Netflix The Nurse recap guide: All 4 episodes explained

Looking for a new true crime show that you just have to see with your own eyes to believe? Netflix has released a Danish series called The Nurse, based on the true story of Christina Aistrup Hansen. The miniseries was created by Danish writer/director Kasper Barfoed (The Chestnut Man) and is just four episodes, making it very easy to binge in one weekend.

If you watched Netflix’s 2022 movie The Good Nurse starring Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne and then checked out the docuseries Capturing the Killer Nurse, you’ll totally see similarities in The Nurse. The frightening thing is that true crime cases like this have happened multiple times across the globe.

The Nurse stars Fanny Louise Bernth as Pernille, Josephine Park as Christina, Peter Zandersen as Niels, and Amalie Lindegård as Katja, among others.

Here at Netflix Life, we’re breaking down all four episodes of The Nurse and recapping all the biggest moments. Let’s start with the premiere, titled “I Will Survive.”

The Nurse episode 1 recap: I Will Survive

The premiere episode of The Nurse takes us back in time to 2012 as we meet an older gentleman named Arne. Unfortunately, we find him in bad shape when he comes home and greets his dog totally out of breath. He ends up passing out, and when his brother Kenny comes over he finds him on the ground. He’s rushed to the hospital, but fortunately when he wakes up he’s in good spirits. He’s got friends and family there visiting, and he even sneaks a beer in while laying in the hospital bed.

But sadly, things take a turn later that night when a person comes in and injects something into Arne’s IV. We don’t know why it’s happened, but someone’s just killed him.

We then jump ahead to 2014 and meet our protagonist in the story, Pernille. She co-parents her young daughter Alberte with her ex, who seem to get along very well, and she’s getting ready to start her first day as a nurse. After dropping Alberte off at school the following day, she heads to the hospital and gets acquainted with the place. She meets her new co-workers and starts to get a lay of the land when suddenly, an alarming beeping begins. She heads to one of the rooms and watches as a nurse named Christina saves a patient’s life.

Christina starts training Pernille, and she seems extremely knowledgeable about all the patients. She clues Pernille in about the state of the hospital, telling her that they get the doctors no one else wants.

That evening at home, Pernille is telling her ex about her first day when she gets a call from the hospital, asking her to work a night shift. Pernille’s ex agrees to watch Alberte so she can go. During the night shift, Christina is also working and at first, it’s going very slowly. They have nothing to do, so Pernille decides to go check on all the patients. She’s then surprised when the cardiac arrest beeping starts, and she finds Christina giving a patient chest compressions. Christina shows Pernille how to do it, and together they save his life. One of the doctors comes in and calls the two ladies “the dream team.”

Back in 2012, we see what happens in the fallout of Arne’s death. His brother Kenny receives the autopsy, which shows high levels of morphine and diazepam. His death is ruled an overdose. But Kenny is confused, explaining that he wasn’t prescribed these medications. He’s told that Arne must’ve taken his own life by stealing the drugs from the hospital when he was staying there overnight. Understandably, Kenny is outraged by this suggestion.

When we cut to 2014, we see Christina and Pernille start to get close. They go out clubbing with a few of their other co-workers and dance together. Christina makes out with a man she meets and goes home with him, while Pernille starts talking to a doctor named Niels. Christina had previously warned Pernille against dating a doctor at the hospital, but Pernille forms a connection with him at the club. That is, before she has to run to the bathroom to vomit from drinking.

During one of her next shifts at the hospital, Pernille grows close to a patient named Janni, who is a young woman, and then plans to go out with Niels. On their date, he explains to her that he only works at the hospital because his ex and their children live in the town and that when he first started everyone told him it was the worst hospital in Denmark. Despite this, he tells Pernille he likes it now, and that the patients are good people.

Pernille starts getting really good at the job and continues caring for Janni. But one night, she’s shocked when the alarms start beeping and Janni, unexplainably, dies. Pernille doesn’t understand how that could happen as she was so young. She decides to confide in another nurse and tells her about Janni, but Christina comes in and interrupts the conversation. Pernille says she doesn’t think she’s cut out for the ER after what happened, but Christina talks her out of quitting.

As the episode comes to a close, Pernille heads to Janni’s room to say goodbye, and she notices something strange in the trash can. There’s a syringe with diazepam in the garbage, which is very suspicious.

Written by Natalie Zamora