What Happens at the End of Peacock's The Copenhagen Test?
Find out where Peacock's twisty espionage thriller starring Simu Liu and Melissa Barrera left off at the end of the final episode.
SPOILER WARNING: This story reveals major plot points from the The Copenhagen Test finale.
Over the eight tension-filled episodes of Peacock's espionage thriller, The Copenhagen Test, the audience rides shotgun with Alexander Hale (Simu Liu), an analyst for a U.S. intelligence agency called The Orphanage.
Alexander is a first-generation Chinese-American spy working for this clandestine organization that was created to be a watchdog entity for other American intelligence agencies. He discovered that his brain was hacked by an unknown enemy, giving the hackers access to everything he sees and hears, and he and The Orphanage agree to keep the hack open.
As Alexander tries to navigate what is happening to him and keep up the illusion that he doesn't know about that hack — in order to deceive those that are watching him — he's also being watched by some at The Orphanage to ensure he stays the course and doesn't flip on the agency.
Those Orphanage colleagues include Parker (Sinclair Daniel) and her bosses, Peter Moira (Brian d'Arcy James), and the matron of spying known by her codename, St. George (Kathleen Chalfant). Some of the series' biggest revelations come to light in the final moments of Episode 8, during a final dramatic sequence of cross-cutting conversations between different sets of characters.
To find out what happens in the last scenes of The Copenhagen Test, keep reading.
Alexander and Michelle's final scene together
After Michelle (Melissa Barrera) — who was hired by The Orphanage to be a love interest for Alexander in order to keep an eye on him — was seemingly set free by The Orphanage to live a non-spy life, she tracked Alexander down.
Michelle slipped onto a train car where she knew Alexander would be and took a seat in front of him. "Thanks for looking after my folks," Alexander told her, happy that his parents made it out alive after Schiff (Adam Godley) threatened their lives while trying to convince Alexander to lead him to St. George.
Michelle told Alexander that she's "done" and "going to go live a normal life out there, somewhere." She added, before stepping off the train just as swiftly as she came on, "When you're finally done with the life, come find me."
What happens at the end of The Copenhagen Test?
In the final minutes of Episode 8, several characters came together in small groups of twos to chat, ultimately revealing that Alexander's just one cog in a much bigger machine of secret surveillance programs, and that he was betrayed by his close friend Victor, who was behind the hacking of Alexander's brain.
St. George met with Cobb’s (Mark O’Brien) uncle Schiff (Adam Godley) over tea at The Orphanage. "I thought we should finally meet after all this time, have a little chat," she told him, acknowledging that she left him behind in East Berlin, Germany in 1989 after using him to get intel about KGB agents with the promise of bringing him to America. She apologized to Schiff for this. And she revealed to him what she's figured out so far about Alexander's hacking.
"You exploited the hack, but you're not the one who did it in the first place, are you?" St. George asked Schiff. "You discovered it was happening and then found your own back door into the signal."
Schiff acknowledged that St. George was correct.
Meanwhile, Cobb visited Alexander at his apartment and Alexander told him how he discovered that his brain was hacked and how he didn't give it away at the time. Cobb apologized "about the whole turning you over to the agency stuff," but Alexander responded, "You were just doing your job. They could have brought you in on it." Cobb said that The Orphanage was smart not to fill him in on the fact that Alexander's brain was hacked, and that he now understands that the organization was trying to use the hack to their advantage. And he also gave Alexander some useful information.
At the same time, Parker, seen looking unsettled in an Orphanage conference room, revealed to Moira that she wasn't content with how everything had shaken out. She said she believes that Alexander was not a random choice for a hacking subject, and that he had to have been selected and curated years prior as a high value "investment," implying a deeper web of participants and intention that went beyond Schiff.
Finally, Alexander showed up at his long-time friend Victor's (Saul Rubinek) restaurant after-hours, and told him that Cobb was watching him, since "you were the only connection to me that he knew about."
Alexander continued, "He saw you make a call. He couldn't make out much. But he heard the words 'carousel' and 'he's injured.' You were calling for someone to give me medical treatment."
After Alexander pressed him, Victor admitted to Alexander that he hacked him. He also admitted that he ordered the Copenhagen Test all those years ago in Belarus that served as a loyalty test. "I had to prove you were worthy," Victor explained of the test, which used Michelle as bait years before Alexander met Michelle again when The Orphanage hired her flirt with him.
Victor then led Alexander through a tunnel from the restaurant into a secret lair featuring a desk with six screens. Five of the screens showed live feeds from the brains of other hacked individuals around the globe. "We had to have more than one," Victor told Alexander.
Only a screen reading "A. Hale" was marked as "OFFLINE," since The Orphanage was able to operate and give Alexander a tool to switch the signal in his brain off that transmits what he sees and hears.
Victor saw Alexander staring at one of the screens and told him, "That particular asset is the only one like you. He knows we can see what he can see." The screen showed Michelle meeting up with a man and girl outside somewhere.
"Why are you watching Michelle?" Alexander asked.
Victor responded, "Well, we have to. She's a loose end. Don't look so alarmed. For people like us, Alexander, it's never done."
To see all the action for yourself, or to re-watch to catch what you may have missed, stream all eight episodes of The Copenhagen Test on Peacock now!
