‘Only Murders In The Building’ Season 3 Recap: What To Remember For Season 4
Only Murders in the Building Season 4 will take the trusty trio of investigators Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin), Oliver Putnam (Martin Short) and Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) from Season 3’s Broadway stage to Hollywood.
Season 4 will also follow Season 3’s expanded cast, with Meryl Streep returning among others alongside a large group of newcomers starting August 27. For those who need a refresher on what happened in Season 3 of the cozy murder mystery show, a recap can be found below.
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Ben Glenroy Died … Twice
The final episode of Season 2 introduced Paul Rudd as Ben Glenroy within the final moments of the show. Glenroy was the leading man of Oliver’s play — Death Rattle. Oliver had knocked on the door to Ben’s dressing room to make sure he was okay to go on for Opening Night. Ben stormed out claiming that he was fine and ready to take the stage, but when he walked out during the opening dialogue, blood trickled from his mouth and he fell to the floor.
Later, at the party following opening night, Ben reappeared, alive and well, saying he had been poisoned. Shortly after this, though, he died for good, falling down the elevator shaft on top of Mabel, Charles and Oliver’s car. Someone pushed him, igniting the next season of the beloved podcast.
Meryl Streep’s Loretta Became a Leading Lady
The first episode opened with the narration of a young woman’s journey to act in the theater. As the woman took on audition after audition to no success, two signature braids later connected her to one Loretta Durkin (Meryl Streep) who auditioned last minute for the role of the Nanny in Oliver’s play.
At the first table read — which also introduced characters like Ben’s manager Dickie (Jeremy Shamos), Ben’s documentarian Tobert (Jessie Williams) and guest star Ashley Park as Kimber — she didn’t exactly garner faith after trying out multiple accents and styles of speech for the Nanny
Death Rattle Dazzle
Mabel and Charles almost died when they took a creepy guy’s word for it that he had stuff to help them solve the case. Turns out he was one of Ben’s overzealous stalkers. They met at Ben’s funeral, and Greg (Adrian Martinez) was arrested on the charges that he killed Ben.
Oliver tracked down Maxine (Noma Dumezweni), who had previously written a review of the play before opening night when Ben collapsed onstage, and she told Oliver that this production just didn’t sing. This inspires Oliver to turn the production into a musical. The significance of a red rattle-patterned handkerchief had Mabel and Charles tell Oliver that someone in the production had likely killed Ben.
Tobert and Mabel Struck Up a Romance
Mabel runs into Tobert when trying to investigate Ben’s penthouse in the Arconia, where Amy Schumer used to live. Turns out, he left his camera in there, and on it, he had a video of Ben talking to someone in his dressing room the night before he died. They get to know each other while hiding in the wardrobe because Dickie comes into the apartment for a moment, takes a phone call and then leaves.
Later the pair go on a stake-out that turns into a date as they analyze whether Jonathan Bridgecroft (Jason Veasey) could have a motive to kill Ben because he was Ben’s understudy. Kimber was also a suspect at one point
Charles Struggled With His Patter Song
As part of his role as the Constable in the play, Charles is responsible for nailing the patter song – “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?” In several attempts to do so, though, he gets nervous and goes to what theater players call “The White Room” which is a dissociation of sorts where actors go when they know they are flubbing a line since there isn’t a chance to do another take if a mistake is made.
He also tries to practice while in the presence of his new girlfriend Joy (Andrea Martin), who was his makeup artist on Brazzosback in the day. But when he does so, he goes to the White Room and apparently gets down on one knee and proposes to her while dissociating. She accepts his proposal without realizing he didn’t mean to pop the question.
Joy ultimately called off the engagement after Charles questioned if she could have been involved in Ben’s murder because someone had used her red lipstick to write “F—ing Pig” on Ben’s mirror.
Loretta and Oliver Hit It Off as Well
Loretta and Oliver do a dinner date to act on the growing attraction they have felt for a while now, and Loretta cooked a very tough pork chop which took out one of Oliver’s teeth. She took him on the ferry (the Tooth Ferry) and they bonded more, but she revealed to him that she had a confrontation with Ben the night he died, and that she called him a “F—ing Pig.” Oliver doesn’t want to tell Charles or Mabel this.
