'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.

Oskar doubts he can do much officially (he’s on the run!), but his being suspended is a mark in his favor as far as Helena’s concerned. Without saying it out loud, she clarifies some of her clients are very high up in the police force. (Ok, then!) Oskar gets a tutorial on how the ultra high-rollers who play chemin de fer approach betting. Helena summarizes it as a game for players “who have too much of everything;” to get the thrills they want, they have to make the stakes sky-high by betting titles, land, secrets, and even people. 

She gives Oskar the pseudonyms and real names of people who were playing with Max the night he was shot so he can proceed with his quest for the ledgers. Before leaving, he gives Helena the phone number for the Lieberman home, which is the easiest way to reach him, but I doubt its wisdom, as it all but announces where he can be found. Meanwhile, The Baron outright rejects Clara’s opinion piece; she wrote it to meet his exacting specifications from their earlier conversation. However, he declines to offer further editorial guidance and dismisses her, saying, “You squandered this opportunity!” 

(Clara, this is what a lousy editor looks like; you can do way better!)

The Actress gets another visit from the Emperor’s factotum, who agrees to send His  Excellency to attend her late grandfather’s special mass incognito. The General meets again with the tank engineer, who has a model to show. It’s fast, it’s strong, it’s going to revolutionize the face of war, and here’s the difference between The General and me: I hear all of that and think, “How much money would it take for this guy to destroy all evidence that he ever turned his mind to this invention?” and The General thinks “sounds great! How much money will we need for an exclusive contract on these babies?” He signs a contract and announces, “We’re in business together now.” 

(Quick aside: one of the things I particularly love and will miss about Vienna Blood is its print culture. It’s an English language show, but every time we see newspapers, mail, posters, or official documents, they’re all in German, and the typefaces are so visually distinctive. It’s also cool to see people writing with the implements of the era, like fountain pens and blotters. These are small details, but they’re representative of the degree of care the people who make this show invest in their work.) 

Oskar knows he has his work cut out for him – all of these people he’s investigating are so well-connected that he doubts his ability to get to the bottom of it all. In his mind palace, Max once again walks him through it, encouraging Oskar to “go back to first principles” and list the facts he has at his disposal. Eventually, he arrives once more at the notion that what’s really at stake in the Riegers Palace chemin de fer games is illicit information that gives the players power over other people and events. With that in mind, he convinces Clara to help him in his investigation, resulting in their sneaking into The Baron’s office late at night and finding among his current projects an editorial that’s a total reversal of what he’d counseled her to write in the last episode. Peace with Serbia at all costs is out, advising the government to go to war immediately is in. What on earth would make him do that? Hm! Given how staunch The Baron was in his anti-war stance mere days ago, what would make him do such an about-face? Could it be a terrible secret, something he would feel dreadful shame about if it were widely known? 

The next day is the special votive mass for The Actress’s late grandfather, and true to his word, the Emperor is there, having slipped in the back, wearing civilian clothes rather than the military dress uniform he usually wears at major events like this. Coincidentally, the ledger thief has struck again at Riegers Palace, leaving a note for Helena instructing her to attend the mass, too. Oskar quickly convinces her to stay at the casino, as it’s clearly a ploy to erase all knowledge of his membership at the casino by killing her. Oskar dashes off to the cathedral himself, and summons the loyal Haussmann to the scene, too. 

Once at the cathedral, Oskar returns to his mind palace, where Max reminds him that he, Oskar, designed these imaginary rooms and has filled them with items that remind him of previous cases. As moments of earlier cases flash past us, Oskar realizes that he’s seen Mephisto’s face before; he needs to recognize it. What if Lazar Kiss wasn’t dead? Faking your death is a very effective way to get the law to stop searching for you, and he’s the only perpetrator who they both failed to capture and who has an all-consuming hatred for the Empire. 

Sure enough, a suspicious silhouette is in the upper gallery, seeking a shot at the Emperor. Oskar leaps into action, running upstairs and managing to knock Kiss to the floor, along with the silencer-bedecked rifle. The two men scuffle, punch, and kick each other pretty intensely, but not so intensely that they don’t have the lung capacity to have a vital expositional conversation about how Kiss bought the rifle and silencer from Burgsteller and how Carillo was the go-between, so they both had to die to maintain operational security. Kiss confirms he shot Max, and there’s no limit to the lives he’d sacrifice to foment a war before pulling a knife on Oskar, saying dramatically, “It’s been a long time coming, Inspector.”  

