Summary
“Dragon Palace” has a bit more shape than previous episodes, drawing more explicit links between its various narrative components.
This recap of the Nicolas Winding Refn Netflix series Copenhagen Cowboy Season 1 Episode 3, “Dragon Palace”, contains spoilers.
Appearances can be deceiving. A family home might be a secret sex trafficking operation. A Chinese restaurant might hide a body-chomping pig farm being utilized by an underground fight club owner to dispose of dead bodies. You just never know, and Copenhagen Cowboy, in another steady, metaphor-rich outing, is ensuring that you don’t know. That’s part of the point.
Copenhagen Cowboy Season 1 Episode 3 Recap
On some level, “Dragon Palace” is almost a redo of the first two episodes, with the titular restaurant in place of Rosella’s place and Mr. Chiang instead of Rosella and Andre. As before, news of Miu’s “gifts” spread and earn her favor. As before, a veneer of legitimacy obscures a seedy underbelly. As before, pigs. Time is a cycle, not a line.
Miu renaming herself Cimona as part of her new identity must matter. At present, the late Cimona is the only link between Miu and the killer Nicklas, though the two of them crossing paths sooner rather than later seems inevitable. Recall Miu roaming through the rooms of Rosella’s place, taking moments to stretch and convulse; it isn’t hard to imagine the daydreaming Nicklas the same way, touched by something odd and off-kilter.
The difference, I suppose, is that Rosella had no evidence of Miu’s powers, and when she got some, it terrified her. Hulda, though, has seen first-hand proof, or at least what seems very much like it. We don’t have to take the show’s word for it. Through Chiang, Miu sees visions of his past that clue her into him having possession of Hulda’s daughter. The stage is set; more victims, more revenge to be enacted by Miu, who is becoming less a prophetess and more an avenging angel, roaming from one location to another, performing miracles and righting wrongs.
Through Hulda, Chiang, and one of the former’s dead pigs, the show creates a more explicit connection between Miu’s plot and Nicklas (his family is selling the pigs). The building is a warren of memories that Miu can sense, many of them of Cimona. Copenhagen Cowboy is still being deliberately coy with backstory and motivations – aside from an essential sense of moral good – but it is making it clear enough that there is something to Miu’s reputation, some otherworldly and ethereal quality. The visual motifs are still doing most of the heavy lifting, but behind the gaudy lighting and extravagant compositions, the shape of a story is undeniably beginning to emerge.
You can stream Copenhagen Cowboy Season 1 Episode 3, “Dragon Palace” exclusively on Netflix.
Additional reading:
- Copenhagen Cowboy Season 1 Episode 2 Recap.
- Copenhagen Cowboy Season 1 Episode 4 Recap.
- Will there be a Copenhagen Cowboy Season 2?
- 10 TV Shows like Copenhagen Cowboy
