The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 3 recap: A controlled reality and an unforgivable outcome

The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 3 is titled False Flag. It dropped on December 27, 2025.

The Episode puts Alexander into the heart of an agonizing dilemma: abandon a mission he has worked tirelessly on, or follow orders to pursue the elusive hacker collective known as Peacock. The intensity is palpable from the outset, with the stakes higher than ever.

The story kicks off with a flashback. Two weeks earlier, St. George is in her backyard, digging up an old book. Her partner is with her, but he doesn’t even recognize her because dementia has taken its toll. As things move forward, Alexander finds himself slipping further into this fake world, where every move, even his connection with Michelle, feels like someone else is pulling the strings.

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The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 3 recap: False Flag

The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 3 begins with a flashback that takes place some years ago. St. George is excavating the garden in her home when a woman comes out of the house with a gun. Initially, the interaction is risky, but it becomes apparent that it is the wife of St. George who has dementia. The house is cluttered with labelled photographs and handwritten reminders that are supposed to reconnect the lapsed memories.

Her wife acknowledges her momentarily. That clarity is lost when she sees the book St. George has uncovered. It causes panic, anger, and she walks out of the room. St. George goes alone to open the notebook, with names and dates and places, and inscribes a new one, Alexander Hale.

It is an unspoken yet heartbreaking opening in The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 3, making one of the most powerful agents more human and making it clear that Hale is no longer something she can afford to carry.

In the present, Alexander is learning how to load a gun, and he tries to stabilize himself as the tension surrounding him increases. Cobb, in the meantime, is gearing up for a briefing and receives disturbing news via a private detective: something is off with Hale.

Hale and Michelle go on with their relationship that they have built so well. On another date, Hale deviates and inquires of Michelle where she goes to feel centered. She informs him that she goes to cemeteries. Hale is struck by the usual headache on the ride through a dead-signal area as they ride on a train. At the moment when the train arrives at the station, Michelle tells the truth. She is ordered to kill him in case the mission fails.

Nevertheless, as of The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 3, Hale continues to go on.

The management of The Orphanage is confronted with a vicious calculation. They now know the way it was hacked: it is installed in the pills that Hale was being given by his ex-fiancee Rachel. To use this hack to flush out the unknown enemy, they must release fake intelligence and follow where it leads, a “blue dye test.

St. George makes the call. Poseidon will be sacrificed in The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 3.

Poseidon is an operation by Cobb that is meant to give undercover assistance to a CIA mission to prevent a Slovakian anti-reformist president, Hugo Klovach, from returning to his home to challenge a presidential election with the help of a financier, Ilana Leximan. Feeding the intel to Poseidon through Hale allows the staff to keep the hackers occupied and track the signal at the expense of actual lives.

Cobb vehemently disagrees, believing that Hale is compromised. He tries to activate his internal review, bringing up previous involvement and failures of Hale. The request is terminated almost immediately. Marlowe puts it plain and simple: anybody under Claymore is off limits.

In The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 3, Moira says that the pretence has to go on. When the enemy is not receiving anything of value, he will kill Hale and vanish. Parker cautions that Hale can crumble under the psychological pressure, but Moira instructs her to devise a means through which she can keep him on track.

Meanwhile, Hale is aware of what Poseidon is. He knows people will die. He hesitates. So Parker intervenes.

During one of the military parades that were attended by Hale and his parents and Victor, Hale encounters a father who lost his son in war. The man talks of how he finds solace in the fact that his son died for a purpose. The incident shocks Hale, and later, viewers can see what is really going on.

The man in The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 3, was an actor whom Parker planted to provide Hale with a moral framework that would allow him to say yes. It works. Hale reinvests in the mission.

Poseidon is gearing up to take action when Cobb gets intelligence that Klovach and his team were diverted. He suspects that the source is not reliable, and to be sure, he attempts to bury it. Ellie hears and informs Moira. The decision is made to use Hale directly.

During a fundraising, Hale confronts Ilana Leximan, and manages to clone her phone and retrieve the new travel information. Clarissa assists in the identification of the new safe house. Parker makes sure that Hale, Cobb, and Amin are informed about the matter at the same time in a secure room, which would provide them with an airtight alibi.

The intel operation works as scheduled in The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 3. The team is watching the arrival of Klovach in the watch room. Then everything collapses. Klovach comes in with his family, who were never meant to be there. An ambush follows. Klovach, his family, and his CIA security detail are killed. Silence fills the room.

Cobb is broken and self-accusing. Hale and Parker are hounded by guilt. The price of the greater good dawns painfully on one.

Cobb insists on understanding the reason as to why no one in Poseidon is internally reviewed. Moira lies fluently, saying that they had suspected a CIA-side leak and Hale could not have been responsible, because he was monitored all the time. The blame is shifted elsewhere, and Cobb is once again cautioned to step down.

Victor privately contacts Schiff, who is concerned that the allegiance of Hale and his naivety will cost him his life. Schiff will not interfere, citing propriety, but his part is more than he has just acknowledged.

In The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 3, Michelle invites Hale to see her in a church. She takes him down to a basement where he cannot receive the signal. There, she tells him that she was lying above, she does not go to cemeteries to focus herself. She goes to churches. She even tells him the truth, that she reports everything he says. But she will tell whatever he wants to say.

Hale confesses his guilt. Innocent people died because of him. Nonetheless, he thinks that the end can justify the means. In response, Michelle reports that Hale trusts her, and, despite his conflict, he is devoted. She is later found in a cemetery alone, showing that at least one of the things she told Hale was factual.

At The Orphanage, the management comes to a resolution. The enemy isn’t a nation-state. It is an isolated, well-networked non-state actor that markets intelligence to the highest bidder and is probably located somewhere in the Southern or Eastern European region with a slightly modified version of the Cassandra technology.

On his way out, St. George leaves Parker a notebook similar to her own. It’s for the things she can’t carry. Write them down. Bury them. Try not to dig them back up.

Towards the end of The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 3, Schiff is talking to a colleague whom we cannot see. Hale has been cleared, for now. But at long last, he will see that he is compromised. When that occurs, they will require leverage. Someone close to him.