Freud Season 1 finale recap: What did that ending mean?

Freud receives a devastating offer

The General and his soldiers show up at Freud’s house and escort him back to the Emperor. Rudolf remains in a weird state. A soldier has to stand on a balcony in his room and say, “Táltos commands you to sleep” on repeat to keep him from becoming an angry killing machine. There are signs all over his room with the quote printed on them to keep Rudolf stupefied. They need Freud to fix him.

For once, Freud and his talents are in demand. Freud realizes that someone with power over Rudolf needs to utter the command as they did at the Ball. He summons the Emperor who repeats it while Freud hypnotizes Rudolf with his handy pocketwatch.

In his stupor, Rudolf reveals that someone – his father – tormented him as a child and made him feel like a weakling. The emotional abuse he suffered at the hand of his dear old dad resulted in a build-up of toxic masculinity and a violent urge to prove his strength, hence why over time, he turned into a rapist, something he freely admits to Freud while under his trance.

Freud is visibly disturbed by this admission and the fact he tried to have his way with Fleur but ultimately makes Rudolf snap out of his multiple trances and reverts him to his usual level of twisted.

Afterward, Freud is excited to tell the Emperor and the General that he’s going to publish his book and “restructure the system.” He believes his discovery and Fleur’s story will change everything — which is precisely what the Emperor doesn’t want. They intend to cover everything up and hide it. No one wants it to get out that a group of soldiers and a woman almost crumbled the entire empire.

They then threaten Freud to comply and play along, or else they’ll kill him and the people he cares about most. Freud is to get rid of his magnum opus (the book), go back to work at the hospital, keep his head down, and be appreciative that they paid for a year of his rent. Meanwhile, they’ve sent Fleur’s photo to military intelligence to hunt her down and “neutralize the weapon.”

All of this is, obviously, horrifying to Freud, but what choice does he have? He becomes depressed by it but not necessarily completely compliant. For starters, he goes back to the hospital only so he can hand in his resignation to Meynert.

He also happens to run into Fleur one last time. She beckons him into a carriage and looks much better than she did the last time we saw her. Her eyebrows are back, her hair is brushed, and she looks healthier than she has in some time.

Fleur gives Freud some much-needed hope, telling him that his path is to change the world. She also utters one of my favorite lines in the show: “Don’t write one book about me. Write many books…because of me.”

Fleur is okay with being hunted, so long as it means she is free from the Count and Countess. She also has power over Táltos now, saying she understands that it is part of her, instead of at war with her. Their meeting ends in a very poignant way, with Fleur forcing Freud to tell her: “The therapy is over. Next one, please.”

He takes her advice to heart. After what seemed to be a time jump, Freud opens his own practice with Martha at his side. She rushes to greet him in the apartment.

“There’s a patient waiting for you next door,” Martha says.

Freud excitedly goes into his study to set up and then sits down.

“Next one, please,” he tells Martha. The doctor is officially in.

It’s an excellent ending for the show, but there is just one more tiny thing we need to discuss — Inspector Kiss.

At one point during the episode, Kiss starts acting weird. First, he leaves his daughter-in-law’s house (an adorable Poschacher sings to the kids), and he visits Janecek in the dead of night. Kiss brutally kills Janecek, and it’s pretty shocking.

He visits Freud one last time, too,  and Freud realizes that Kiss chose death over a promotion. After, he appears to murder Reidl, as well, who had been waiting to kill Kiss once and for all. Reidl fails to avenge Georg, and the show heavily implies that Kiss killed him. Then he takes off for the Vienna canal.

As if that wasn’t strange enough on its own, he looks up at the moon with his pupils all blown and lets out an unnatural, eerie growl. It sounds a little like Táltos may have found a new host, or something else has possessed Kiss.

So, yes Netflix, “next one, please,” if it means season two!

Odds & Ends

• What was the deal with Szilpman and the ghost story? Why did the Szápárys need Steffi and Clara to die, or if their deaths were just side effects of hypnotizing Georg and Leopold – why did they need to do that? Same with Mucha, what was the purpose? Whatever happened to Clara, did she get better?
• Nothing ever came of Eli and Freud’s rivalry. Why did Izom happen to catch Freud, Arthur, and Lenore helping Fleur escape, only to die by Kiss on accident during his trance, and then never get mentioned again? Speaking of Arthur, what happened to him!? He wasn’t even in Freud’s little vignette of memories at the end.
• Overall, I had a blast with this show and I want a season two, but my god is there are a lot of random unfinished plot points and disregarded storylines.
• I know Fleur’s storyline is mostly “finished” now, but I sincerely hope she’s back in season two.

The entire first season of Freud is available to stream on Netflix.