'Vienna Blood' Recap: Season 4 Episode 3
Daniel Hautzinger
January 19, 2025

Vienna Blood premieres Sundays at 9:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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Max is unresponsive but alive in the hospital after being shot in the tunnels below the Riegers Palast casino. Leah curses Oskar for involving her brother in dangerous police work. Oskar may be responsible for more than just involving Max – he fears he’s the one who shot him, in the confusion of shadows in the tunnel. He only heard one shot, and it was his.
Oskar regrets bringing Max onto the Mephisto case, as he tells Therese, who with her daughter is still staying at Oskar’s house after her husband beat her. He should have protected Max.
Two bullet casings are found at the shooting scene the next day: one from Oskar’s pistol, and another from a different gun. And Max’s doctor thinks he was shot by a rifle – perhaps like the one Oskar saw the man he was following through the tunnels pick up.
Oskar sketches the rifle for the archivist Fräulein Lindner, describing the odd attachment to its barrel, and gives her the cigarette stub he picked up from the casino that looked similar to one he found at the scene of the killing of Burgstaller and Strasser. Lindner eventually matches the rifle attachment to a new patent for a silencer, which would explain why Oskar only heard one shot. Oskar didn’t shoot Max.
And the silencer explains Burgstaller’s link to the case: as a weapons dealer, he probably supplied it.
That’s not the only new weapons technology around: an inventor visits a general to present a design for a tank, but the general is dismissive. The general is “the soldier” who was part of the high-stakes secret gambling game Max played in before being shot. Now that Max’s shooting is in the newspapers, the general warns a subordinate that no one can know he was at the casino.
“The actress” who took part in the game is also facing repercussions: the emperor, her patron, no longer wants to bankroll her gambling habit. But she resolutely tells the emperor’s servant that she refuses to quit her gambling indulgence.
Oskar wants to learn the identity of these and other people who were at the casino, but its owner, Helena Rieger, refuses to share her member registry: it’s full of important people. News of the shooting is slowing business at the casino, and Helena doesn’t want further fuss. Oskar threatens to come back with a warrant and arrest her, but soon receives a warning from his boss von Bülow to stop investigating the casino – a powerful person wants to end Oskar’s digging.
Oskar tells von Bülow that he is trying to ferret out a high-up government traitor known as Mephisto, carrying on Strasser’s investigation. Von Bülow wants to inform Strasser’s replacement, but Oskar says they can’t trust anyone and asks for 24 hours to deliver proof.
Therese wants to pick up some things from her house, so Oskar goes there first to see if her husband, Thanhofer, is gone. He’s not: he’s dead there, killed by a knife. Oskar calls in the murder and is quickly implicated: a neighbor heard a violent argument in Thanhofer’s apartment and then saw Oskar leave, and bloody fibers on the body match Oskar’s coat. Oskar admits that he warned Thanhofer to leave Vienna, but didn’t kill him. He tells von Bülow that Mephisto is trying to set him up. But von Bülow tries to have Oskar arrested, so he flees.
Oskar takes refuge in the Liebermann home, where he convinces Leah to hide him in a secret room. When the police search the home, they can’t find Oskar. Meier has been put in charge of the case because Haussmann is too close to Oskar. Indeed, Haussmann stays behind at the Liebermanns’ and insists that Leah show him to Oskar after the other policemen have left. Oskar gains another ally.
Meier also searches Oskar’s house, where he finds Therese and tells her that her husband is dead – and that Oskar is the prime suspect. He threatens her and her daughter. Her presence at Oskar’s house only further implicates Oskar.
But Meier has ulterior motives. He visits the comatose Max in the hospital and moves to suffocate him with a pillow, but is interrupted by Max’s visiting parents. (Clara also visits Max and tells him that he’s right; she does still have feelings for him.) When Max’s parents return home and find Oskar hiding there, they tell him about Meier’s suspicious behavior.
Meier further frustrates the investigation when Lindner tells him that she identified the store that sells the expensive cigarette Oskar found at the scene of Burgstaller’s killing. The shopkeeper is willing to share a client list. Meier assures her that he will continue the inquiry from there.
Oskar hides his face with a hat and high collar and goes outside, where he sees Therese leaving the police station and stops to speak with her. Meier called her in for questioning. She doesn’t question Oskar’s innocence, but feels responsible for his predicament.
Oskar then follows Meier, but Meier soon notices and tries to arrest Oskar. Oskar resists and asks if Meier is working for Mephisto; is that why he shot the man who killed Burgstaller and Strasser, so that Oskar couldn’t question him? The two men fight and Meier flees when Oskar proves stronger. Meier gets stuck in a dead-end courtyard full of drying laundry and hides amongst the hanging sheets. Oskar finds him and grabs him, and Meier tells him that Oskar has no idea what Mephisto can do.
Meier is then shot through the head. Oskar looks up and sees a gunman in a window.