(This can only be interpreted by me, anyway, as a shout-out to Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, which famously and sadly, could not go on in Vienna this summer due to credible terrorist threats. I hope anyone working on Vienna Blood at the time and who had tickets to the shows in Vienna could attend the Eras Tour in another city later.) 

Back to Oskar and Kiss, their knife fight devolves into a fistfight, leading to them stumbling through some wooden slats onto the cathedral’s beautifully tiled, steep roof. They slide down it onto a walkway at the very edge of the roof. Oskar tumbles over it, narrowly avoiding falling to his death by gripping the lip of it as Kiss indulges in a bit of “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die”-style villainously smug nastiness, crushing Oskar’s fingers with his boot. 

Now it’s time for another memory to burble up from Oskar’s mind palace, a flashback of the heated confrontation with Herr _______, the steel magnate who turned out to be the villain Max confronted on the Riesenrad. As it turns out, Helena is not immune to the feeling of needing to take a considerable risk, and she expresses it by telling Oskar that not only is she Mephisto, but she’s been steering the Austrian empire toward war because there aren’t many more bridges or railroads to build now. To keep her steelworks successful, she has to expand, and what better way to do so than a war and all the tanks the army has agreed to purchase. Kiss killing the Emperor would lead to a declaration of war and a rush order for those tanks.  

(I’d be remiss not to mention the detail from my own mind palace that has been floating up to the surface: this scenario recalls two moments from Oskar and Max’s first case, which included a chase across Vienna’s rooftops, and where, later, Max nearly plummeted to his death dangling from a carriage on the Riesenrad. Fortunately, Oskar summons a last bit of strength and uses his other hand to grab Kiss and give a firm yank, sending Kiss fatally falling to the pavement below. Haussman arrives at the knick of time to save Oskar from the same fate; yay! He could be a great detective if he survives this case.)

We get a moment of much-needed levity as Oskar learns he’s being reinstated, with the Emperor’s personal thanks and a letter of commendation soon to be en route to the ministry so they know just how doggedly dutiful he is. The cherry on this professional sundae is learning von Bülow will be tasked with writing the letter. Sometimes, we do get justice at our workplaces. 

Oskar heads to Riegers Palace to thank Helena and share that Kiss’s death means the Mephisto threat has finally been eliminated and to thank her for sharing the information that made it possible for Oskar to prevent the Emperor’s assassination. All’s well that ends well, except that Helena, like so many evil geniuses, must show Oskar her whole hand. Do you recall her telling Max that she’d inherited the casino from her late father, who had run a successful steelworks? In chillingly familiar words, she describes him as having built “every tram line and telegraph wire,” producing scalpels, razors, and table knives. He built Vienna. 

Oskar deduces that Helena needs him, a man driven by duty, to kill Kiss and ensure that Serbian nationalism gets a much higher profile in the news and public imagination. She used him to get vengeance for her father’s death, too, using her relationship with the man who took over from the late Strasser to maneuver Oskar into position. They’ll keep him alive to use him to help launch the war. Unlike others in Helena’s diabolical web, she doesn’t need to bankrupt him; he’s already shown that he’ll always protect the people he cares about, so all she needs to do is threaten Max, Therese, or Hannah to get him to do her bidding. 

Now, there’s nothing more for him to do than deliver a rueful, loving eulogy for Max, to Max in his mind palace, saying that he loves this impossible, stubborn know-it-all and that he’s better for having known him. Max hopes Oskar gets a chance to use it, and Oskar hopes he never does. I don’t know who is busy chopping onions in this room, but I’d like them to stop immediately. How am I to complete this recap with my eyes full of tears? 

Mind palace Max doesn’t get his wish because regular Max emerges unscathed from his coma, immediately asking if he’d missed anything while unconscious. It would be so lovely if we closed out on this happy scene of relief among all of his loved ones, but instead, the finale’s final shot is of Oskar receiving his commendation and looking abjectly miserable. His face here is the opposite of how he looked at Max’s bedside – there’s no relief, no joy, just a grim determination to survive the monstrous role he’s been maneuvered into. 

Forget it, Oskar, it’s Leopoldstadt.

Should we be so lucky, the door is clearly left open for a fifth season. I’m not holding my breath, but it would be fun to welcome Inspector Rheinhardt and Dr. Liebermann to the case again.

Vienna Blood Seasons 1 through 4 are available to stream on the PBS app, the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel, and PBS Passport for members. As always, check your local listings and streamers.