Wendt and Gustav Stresemann have lunch and discuss politics, during which Stresemann suffers a stroke and dies.
The police raid the Gosztony brothers' warehouse, but only manage to arrest one of them. The Armenian and Weintraub team up one last time to enact revenge upon him. Esther makes a last-ditch attempt to keep them together.
Greta prepares for her imminent execution. Charlotte and Hans Litten race to submit a stay of execution.
Daemonen Der Leidenschaft premieres.
Tropes:
- All for Nothing: All of Gereon's, Charlotte's, and Litten's attempts to exonerate or reprieve Greta come to naught because of one corrupt guard.
- Call-Back: The banker who commits suicide by hanging himself is the same who pushed Boehm to take a risky loan.
- Caught on Tape: Gereon manages to trick Wendt into confessing to his crimes on tape due to a very elaborate hidden recording apparatus.
- Caustic Critic: Jacoby
- Critical Dissonance: In-universe. The premiere audience loves Daemonen Der Leidenschaft. Jacoby is the sole exception and writes a scathing review.
- Forced to Watch: Charlotte is trapped by a guard and forced to watch Greta be executed, helpless to do anything before it's too late.
- The Great Depression: The season ends with its onset in Germany.
- Hidden Wire: Effectively this, even though - owed to the technology of the date - it's technically more a case of Caught on Tape. Gereon wears a recording device to catch a confession of Wendt. Given the limited technology available, he must carefully prepare the scene ahead of time by hiding the large recording device in a satchel on the opposite side of his bench and run a wire all the way back to a truck waiting on the street. Because of all this, Gereon can't move from his seat, and his plan only works because Wendt agrees to come to him.
- Historical Domain Character: Gustav Stresemann did indeed die of a stroke on 3 October 1929. Additionally, Albert Grzesinski, Zoergiebel's replacement as Police President, was also a real historical figure.
- Hope Spot: Charlotte gets within sight range of Greta's execution, but is stopped at the last minute by a corrupt guard paid off by Wendt.
- Hostage Situation: Boehm holds the Berlin stock market hostage after the crash ruins him.
- Karma Houdini: While Wendt doesn't get everything he wants, he escapes from real comeuppance for his various crimes.
- Killed Off for Real: Greta.
- Last-Minute Reprieve: Heart-wrenchingly subverted with Greta's execution which Charlotte is rushing to prevent to no avail.
- Mob War: Gennat believes the Betty Winter murder has set this off in Berlin.
- Motive Rant: Gereon tricks Wendt into doing this on tape.
- Murder by Inaction: Wendt allows Stresemann to die while he watches.
- Off on a Technicality: Charlotte and Litten attempt to stay Greta's execution because it falls on a national day of mourning, due to Stresemann's death and state funeral and an old decree by the Kaiser that has been grandfathered into the republic's legal code. Even the Obstructive Bureaucrat from before agrees unambiguously.
- Off with His Head!: Greta's fate.
- The Reveal:
- Leopold Ullrich delivers a speech to an empty lecture hall (interspersed with shots of him seeming to believe he's actually addressing a crowd) explaining that he blackmailed two mobsters to invent a serial killer and deliberately fudged evidence to demonstrate the superiority of forensic science over traditional witness and deduction-based investigation. In effect, what started out as a simple revenge plot became one crazed scientist's massive trolling exercise.
- Over the third season, Charlotte alternates using a rented room above a bar with a man she never meets who uses it while she's away. She complains about his messy habits to the bartender, who holds the key for the tenants. In the last episode, we learn that the other tenant is the bartender himself.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: Gereon seeing Helga with Nyssen is so traumatic to him that he sees a Leviathan crawling through the sewers outside the stock market.
- White Shirt of Death: Greta's outfit for her execution.
