The Purity of Vengeance 2018

In 1961, teenage girl Nete Nete meets her boyfriend Tage on the beach. They share a kiss, speak about their future, and talk about Nete’s pregnancy. Their moment is shattered when her father finds them and berates her for “whoring around” with her cousin. He sends Nete to the care of Nurse Gitte Charles, who escorts her to a home for troubled girls on the isolated island of Sprogø. There, Nete encounters the facility’s doctor, Curt Wad, whose coercive presence marks the early, troubling power dynamics at the institution.

In the present tense, Hafez el-Assad sits disappointed as Mørck delivers an impersonal reference letter ahead of a transfer to the fraud department. With only a week left in Department Q, Carl Mørck downplays the depth of their long friendship, and Assad departs with a sense of dissatisfaction. Meanwhile, Nour visits an OB/GYN clinic and faces an abortion. A construction crew reveals a gruesome discovery: three mummified bodies seated around a dinner table, their organs removed and stored in jars, with signs of henbane poisoning. The team soon identifies two victims with legible IDs as Nete Hermansen and Philip Nørvig. Philip’s disappearance had previously been closed twelve years earlier, with his wife claiming he ran off with another woman. The investigators break the devastating news to Philip’s wife Mie, who explains that Philip sent an email claiming he was moving on with another woman; their son traced the IP to Málaga. She also reveals that Philip worked as a defense attorney in a case tied to Sprogø.

Back in 1961, Nete is assigned a roommate, Rita, who gradually initiates her into life on Sprogø. The girls experiment with henbane, and Rita sexually assaults Nete. Rita soon realizes Nete is pregnant. They slip away to meet a nearby fisherman, but Rita betrays Nete to secure her own release from the island. The fisherman begins to assault Nete, and Dr. Wad and Gitte are escorted in by Rita. Wad makes a crude attempt to violate Nete, but she fights back, biting his ear. Nete ends up forcibly sterilised, and shortly after, the Danish state closes Sprogø.

In the present, Rose identifies Rita as the last of the three victims and reveals that Gitte had an address in Málaga. The Spanish police arrive to arrest Gitte, only to find she has fled. The detectives suspect the central link among the victims is Sprogø, but records in the police archives are incomplete. Mørck, Assad, and Rose meet Brandt, a paranoid caretaker of the abandoned facility who offers a tour and hints that many cases were decided in secret hearings. They uncover a record of a forced-sterilisation case in which Philip represented Dr. Wad. Mørck and Assad interview Wad, and Brandt points them toward a troubling implication: Wad’s group may still be sterilising women—particularly those from immigrant backgrounds—without their knowledge. Assad recognises Nour in a video Brandt shows them. A medical exam confirms that Nour was sterilised by Wad. She is devastated and reluctant to file a formal complaint. Wad exhorts his secret eugenics society to close ranks. Mørck and Assad reopen Philip’s files, only for the files to be destroyed after a motorbike attack. Brandt is later found dead, and an assailant pursues Rose; Assad accuses Mørck of withholding information, and their partnership frays.

Mørck pieces together that the target is not Gitte but Nete, who has taken revenge on Wad’s circle by assuming new identities. He confronts an elderly woman getting off a bus, who pepper-sprays him and escapes. Nour, furious, heads to Wad’s clinic. Mørck follows Nete onto a ferry; the two share a tea laced with henbane as he realizes she killed Philip, Rita, and Gitte, and then assumed Gitte’s identity. He also deduces that the empty place setting at the dinner table was intended for Wad. Nete confesses that she and Tage briefly reunited after her release, but she was not the same person, and Tage wanted children. When her case against Wad was rejected, she began planning the murders; Tage’s death left her free to continue for twelve years until he died. Mørck lets Nete go, understanding that she has come to scatter Tage’s ashes in the Øresund.

The suspense tightens as Mørck receives a call requesting help at the clinic; Assad believes Nour is trapped there. An officer arrives, revealed to be a member of Wad’s circle. Assad discovers Nour unconscious with Wad, and the officer shoots Assad. Wad aims to stage the incident as self-defence. A still-inebriated Mørck arrives, recognizing that the officer is the same one he shot during the motorbike attack. The struggle culminates on a balcony, where Mørck hurls the officer off to his death. Nour wakes long enough to strike Wad, and Mørck calls for help.

In the aftermath, Mørck stays by Assad’s bedside and admits what their partnership means to him; Assad agrees to return to Department Q. Marcus announces the case to the press, and Wad and his wife are arrested. Nour speaks out about her experience, closing a chapter that began with a hidden past on an isolated Danish island and ended with a fragile sense of closure for those who survived the chilling chain of sterilisation, murder, and revenge. Their investigation highlights how memory, justice, and the scars of state power intersect across generations, and it underlines the fragile but essential bond that keeps Department Q functional even in the darkest cases. > “whoring around”