Copenhagen Cowboy, the latest show from Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Bronson), is pretty weird. There are Chinese restaurants in the middle of Danish forests, magic powers, neon lights, and dozens of blue tracksuits, and Refn doesn’t go out of his way to explain much of it.
This includes the first season’s final moments, which conclude with a cameo from a friend of Refn’s who also happens to be one of the most famous video game developers of all time. And even if we can’t exactly explain the rest of Copenhagen Cowboy, we can at least tell you about the cameo.
[Ed. note: This story contains spoilers for Copenhagen Cowboy season 1.]
To the surprise of no one, Hideo Kojima is the surprise cameo, with a brief appearance at the end of Copenhagen Cowboy season 1’s final episode. The Metal Gear Solid creator’s appearance comes by way of a laptop screen through which he tells Miroslav (Zlatko Buric) to go to the Giants if he wants protection from Miu (Angela Bundalovic), because apparently they’re the only ones who can fight her — though he may not know about red tracksuit girl quite yet.
We’re not really sure who the Giants are, what their powers are, or why they can or would fight Miu and protect Miroslav, but we’re willing to take Kojima’s word on it. It seems like this cameo is designed to expand the world of the show if it gets a second season, giving us a new group of supernatural creatures to meet and another foe for the many, many Mius we see at the end of the season.
The cameo itself isn’t too surprising given that it isn’t the first time that Refn has put Kojima in one of his projects. A few years ago, Refn gave Kojima another cameo in his series Too Old to Die Young, where Kojima played a yakuza member. Meanwhile, on the other side of the exchange, Refn shows up briefly in Kojima’s most recent game, Death Stranding. One thing that is somewhat surprising is that Kojima seems like he could be important to the future of the show, given that he knows all about who Miroslav should visit next and says that he likes Miu, which probably means that he’s up to date on at least a few of the events of the series so far.
Of course, the future of Copenhagen Cowboy remains unknown for now. With the series only just getting released, Netflix hasn’t said anything about a potential second season and it’s way too early to know how popular the show is with viewers.