‘Copenhagen Cowboy’ Episode 6 Recap: I’ll Be Back

Please renew Copenhagen Cowboy. I’ll say it again: Please renew Copenhagen Cowboy. I’m not a praying man, but to whatever Netflix gods are listening, I beg of you: Please renew Copenhagen Cowboy.

I mean, would I live if the adventures of Miu never get completed? Sure. As good as it is, Copenhagen lacks the blistering ferocity and unpleasantness of Too Old to Die Young, so a renewal, while pleasant, feels less urgent. 

But the show also lacks TOtDY’s sense that the story/season/series ended on a note of closure, pointing a way forward for its surviving characters without actually requiring us to walk all the way there with them. Copenhagen, by contrast, ends on a pair of straight-up cliffhangers, one of which cuts off in the middle of a scene — a psychic battle, no less. It’s the kind of ending that normally rewards letting that “Next Episode” button fire up and launch you right into the next hour of your binge…only there is no next hour, not unless the show gets renewed. 

So I say again: Please renew Copenhagen Cowboy.

Because I want more stuff like Miu’s surreal final encounter with Mr. Chiang, in which they commune within a dream, Chiang falls in love, Miu rejects him, and they fight to the death. (Chiang’s death, naturally.) Abstracted synthesizer sound effects are used in lieu of traditional combat foley art, to give the battle the feeling of a boss fight in a video game, or perhaps the aural equivalent of the Batman TV show’s “BANG! POW!” placards. Even Miu’s entrance into Chiang’s inner sanctum with Mother Hulda looks like astronauts traversing a corridor of pure light in deep space. Meanwhile the use of blue curtains and the way Chiang glitches into the scene are shameless David Lynch swipes and I love every second of them, because the dream sequence, with its beatific composition, shows Nicolas Winding Refn is way more than a clone.

I want more stuff like the introduction of Aske (Adam Buschard), an apparently immortal figure who serves as a hunter of humans for Nicklas (now played by Andreas Bisquard Vestervig, though I have no idea when and how and why the switch took place) and Rakel’s “bloodline.” Sure, he shoots an obnoxious businessman incongruously having a cellphone conversation in the middle of a forest and feeds his heart to Rakel to strengthen her magic powers. But, as he kindly reminds Nicklas, “I’m not just a good hunter, I’m a good listener, too.” Isn’t that sweet? Isn’t it incredible that this guy was saved for the very last episode?

I want more stuff like the dreamlike natural lighting and frequently handheld camera work of the sequence where Miu gathers the spirits of Nicklas’s many victims. All of them wear blue tracksuits, just like her, arrayed against the red-tracksuited menace of Rakel. It’s a sequence of strange, sad communion.

I want more stuff like the banshee scream that Rakel unleashes against Miu and the ghosts, forcing tears from Miu’s huge eyes, while light beams shoot out from her own. Not to get back to Lynch again, but few directors come closer to his mastery of portraying supernatural evil through a contemporary aesthetic sensibility.

And I want to find out what the hell Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima is talking about when, during his cameo as a crime boss named Hideo, he tells Miroslav to contact “the Giants” and enlist them as protection against a vengeful Miu. You can’t drop stuff like that on us and then just leave!

Of course, you can absolutely do just that, especially in this increasingly uncertain era for streaming television — ask the folks who made 1899. But I hope it doesn’t turn out that way. I hope we get to see more of the Copenhagen underworld, in every sense of that word. I hope we see more hours and hours of Refn (aided and abetted by co-developer Sara Isabella Jønsson and a talented writing staff in tune with their sensibilities). He’s a filmmaker completely confident in his obsessions who, for some reason, has been given more or less free rein to pursue them. You don’t see that on TV very often. Copenhagen Cowboy proves that you should. 

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.