Stennes and the SA seize the Angriff building. Stennes challenges Gereon to execute the official local NSDAP leader, and when he refuses exposes him as a traitor and orders his death. Gereon is rescued by Moritz. When Grzesinski refuses to intervene in an "internal party issue", Wendt has the local SS armed with police weapons, and bloodily puts down the rebellion. Gold passes Grun the Blue Rothschild and leaves for New York. Charlotte arranges for Toni to go to a genuinely rehabilitative school for troubled teenagers, but Toni sends Renate there to impersonate her. Toni and Moritz run away together and hitch a lift to somewhere westwards.
Wendt tries to arrest Kulanin at the airport, but a US Army officer appears and declares him to be a diplomat, forcing Wendt to let him leave. MaLu also boards the Graf Zeppelin, breaks into Kulanin's stateroom, and drops the Reichswehr document on a parachute at a prearranged point, where Völcker and an NKVD man pick it up. She then surprises Kulanin in the dining room, in male drag.
Gereon and Charlotte go to a boxing match where Johann "Rukeli" Trollmann, who Charlotte believes to be her half-brother, beats a local opponent despite an SA contingent abusing him as a "gypsy". Gereon, Charlotte and their friends celebrate at an after-party, where Gereon tells Charlotte that she has been reinstated and gives her back her detective badge. They go home and make love.
Gereon leaves a sleeping Charlotte and is picked up in a car by the Armenian, who intends to fulfil his promise to kill Anno/Schmidt for him. When they arrive at the asylum, Gereon says that he will do it himself and tells the Armenian to stay in the car. Gereon meets Dr. Schmidt in his office, and tells him that he intended to kill him but does not need to any more, as he no longer fears him. Schmidt shows Gereon the asylum patients, many of them disfigured war veterans, lined up on military-style parade in the courtyard, and tells Gereon that he is ready to lead them. Charlotte suddenly awakens screaming Gereon's name.
Tropes:
- Book Ends:
- Kulanin and Gold have a conversation at the Zeppelin bar, just as they did when on the way to Berlin at the beginning of the season.
- Both the beginning and end have a boxing match with an upset outcome.
- Catapult Nightmare: Charlotte waking up in the final shot.
- Diplomatic Impunity: Kulanin avoids arrest at the airport, and in fact makes it onto the zeppellin headed for the United States, because he is a diplomat. (In other words, he is an American spy.)
- Gainax Ending: The season ending with Schmidt and the asylum patients.
- A Lighter Shade of Black: Stennes expects a physical fight with Wendt and the SS, but is shocked when the SS, on Wendt's orders, open fire on his men with rifles.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The Reichswehr document ends up with the NKVD, leaving Katelbach and his editor stuck in jail.
- Shovel Strike: Moritz attacks the SA man who's trying to kill Gereon with a coal shovel.
- This Means War Paint: Before the final round of the boxing match, Trollmann covers his face and chest with crushed chalk, as if in response to the Nazis racially abusing him.
- Wild Card:
- Moritz, after betraying Gereon to Stennes, then rescues him from being murdered.
- It is left extremely ambiguous just who Kulanin is or was working for. On the Zeppelin, he tells Gold that he was telling the truth when he said he was a Russian spy, but "not for the Communists".
- You Owe Me: When a riot appears to be about to break out after the boxing match, Gereon orders the NSDAP leader to remove his followers, silently indicating that the man owes him for not killing him for Stennes.
