The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 4 recap: The Orphanage’s manipulation comes into focus

The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 4 is titled Obsidian. It dropped on December 27, 2025, along with the rest of the season on Peacock.

This espionage sci-fi series stars Simu Liu as Alexander Hale, an intelligence analyst whose brain has been hacked. Every step he takes is watched, and the line between technology and spycraft blurs in this near-future world.

Hale is stuck trying to figure out who is behind the hack and, at the same time, fighting to prove he is still loyal to his shadowy agency, The Orphanage. The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 4 throws Hale into the fire. He heads into the field, planning to bait enemy agents by reaching out to a Source. Turns out, nothing about this mission is simple, and people aren’t who they seem.

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The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 4 recap: Obsidian

The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 4 is heavily focused on paranoia, showing the extent to which manipulation is embedded within the walls of The Orphanage. It silently affirms that the Lone Wolf is not necessarily the greatest threat Alexander Hale has to face, but rather his own agency.

The episode begins with a flashback to five years ago. Cobb is dragged in to be taken through a review and accused of leaking sensitive documents in the office of a senator, an allegation that he strongly refutes. Just as his career seems finished, Marlowe steps in.

She exposes that Cobb was not the one leaking information, and the one who accused him was the actual offender. Instead of clearing his name publicly, Marlowe hires Cobb, taking him to The Orphanage. The moment reframes Cobb not as a paranoid nuisance but as the product of institutional betrayal all along.

In the present, Parker is at work after another sleepless night, and he is still shaken by the death of Klovach. Moira sees her already calculating her next move. Two weeks later, Parker already has a plan: Hale is sent undercover to approach a compromised CIA agent called Mosaic, whose real name is Saul.

The plan of the Orphanage is noble and cruel in The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 4. They want the Lone Wolf to think that Saul has a hard drive that has evidence of a spy within The Orphanage. The hackers will strike if they believe they are being exposed. The dummy drive is placed, and Saul is allowed to think that he has something of great value. Expectedly, he starts quietly searching out buyers.

Meanwhile, Hale is trying to win the trust of Saul and become his friend. Marlowe and Moira, on the contrary, are doing their best to encourage the act and make Hale feel appreciated, not out of their heart, but because he will remain emotionally involved in the mission and devoted to The Orphanage. Michelle becomes increasingly involved with Hale, and boundaries between personal and professional become so unclear that it becomes even more calculated.

As the trap is played out in The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 4, Cobb re-examines a video of the Klovach ambush. As he magnifies the evidence, he finds something chilling. One of the men who participated in the action is carrying a schematic of the safe house with a marking of X, in Cobb’s own handwriting. The implication is impossible to deny. The information was obtained within the Orphanage.

Cobb attempts to re-access the file but finds that it has been pulled and labeled as “damaged” without a record of any person having done so. Shocked, he approaches Amin, who advises him to be careful. Cobb, nevertheless, contacts the senator he used to serve and insists on interviewing with the CIA Director, suggesting that he is aware of the person who has betrayed the operation in Slovakia.

In The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 4, Saul challenges Hale in his house and accuses him of collaborating with The Orphanage, and offers him a deal: Hale can be a middleman to sell the drive back to the agency. Hale forwards the message of Saul to his bosses at The Orphanage, and they continue the fake operation. But this time it is also intended to confuse Schiff, who is closely observing and trying to figure out what The Orphanage is up to.

During a subsequent meeting, things go wrong. Hale identifies some suspicious men in the building, assassins who do not appear related to the hackers themselves or The Orphanage. Hale realizes that something is amiss, and he changes the plan and returns to Saul. Parker must violate procedure and call Hale directly, instructing him to go to a safehouse as an extraction team is dispatched.

Saul spirals within the safehouse. He cautions Hale never to believe The Orphanage and tries to escape. This is met with a fierce fight, and Hale is left with no choice but to kill him. The situation is violent, and the seizures of Hale, which increase in intensity and frequency, add to the situation.

It is later revealed in The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 4, that Saul was to die. Moira had not intended to keep him safe, but to make him meet the dead end that would leave the Lone Wolf in need and exposed.

Off the field, Marlowe informs Moira and St. George about her inquiry into the pills that Hale has been taking. Rachel got them through a pharmaceutical rep, who is no more. The chemist who spiked them with nanites is still on the loose, and there’s no evidence that Rachel was handing out more than she actually knew.

Hale himself is the greater issue. His brain functions are exhibiting dangerous changes. All the operatives who demonstrated such signs were later killed. The technology expert cautions that complete symbiosis may occur within weeks or days. The Orphanage does not tell Hale that he is running out of time.

The cover that Michelle had so well under control starts to break as a man she had a relationship with in the past identifies her at a bar. He suggests that he had believed in her fully before his secrets were revealed and she disappeared. Taking him as a danger, Michelle finds him later and shoots him in his apartment. The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 4 proves that her loyalties are deadly.

Parker is obviously under tension and opens up to Michelle. She confesses she feels bad about how easily she can manipulate now. She even feels jealous that she did not come up with the idea of the Mosaic herself. Michelle hears and asks her to accept what she is becoming.

In The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 4, Hale tries to find a solution in other places, visiting Victor in his restaurant, where he expresses his increasing uncertainty about The Orphanage and his place in it. Victor encourages him to tolerate ambiguity, yet we do not know whether we can trust Victor.

Towards the end of The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 4, Hale shows up at Michelle’s apartment. As he waits, he sees a book on her shelf, draws it out, and recognizes it instantly. There are lines that she used to say to him during what he intended to be intimate, spontaneous moments. Every word had been scripted. Every interaction planned.

The discovery comes silently but destroys him. Michelle was never simply Michelle. She was yet another instrument of the Orphanage, who was moulding him. Hale does not reveal anything, yet the illusion is broken. He is more alone than ever.

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The Copenhagen Test Season 1 Episode 4 is now streaming on Peacock.