'Vienna Blood's Finale Shows Us "The Face of Mephisto"

Welcome back, possibly for the last time, to Vienna Blood. If this season finale pulls double-duty as a series finale, it will complete a nice little set of bookends for our favorite intercultural, pre-Great War crime-fighting odd couple (while leaving the door tantalizingly open for several more chapters of The Adventures of Max and Oskar). When last we saw Detective Rheinhardt, he was being slandered and hung out to dry by his own police department, blamed for murdering Therese’s terrible husband and narrowly avoiding being felled by an assassin’s bullet, himself.

Aspiring detective/murderer Meyer took one to the head right in front of Oskar, who von Bülow instantly blames for Meyer’s death because Oskar’s engraved silver coffee bean case was found at the scene. With Meyer dead, von Bülow also takes over the investigation, which means yelling at everyone within earshot at the Leopoldstadt precinct to search the city until they find Oskar. Incredible strategy, implemented immaculately, pal. Haussmann and Linder are skeptical of everything unfolding before them and quietly make a pact to continue to be a friend to Oskar however they can.

Oskar takes another trip to his mind palace to consult with Max: Why didn’t Mephisto kill him when he had the chance? Oskar concludes that with Meyer gone, there’s no way to pin Therese’s husband’s murder on anyone but Oskar. I’m not sure that B follows A, but there’s no time to go further down that logical rabbit hole because Oskar has been summoned to Riegers Palace to investigate the overnight theft of her ledgers. Somebody is seeking the identities of her members, which is Simply Not Done and could quickly destroy many reputations in Vienna’s extremely gossipy Germanic version of the Regency period’s ton.