Delayed as I had some other things to attend to today and it ended up taking more time and so on - I made some of these in advance, but not all, so here we are. Woops!
The big man, the safe harbour; Kuno joined the cast in season 2 in the most dramatic way possible and became one of the most (if not THE most?) stable love interests of our girl Ghita. I described him originally as:
A Greenlandic dog trainer who befriends Ghita and her colleagues and supports them while they investigate in Greenland. Kuno was born in Greenland, but his parents split when he was young and his mother, a nurse, moved to Denmark. He stayed with her until finishing school at 19 and then made the decision to move back to stay with his father and pursue a dream of training sled dogs.
Now in his early 30s, he takes an interest in the investigation team and seizes the opportunity to be their guide and help them when the local police become inadequate. He is a kind man and down to earth. His build is large and sturdy. He falls for the main character quickly, but respects if she is unwilling to pursue a relationship.
Kuno is very much a 'he fell first and hardest' as his quick and sometimes shy attraction to Ghita is accelerated every time he gets the chance to spend time with her. I liked him being concerned and professional after saving her from the ice, but when they meet again, he's had some time to think and he just goes for it. I think it's so cute that he seemingly went "what the heck, might as well try" and stated his intentions.
There's something about it that I thought was very fitting with the setting. These small settlements are quite isolated along the coast, you can only get from one settlement to another via planes, so any outsiders come with a purpose. They're not there for long and they might never return. If you feel a spark with someone, it's honestly a race against time to sort out your feelings before they'll be gone forever.
I characterised Kuno as a very sociable man, someone who really needs human connection to thrive, and there's just something about the way he connects with Ghita - especially if you choose the Greenlandic background - that works on so many levels. His physical presence, his kindness, his spirituality; he was so acutely aware of his surroundings and at ease in the cold, harsh nature around them, that I think Ghita immediately felt safe around him and that's part of the reason why asking him to come to CPH without knowing him for that long didn't feel implausible. I do think we sometimes meet people that we connect with beyond knowledge and history, but really just that intangible soul connection. And Kuno really did feel deeply.
I wanted to address two things - first of all, the unspoken tension between Kuno and Mads. 🤫
Sometimes I get an idea and it is of zero consequence, but also is so obscure that I know, in advance, that this is more an inside hee-hee haa-haa to myself than to anyone else.... and I will add it.
Writing is supposed to be fun and stuff like this makes me smile.
Mads already gave a beautiful performance of "I'm not gay" at the front desk of the hotel if you're playing with a WLW Ghita, and this little joke chases him around until the end (him being weirdly specific about not arriving "together" with Yasin in the final scene like, yes, we get it, you're straight). The part of it I had the most fun with though, were these secret signals that Kuno was sending out to test if Mads was interested.
I'm not about to claim I know the first thing about how a man determine in the wild that another man is gay, but flirting is flirting and rejection is rejection. The fact that Mads recognises Kuno checking him out and changes how he speaks to him is just another one of those layers. Kuno on the other hand is pretty funny about it - in the breakfast scene episode 9, I couldn't help but phrase Kuno's address to Mads plaufully, while Mads is riggid and dismissive, not impolite but just...... "hello stop flirting with me."
What can I say, it brought me joy!
Secondly, Kuno's role as the boyfriend. He was always meant to be unconnected to work once he was in Copenhagen. His quick adoption into Ghita's friend group and the sharp separation of work life and private life was very much on purpose. Kuno is perhaps the ideal "policewoman's husband" as Ghita can truly let go of work when she gets home to him. He's there for her to offload her burdens and he can shoulder a lot of her worries as he isn't himself involved.
In the dynamic with Alba, he offers the parts Alba cannot. Where Alba needs saving from Ghita, Kuno is there to pick up the slack. He will carry Ghita after she's spent all her energy carrying Alba. It's the first time I've done a poly relationship and I don't know if it necessarily added anything to the arc, but it was a good experiment. I also found that it changed the vibe of their interpersonal relationship, where Ghita (if I remember correctly) is much more stressed and worried about Kuno's giving nature on a Kuno-only route than she is on a Kuno-Alba route, simply because she needs more of him with a third person in the relationship.
Will it last? I don't know. Both Kuno and Alba challenge Ghita in their own way and with different motivations to reconsider her whole life. To me, they each seek a place to feel home and unfortunately, they're pulling in opposing directions. Compromises could be made, but at the end of the day Ghita's own dependency on her job, her police identity, could end up being the deciding factor. I don't know if she could settle for a bohemian life in Berlin, or wouldn't get bored in Sullulik.
I think Kuno is an important relationship for Ghita because he inadvertedly teaches her so much about herself, but given the kind of person she is, their happiness depends on her willingness to change for him too.
Do you have questions? Leave them in the comments or submit an ask!