Howard Thought He Killed Ben
Howard Morris (Michael Cyril Creighton) convinced himself that he may have killed Ben by not sweeping the stage ahead of Opening Night, so he brought the trio along to the theater to investigate. He explained that he couldn’t get the broom because KT’s office was locked, and he heard a mysterious noise coming from within’, which was the shredder.
KT told Howard that he shouldn’t try to exclude Gideon Goosebury, the ghost that haunts the theater where they are putting on “Death Rattle Dazzle,” but to include him. The ghostlight, which indicates the atmosphere of the theater flickered out, but Howard and KT help each other practice their dreams while welcoming the ghost.
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Oliver ran into an old friend squatting in the rafters above the stage who may have had a hand in some sandbags dropping near Charles, who got stuck in the basement and almost lost Joy’s fish President McKinley by accidentally flushing him down the toilet.
Matthew Broderick Guest Starred
Matthew Broderick almost took over for Charles as the constable after he and Oliver got into a big fight. The whole trio had it out at the end of episode 6, and Mabel was frustrated because she felt like she was leading the investigation and none of them were on the same page. But Broderick quickly annoyed Oliver, so he took Charles back.
The Real CoBro
Also in episode 7, Mabel and Theo Dimas (James Caverly), discovered that Dickie was actually behind the CoBro franchise in which Ben starred as a reptilian superhero. The B in the signature turned out to be an R for Richard. This shifted the motive of killing Ben to Dickie, who was always slaving for his brother. Ben was the miracle child who came along right as their parents adopted Dickie thinking they couldn’t have children.
Loretta’s True Intention Was Revealed
Back at the beginning of the show, Loretta’s intro didn’t reveal that she had given up her baby to pursue a career in the theater. Turned out, she hadn’t been stalking Ben like her diary made it seem like, but Dickie. All of the pictures in the book, which Oliver took from Loretta’s house under suspicion she might have been the killer, showed the pair of them.
Loretta even took the fall momentarily for Dickie when police thought he was responsible for killing Ben.
Confessions and Confections
Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s Detective Williams came back on the scene within the last few episodes of Season 3 to investigate the Ben Glenroy case, which officially reopened after Greg was proven innocent. Charles and Oliver distracted her by building anticipation for Charles’ run-through of the patter song at the sitzprobe rehearsal so that she would leave and Oliver could sneak a Go-Pro into the room where interrogations were held. That way, the trio got everyone’s stories for themselves. They slowly piece together that Ben wasn’t talking to a person in his dressing room on opening night, but a cookie. Earlier on in the show, he had made a big deal of not being able to eat cookies because of his diet, but he was so stressed that he crammed it down his throat.
One of the play producers Donna (Linda Emond), covered the cookie in rat poison and put in Ben’s room because she tried to kill him after Maxine’s review pointed him out as the weak link in the production. It was Donna who had been in KT’s office where the broom was, and she had shredded the review. Donna also had stage four lung cancer, but she claimed she had done this out of love for her son Clifford (Wesley Taylor), or Cliff.
After Ben came back to life, Cliff ended up pushing him down the elevator shaft after he realized Ben was onto what Donna had tried to do.
All of this clicked into place as Death Rattle Dazzle went off without a hitch — not counting Oliver’s replacing Jonathan as the main character — and got a glowing review from Maxine. All of his stress, which induced two heart attacks, became worth it.
The Next Victim
Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch) showed up to congratulate the trio on a murder solved and a musical well done, but when she volunteered to go fetch a fancy Spanish wine that Charles had been saving for a special occasion, a sniper shot her through the window, claiming her as the next victim for Season 4.
The stakes seem higher, as Sazz stunt doubled for Charles, so the murderer could have been aiming for him! Also, various threads point that Season 4 could head to Los Angeles, from Tobert’s getting offered an indie film there to Loretta’s television gig in an offshoot of an offshoot of a spinoff. Mabel also had to move out of her aunt’s Arconia apartment at the end of Season 3.
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