows that they need to sacrifice a project. They need to give the hackers intel, and this will allow them to keep tracking signals — which are advanced and prove the hackers are working an upgraded version of the Cassandra Project than the team had — and make it look like Alexander hasn’t been compromised yet.
St. George decides that the Poseidon project is the one that can be compromised. It’s clear that it’s potentially the Chinese that are doing this, and they need to lure the hackers in with the Slovakian intel. Of course, this means that Cobb isn’t happy about the entire situation, and he tries to get Alexander kicked off the case. He has all the intel that should get him kicked off the case, but of course, nobody is going to do that.
Cobb decides to make things difficult, but everyone on Claymore is working together to protect anything that goes wrong.
Alexander needs to prove himself in the field
At first, Alexander isn’t too certain about the new task that he has been given. He knows that there will be an ambush, and that means the deaths of people on his side. He’s not too certain about that, and Parker knows that he needs to have a reason to say yes to the rest of this mission. She decides to set up a sting during a veteran’s parade, with a man who shares that his son died in combat and that he’s happy to know his son died for a purpose.
However, there are still issues. Cobb gets some of the intel switched out for the meeting with a man from Slovakia, and that means Claymore has to act fast to get the new information and get it to Alexander. How can they do that without putting him in the middle of the field? Well, there is only one option: to make it sound like Alexander needs to prove himself. Of course, he’s going to do that.
Once he gets the new intel, we finally get an insight into who is doing the hacking. It’s much closer than anyone would think, Cobb’s uncle!
And with that, the sting is able to take place. It hurts for Alexander to see it all play out, knowing that he was the reason for it, but it had to be done for the greater good. These are the decisions that people in charge need to make, and I will give everyone their due. They are somber about the situation, even St. George.
Cobb is the one to get the blame for the entire situation, since he was the one who tried to change the safe house and meeting point. There is a bigger story set up as well, as Cobb is smart to realize that he hasn’t been reviewed internally along with the rest of the team. One thing that this does do is make it look like Alexander isn’t the source of the leak, as Alexander and Cobb were briefed on the changes at the same time and then kept together.
If only Cobb knew how the real leak. But also, if only Alexander knew what was really going on. Since we know Cobb’s uncle, Schiff, has seen the intel, it’s suspicious that he and Alexander’s old boss, Victor, are meeting in secret. Victor wants Schiff to check with Cobb on whether there’s anything he should be worried about with Alexander at work. Schiff won’t help, though. So, who is the bad guy in all of this?
Dealing with the losses of the episode
The Copenhagen Test season 1 episode 3 ends with Alexander and Michelle meeting in a church. She takes him down to the catacombs, where the signal to Alexander is blocked. It allows the two of them to speak freely, so Michelle can share what they told her. Is this a turning point for Michelle? Is she siding with Alexander and falling for him? It certainly seems so. She seems to want to connect with him on an emotional level about the entire situation from agent to agent, or she just wants him to find someone that he can trust to talk about it.
Alexander decides that he will trust Michelle to talk to her, admitting that while he had to kill innocent people, many others may have been saved because of this. All he knows now, is that they have to win, whatever it takes. That’s the message that she can pass on.
Back with St. George, Moira offers an update on the enemy. The enemy is an independent non-state actor, and a lone wolf is a dangerous one to deal with. What they do know is that the enemy is processing the hack somewhere in Eastern Europe, so it could be Russian intelligence.
Meanwhile, Parker is struggling to deal with the losses. After the briefing with Moira, St. George heads to see Parker and hands her a book. It's similar to the one she had at the start of the episode. The book is actually for the "things you can't carry." She encourages Parker to write it down and bury is (I guess literally) and try not to dig it back up.
It seems like Schiff is the real one behind the hack and the bigger situation. Schiff knows that it's only a matter of time before Alexander realizes that he's compromised, and now he wants to use someone close to Alexander as leverage for when that happens.
The Copenhagen Test is available to stream on Peacock.