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Spoilers below.
When we left the Arconia crew at the end of the second season of Hulu’s breakout hit Only Murders in the Building, they had solved a second murder in their Upper West Side building via an elaborate killer reveal party. The unlikely trio of Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez), Charles Haden-Savage (Steve Martin), and Oliver Putnam (Martin Short) cleared their names and moved on with their lives, but in a flash forward to one year later, they found themselves adjacent to yet another death. In the time jump, Oliver had finally been welcomed back to Broadway and was staging his long-gestating play with a huge movie star at its center: Ben Glenroy, played by guest star Paul Rudd. But moments after he takes the stage, Ben suddenly drops dead, bleeding from the mouth.
Between seasons, Paul Rudd was confirmed as a cast member alongside other new faces: Academy Award winner Meryl Streep, Emily in Paris’ Ashley Park, and Jesse Williams of Grey’s Anatomy fame. We meet them almost immediately in the first two episodes of the new season as various characters in the orbit of Oliver’s play.
Season 3 picks up where it left off while also pushing each character’s narrative forward: Oliver is finally living his Broadway director dream; Charles is happy in a new relationship; and Mabel is on the verge of losing her apartment and her two built-in friends, and is scared about her lack of direction. It’s no surprise that she’s the one who suggests reviving their investigative podcast—a moment that comes to fruition by the end of the double-header premiere. Let’s hop back into our favorite Manhattan mystery.
Episode 1
The season opener sets the scene for the impending murder by taking us four months into the past to the first table read of the production. The readthrough of Death Rattle, a murder mystery where the only witness is an infant in a lighthouse, penned and directed by our very own Oliver Putnam, is the setting of the majority of the first episode where we properly meet Rudd’s Ben Glenroy, a bombastic and arrogant movie star who is trying his hand at Broadway. He arrives with an entourage that includes his shifty brother and a camera crew because, of course, he is filming a documentary about his foray on stage. Jesse Williams is the man behind the camera who promises to not be seen or heard while they’re working. With Williams as a recurring star this season, it’s obvious his footage will play a pivotal role in the murder investigation.
Jesse Williams joins the cast of Only Murders season 3.
The episode is also an ode to theater kids and working artists: In a voiceover during the opening moments of the premiere, Charles talks about dedicating your life to the craft and weathering the ups and downs of the industry, serving as an introduction to Streep’s Loretta Durkin. She came to the theater early, inspired by a 1962 performance and began seeking out her big break at every turn. But it hasn’t happened yet—at least not until she comes to the Goosebury Theater to read for the role of “nanny” in Oliver’s play. “Where have you been?” he asks her at the end of her impressive audition, casting her on the spot.
She’s a wunderkind of sorts and she’s eager to prove herself, and the first test is the first table readthrough. Instead of sticking to the performance that got her hired, she decides to try on different accents—it’s all part of her process—and then promptly forgets to recite her line in the next scene. The rest of the cast, especially Ben, sees it as a sign of unpreparedness and weakness, and tries to convince Oliver to recast the role. But he’s convinced of her abilities: in a pep talk he tells her, “if you go, I go.” His draw to her foreshadows a moment later in the episode where Loretta asks Oliver if they can forgo the production’s rules and make their relationship romantic after Ben (and the play) are presumed dead.
Mabel doesn’t exactly have a reason to be at the table read (Charles was reluctantly cast and is holding onto his Brazzos legacy as long as he can), but she’s a low key Glenroy superfan and is starstruck when Ben introduces himself to her during his entrance. We don’t spend too much time with Park’s Kimber or much of the rest of the cast, but we do meet a curious mother-son producing duo who kiss uncomfortably on the mouth far too many times and are inexplicably funding Oliver’s vision.
What’s going on between Loretta and Oliver?
Back in the present, Oliver decides that even if the show was ruined and canceled, his opening night party must go on after Ben’s death. He gathers the cast and crew in his apartment where people feign remorse and sadness and clutch a handkerchief adorned with rattles that Ben gifted everyone before his demise. Mabel suspects foul play and observes all of the guests closely until Ben suddenly bursts through the door fully alive, wearing a trenchcoat drenched in dried vomit, the remnants of which are also smeared on his face.
