‘Oktoberfest: Beer and Blood’ Ending Explained: German show deserves Season 2 for Roman to exact revenge
Spoilers for ‘Oktoberfest: Beer and Blood’
‘Oktoberfest: Beer and Blood’, the six-part German miniseries about the famous beer festival at the turn of the twentieth century, is a dark and twisted tale. The show’s anti-hero Curt Prank (Mišel Matičević) is a cunning and ambitious and ruthless man who lets nothing get between him and his dreams -- to open the biggest beer burg at the festival, and to control the beer industry in Munich. He, being an outsider -- a Prussian from Nuremberg in an industry full of Bavarians from Munich -- employs everything to succeed.
He blackmails a city councilman called Alfons Urban (Michael Kranz), murders a competitor (Ignatz Hoflinger, played by Francis Fulton-Smith), trades his daughter Clara’s (Mercedes Müller) hand to a rival businessman called Anatol Stifter (Maximilian Brückner) in marriage, and even murders his henchman Alfred Glogauer (Martin Feifel) just to bury the evidence of his wrongdoings.
Prank, by all standards, is a bad man. But he is just one of the many power-hungry people doing questionable things on the show. For example, Roman Hoflinger (Klaus Steinbacher) seems like a flirtatious, fun-loving youngster at the beginning of the season. But by the end of it, we see just how ruthless he is capable of being.
He and Clara fall in love (and she gets pregnant with his child). But he and Prank remain at odds with each other because of his relationship with Clara, and because he thinks Prank was involved with the death of his father (which he was). But after Prank successfully manages to put the blame on a dead Glogauer, he joins forces with him to combat Stifter. Roman also makes sure his mother Maria (Martina Gedeck) is committed to an asylum so that he could take over the Deibel brewery.
Ultimately, he and Prank together end up causing Stifter’s downfall. And he and Clara get married, with ambitions of becoming the masters of the beer industry in Munich.
‘Oktoberfest: Beer and Blood’ is a miniseries, but it has the potential to become a regular series. For starters, the show is hugely entertaining with its plot twists and betrayals and bloodiness. But more than that, the series has much more to explore -- even if in terms of the characters alone.
The show’s end brings one aspect into the spotlight: Roman still suspects Prank’s involvement in his father’s death. He was told by the police that his father died in a botched robbery and that his head was bitten off by a huge dog (that belonged to Glogauer). But in the last scene, Prank arrives at the wedding with the dog and Roman knows in his guts that it was the same dog that did the deed.
At the same time, Maria’s story cannot be over. Yes, she is not in a fit state with the death of her husband and her younger son Ludwig (Markus Krojer). But she is a strong woman nonetheless and she will still seek revenge. Even Stifter is far too cunning a man to be defeated this easily.
All in all, the show can chart in future seasons, how these beer empires rise and fall. So far, ‘Oktoberfest: Beer and Blood’ has not been renewed for a second season. But it definitely deserves one. If nothing, we should get to see if Roman will get to exact his revenge on Prank, don’t we?
‘Oktoberfest: Beer & Blood’ was first released September 8 in Germany as ‘Oktoberfest 1900’ on ARD Mediathek. On German television, the six-part German-Czech television series aired on Das Erste on September 15, September 16, and September 23, in double episodes. The series is now available on Netflix for viewing.