'Vienna Blood' Recap: Season 4 Episode 4
Daniel Hautzinger
January 26, 2025

Vienna Blood is available to stream. Recap the previous episode.
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The assassination in public of a police officer, Meier, is a disaster. The new director of security, Bartholdi, insists that commissioner von Bülow find the killer – whom von Bülow suspects is Oskar, given that his silver case of coffee beans was found at the scene of the shooting and Oskar is already an assumed criminal in the killing of Therese’s husband Thanhofer. Haussmann and Lindner believe in Oskar’s innocence, and secretly promise to help him.
So Haussmann goes to the Liebermann house, where Oskar is hiding, to warn him that he’s suspected as Meier’s killer. Oskar explains that Meier was working with Mephisto and killed Thanhofer to frame Oskar – but why didn’t Mephisto take the chance to kill Oskar when he killed Meier?
Haussmann also tells Oskar that Karner, the manager of the Riegers Palast casino, has asked to see Oskar. So Oskar goes to the casino via the tunnels below it and meets Helena Rieger. A window in her office has been smashed and some of her papers, including her secret membership registries, have been taken. Helena called Oskar because he has been suspended from the police; some of her clients are high-up members of the police, so she fears involving them.
Oskar explains that he and Max ended up at her casino because they’re investigating a government traitor trying to start a war between Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The singer Carillo, who must have served as a messenger for the traitor Mephisto, was supposed to meet at the casino and had a token for its private, high-stakes game where you can bet anything – even people, information, or possessions. Oskar convinces Helena to reveal the identities of the participants of the game – one of them must be Mephisto, and may also be the person who shot Max.
Helena worries that the intruder will return, so Oskar gives her the phone number of the Liebermann house and tells her to contact him if anything happens.
The participants in the secretive casino game all have access to government secrets and power. The press baron Herzog has numerous politicians in his pocket. The actress Schratt is a mistress of the emperor. And the general Straub controls the army – which he has just enhanced by entering into a contract with the inventor of the tank, despite an earlier dismissal of the new technology. Herzog has also reneged on an earlier idea: when Clara presents her column advocating for peace with Serbia as he requested, he trashes it, telling her to go back to writing gossip columns. And the emperor, having told Schratt that she can no longer gamble, has apologized. He will also attend a mass in honor of her late grandfather, slipping in with no guard and wearing civilian clothes so that he is unnoticed.
Oskar knows that Clara works for Herzog, so he gets Leah to call Clara to the Liebermann house. He then explains things and asks Clara for her help. She stays in the newspaper office until everyone else has left, then lets Oskar in to search Herzog’s office. She’s surprised to find an editorial dated for the day after tomorrow advocating for war with Serbia, despite Herzog’s request to her to defend peace and his own years of support for it. She and Oskar wonder if another player in the casino game has won a hold over him, forcing him to change his position.
Back at the Liebermann house, Oskar receives a frantic call from Helena: her office has again been broken into, and this time the intruder left a note. Meet at the cathedral in half an hour, it says. Oskar suspects that Mephisto, having taken paper records of their identity from the casino to protect their tracks, now wants to kill Helena because she can identify them. Oskar goes in her place, and calls Haussmann for back-up.
The mass for the actress Schratt’s grandfather is taking place at the cathderal, and the emperor has slipped in to attend. Oskar wonders which of the attendees is Mephisto, and then realizes that it must be someone from a previous case, someone whom Max recognized – that’s why Mephisto shot Max, because Max could reveal their identity. Oskar looks up and sees Lazar Kiss, the Serbian radical who tried to bomb a roomful of diplomats, in the gallery. Oskar thought he was dead, but there he is, readying a silenced rifle to assassinate the emperor.
Oskar tackles Kiss. They tussle and Oskar knocks the rifle out of Kiss’ hands. Kiss flees up to a high storage room and they fight more as Haussmann sees from far below and tries to follow. Oskar rushes at Kiss and they both tumble out a window onto the slanted roof of the cathedral, high above the square. Oskar hangs from the eave by his hands. As Kiss goes to kick him off, Oskar throws Kiss himself off to his death. Haussmann appears and pulls Oskar to safety.
The emperor sends personal congratulations to Oskar, who also receives an award and is reinstated as a police officer, to von Bülow’s disappointment. Oskar thanks Helena for her help, but before he leaves her she reveals that she is the daughter of Brückmüller, an anti-Semitic industrialist whom Oskar and Max put in jail for murder; he died there. Helena had to change her name to avoid the stain on her reputation.
And she has another name: Mephisto. Through the private casino game, she has been able to manipulate the other powerful players, winning secrets from them, which she then shared with the Serbians. She also forced Herzog and Straub to change their positions in order to encourage war, which would be good for business. And she used Schratt to get the emperor in a public place where Kiss could assassinate him.
But she also hoped that Oskar might save the emperor, thus revealing the extent of Serbian plots against the empire to the public and stoking aggression. Now Oskar is a hero, a visible sign of a call to arms, so she won’t kill him. She chose him for this “honor” because he jailed her father. That’s why Oskar has been kept alive.
And Oskar can’t do anything about it, because Bartholdi, the new director of security, is allied with Helena – that’s why she had Strasser killed, so that Bartholdi could replace him. And Karner, her casino manager, is the one who killed Strasser and Burgstaller – he smokes the expensive cigarettes Oskar found at the shooting scene. Bartholdi warns Oskar to keep his mouth shut once the war starts, or else Therese and her daughter might be hurt.
Oskar leaves dejected. But there is one bright spot. When he goes to the hospital to visit Max, who is surrounded by his family and Clara, Max finally opens his eyes.