He uses his second chance at life to fake-apologize to members of the cast that all clearly despised him and his antics—except to Loretta, whom he calls a snake, hissing at her for full effect, and Charles, whom he claims was happy he died.
After all of the hullabaloo about Ben’s death and subsequent resurrection, Mabel retires to a very upgraded version of her apartment. After a moment, she texts her favorite “olds” with a request to go to the diner and when they arrive at her apartment, she reveals that her aunt sold the apartment and she’ll have to relocate to another borough within four weeks.
Oliver, Charles, and Mabel get on the elevator that had previously been broken and are almost immediately met with an ominous drip, drip, drip of blood. Before the door closes, they rush out in the knick of time—the elevator’s ceiling crashes down on them with none other than Ben’s body, fully dead this time.
Mabel, Oliver, and Charles encounter yet another murder in the building.
Episode 2
Now that we officially have a murder in the building, Mabel’s spidey senses are activated. She snags a photo of Ben’s body at the crime scene before they disperse, and she notices he had one of his rattle handkerchiefs on him when he died. As the youngest and seemingly most directionless of the trio, Mabel is keen to investigate the death to have something to do and distract herself.
But she also holds a soft spot for Ben Glenroy, star of Girl Cop, because the movie is a cornerstone for her relationship with her mom. She spends an afternoon watching the film and then imagines him sitting in her living room in the flesh. Ghost Ben lends an ear to her existential feelings and offers her some advice: he was only 31 when he landed his first big gig and he also felt lost at that time. But, he says, late bloomers are great. Mabel can take her time but she shouldn’t waste it, he advises.
Bobo (Don Darryl Rivera), Kimber (Ashley Park), and Ty (Gerald Caesar) attend Ben’s funeral.
Mabel accompanies Charles and Oliver to Ben’s funeral, which is as much of a production as expected. They’re placed in the “Overflow 3” viewing room, much to Oliver’s chagrin, with the rest of the Death Rattle cast. While Oliver is scheming about how to get into the main room of Ben’s funeral, Mabel strikes up a conversation with an alleged member of Ben’s security team. He promises to share some files about Ben, and Mabel and Charles, hoping to find clues about his death, venture up to his apartment during the service. The apartment is decked out in Ben Glenroy memorabilia—all of which the security guard claims was gifted to him by Ben—until Mabel and Charles spot some photographs that are clearly photoshopped. Before they can get themselves out of there, the “security guard” chloroforms both of them and ties them up in the building’s basement.
While Mabel and Charles are gone, Oliver corners a journalist to beg for a good review of the play. But the journalist dismisses his request and laments that no one will ever see her “vitriolic review” now that the show won’t go forward. The acknowledgment that his play was a failure is too much for Oliver’s heart, and he suffers a heart attack outside of the funeral. But don’t worry—he’s okay, though he’s instructed to reduce his stress, which certainly will not happen. (After dreaming of Mabel, Charles, and his son Will in a Fosse-esque dance sequence, Oliver decides to turn Death Rattle into a musical.)
Mabel’s got moves.
When Mabel and Charles regain consciousness in the basement, Charles admits that he and Ben had beef dating back to Ben’s childhood: Charles got 8-year-old Ben fired from an arc on Brazzos and he has held a grudge ever since. During an encounter in his Death Rattle dressing room, Charles recounts how Ben promised to make the set a living hell for him. Before Mabel can react, the security-guard-turned-stalker returns with a wide array of butcher knives on a tray—and Ben’s rattle handkerchief. He admits to being Ben’s superfan, and he’s convinced that Mabel, Charles, and Oliver are behind his death. But just as he’s promising revenge on Ben’s behalf, police arrive and admit they have been tailing this guy for a while, arresting him on the spot.
Realizing that this fan, though unwell, didn’t kill Ben, Mabel tries to reason with the cops for his release but they don’t budge. Moreover, she realizes that the handkerchief Ben died with wasn’t his own, meaning that someone in the cast or crew must be responsible for his death. With all of the evidence in hand, the podcast is officially back in session.
Radhika Menon is a freelance entertainment writer, with a focus on TV and film. Her writing can be found on Vulture, Teen Vogue, Bustle, and more.