'Vienna Blood' Recap: Season 4 Episode 1

Vienna Blood premieres Sundays at 9:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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Oskar and his deputy Haussmann have made a significant arrest, of the arms dealer Franz Burgstaller. But when Commissioner von Bülow brings beer into the police station to celebrate and makes a speech congratulating himself on the arrest, Oskar leaves. Burgstaller wants to talk – but only to Oskar.

The criminal asks Oskar to tell the government’s director of security, Strasser, that he knows where to find Mephisto. He will only say more outside of his cell.

Oskar brings this cryptic message to Strasser, who oversees the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s police. Strasser asks Oskar to bring Burgstaller to meet him, offering a ruined castle near his home as a rendezvous. Oskar objects, fearing for Strasser’s safety, but Strasser insists and gives Oskar written permission to take Burgstaller out of custody. Mephisto is the Empire’s deadliest enemy, whom Strasser has been unsuccessfully trying to track down for years.

So Oskar, Haussmann, and a trusted deputy named Meier escort Burgstaller to the ruins. No one else on the police force knows details of the meeting. Burgstaller tells Strasser that he knows Mephisto’s real name: he did business with an associate of Mephisto and then followed him and saw the two together. He wants to barter for this information, so Strasser authorizes Oskar to remove Burgstaller’s handcuffs.

Just then, shots ring out and all the men scatter to shelter, Burgstaller with a bleeding arm. Oskar and Haussmann fire back, but while they are both reloading their new automatic guns, Burgstaller makes a run for it. The unarmed Strasser follows to prevent him from escaping. A man emerges and shoots Burgstaller and then Strasser point blank. As he turns towards Oskar, Meier appears behind him and shoots him. Strasser gasps out to Oskar that he wants him to find Mephisto, and Oskar promises to do so before Strasser dies. Burgstaller and the attacker are already dead.

Von Bülow takes Oskar off the case and any other murders. He does reveal that the dead killer has been identified as a member of the Hofer gang of thieves; presumably they feared Burgstaller was going to inform on them. Oskar doesn’t tell von Bülow about Mephisto. Indeed, when Strasser’s replacement visits the police station, he requests that Oskar share anything he finds out with him – he knows that von Bülow relies on Oskar. Nevertheless, von Bülow thinks the death of both Burgstaller and Strasser under Oskar’s watch will be career-ending for Oskar.

Oskar returns to the ruins and finds two cigarette butts, pocketing them before visiting Strasser’s daughter. She lets him search Strasser’s study, where Oskar finds clippings of newspaper articles about policing failures, including the attempted bombing of a treaty signing by Lazar Kiss, a Serbian radical, that Oskar and Max prevented. Kiss has since died. Strasser’s daughter, Eva, tells Oskar that Strasser once drank too much and kept repeating that someone in Vienna was giving away their secrets. Oskar thinks that means Mephisto is a high-powered government traitor.

Oskar enlists the unofficial help of the police archivist, Fräulein Lindner. She brings him the files from the bombing case and also notes that the cigarette butts he found were likely smoked by different people, since one is cheap and one is expensive.

Oskar then goes to another friend for help with the case. Max has just returned from a lucrative lecture tour of America. He’s also now the head of his department at the hospital, so he can easily afford to buy as a gift a silver case for Oskar to hold the coffee beans Oskar likes to chew.

Oskar brings Max to speak to Burgstaller’s lover. She mentions that Burgstaller sometimes visited someone at a palace, unusually. She thinks it was a Spanish singer named Carillo.

Carillo tells the detectives that he doesn’t know Burgstaller, nor does he ever find himself in palaces. But after he leaves his interview, he calls someone and frantically asks them to tell him that his debt is paid; as far as he is concerned, their business is now settled.

Apparently not. Carillo is found dead at a bathhouse the next morning. Most of the facility’s clients are anonymous. There is a slip of paper in Carillo’s pocket reading 1257. Among the personal belongings found in his home are a big wad of cash and hundreds of letters from fans – plus a cipher to decode a hidden message. The detectives and Fräulein Lindner try it on all the letters but turn up nothing.

Then Max notices a letter that was unopened and newly delivered, with an expensive stamp for long distances, despite being sent from Vienna. The letter itself is unremarkable, but Max peels away the stamp and finds a grid of letters hidden underneath. Fräulein Lindner uses the cipher on it, and “Riegers Palast” is revealed. Oskar recognizes the name from another paper found at Carillo’s: it’s a casino. It must be the “palace” Burgstaller’s lover said Burgstaller visited. And there’s also a gambling token found amongst Carillo’s things.

Max wants to visit the casino undercover with Oskar as wealthy gentlemen, but Oskar notes that they’ll need to spend some money to make their guises convincing. Max just made a hefty sum on his lecture tour, didn’t he? Max agrees to spend some of it at the casino.

Oskar has run into another old acquaintance: Therese, whom he was courting until he found out that she had a husband who is absent a lot. Oskar spots her at the police station; her husband got into a drunken fight and spent the night in a cell. Oskar politely asks after Therese and her daughter, but the encounter is awkward. Therese’s husband is glowering at them from afar.