Only Murders in the Building is about three unlikely friends who are brought together by their shared love for true crime. Mabel (Selena Gomez) is a young artist living in the historic Arconia fixing up her aunt's apartment. Steve Martin plays Charles, a mostly-retired actor whose crowning achievement was starring in an old crime show called Brazzos. Oliver (Martin Short) is a washed-out Broadway director with big ideas and a small budget. The three all live in the Arconia but only cross paths the night of the murder over their favorite true-crime podcast, never expecting they'd be living in one soon.
Although most people would hide away in their apartments after a murder occurs in their building, these three do the opposite. They decide to investigate the murder and create a podcast to document their findings and theories. Along the way, they uncover secrets about the Arconia and each other. This formula is used in Seasons 1 and 2 and presumably will be used in Season 3 too.
10 Persons of Interest
None of the episodes in Season 2 were boring by any means, but in a show that centers on murder, true crime, and is full of surprises, an exposition episode doesn’t have time for much excitement. In the first episode, the second murder in the building takes place and Charles, Oliver, and Mabel are arrested for it.
After they are released, Mabel doesn’t want to meddle. That seems plausible considering Charles was offered a role in the Brazzos reboot as Uncle Brazzos, but after they discover Cinda has created a podcast about them and their podcast, they can’t help but meddle. This episode sets up a lot of the Season 2 lure, but since nothing can be solved that early in a ten-episode season, it’s a little anticlimactic.
9 Framed
The second episode, like the first, sets up a lot of the drama to follow. It is a little quicker than the first episode, but other than a strange cameo by Amy Schumer and Bunny’s parrot saying, "I know who did it," not a lot actually happens. This episode has a nice progression of Mabel’s budding relationship with Alice in which Alice encourages Mabel to destroy art to release her emotions resulting in a steamy kiss.
8 Here's Looking at You
The fourth episode of Season 2 is slow but has a few big reveals. The biggest reveal in this episode is done by Charles’s step-ish daughter, Lucy. She tells Charles, Oliver, and Mabel that there are secret tunnels in the Arconia but keeps to herself that she saw the murderer in the tunnels the night of Bunny’s murder and that Charles is in danger. Charles also visits Jan in prison secretly during this episode, which is juicy, but not necessarily surprising.
7 Hello, Darkness
Episode 8 centered on a blackout. A blackout in New York City while there’s a murderer on the loose sounds a lot crazier than this episode made it. Lucy was chased through the secret tunnels of the Arconia, but it didn’t get the gang closer to the killer. There is some Arconia drama in this episode in the form of Howard going on a date with his neighbor and Marv requesting to be featured on the podcast. In the final moments of the episode of a mildly sleepy episode, Mabel realizes that Detective Kreps is who attacked her on the subway.
6 The Last Day of Bunny Folger
Episode 3 is mostly a flashback episode of Bunny’s last day alive. Flashback episodes are great because backstory is, but they don’t advance the plot as much as a regular episode would. Bunny is threatened on her last day by a mysterious person who wants to buy a painting she owns, and she gives a server a suspiciously large tip, but mostly her last day provided more insight about who Bunny was. The saddest part of this episode is when Charles, Mabel, and Oliver realize that if they had been kinder to Bunny and invited her in when she stopped by, she may not have been murdered.
5 Flipping the Pieces
In Episode 7, we learn more about Mabel’s relationship with Theo after he helps her recover from her subway attack and tries to help investigate who tried to hurt her. The murder weapon is planted in Charles’s apartment and Lucy accidentally touches it, but they hand it over to Detective Williams in hopes to clear their names. Mabel also forgives Theo for an accident that happened when they were teenagers. This episode is thirty-two minutes of nonstop drama, leading up to the final moments where it’s revealed that the murderer’s next target might be Lucy.
4 Performance Review
Mabel has a rough time in the sixth episode. After setting a glitter trap for the killer, she runs into a glitter-covered man on the subway and accidentally stabs him. She also walks in on Alice recreating Bunny’s crime scene as art, which reasonably upsets and creeps her out. As if that’s not bad enough, someone Mabel used to know goes to Cinda and says that she cut off one of his fingers to demonstrate her rage and frame her. This episode is entertaining, but stressful because fans of the show know Mabel is innocent, despite how bad this episode makes her look.
3 The Tell
In Episode 5, accusations fly. Charles and Oliver are suspicious of Mabel’s girlfriend Alice because Jan, who is a prosecuted murderer, tells them the killer is probably an artist. Oliver uses a party game to build “a case” against Alice, but after accusing her in front of an entire party, she tells a sob story to prove she is not the murderer. Oliver also learns in this episode that his son has Greek ancestry, which is even stranger considering Oliver knows he is fully Irish. This makes him realize that his son probably isn’t actually his son, a reality he does not want to accept.
2 Sparring Partners
Episode 9 is unbelievably dramatic and keeps viewers on the edge of their seats. In a whirlwind, Charles learns way too much about his father’s past, Oliver learns that he is not the biological father to his son, and Mabel uncovers the truth about Cinda, Kreps, and Poppy, which in turn helps her to solve Bunny’s murder. Mabel thinks Cinda is the mastermind behind the murder. She believes she did it all so that she could make the perfect podcast, which she’s done before because it’s also revealed that her assistant Poppy is actually Becky, the "missing girl" from her most successful true-crime podcast.
1 I Know Who Did It
In their true eclectic, and at times insensitive, fashion, Mabel, Charles, and Oliver kick off the finale with a killer reveal party. Mabel accuses Alice, who then stages an attack on Charles in a ploy to get Cinda to confess, or so we think. When Cinda praises Mabel for solving the case, Poppy/Becky can’t stand it and exposes secrets only the true killer would know.
This is backed by DNA found on the murder weapon and Bunny's final words. Kreps is Becky’s lover who was in on the whole thing so that they could make their own podcast and get famous. It seems like every character, excluding them, lives happily ever after. Charles gets a real role on Brazzos, Oliver is directing on Broadway again, and Mabel falls in love. Then a mysterious death during the opening night of Oliver’s new play starts the whole cycle again.
The end of summer is usually not something to look forward to, but for fans of Only Murders in the Building, July can't pass fast enough. On August 8, 2023, Charles, Mabel, Oliver, and the rest of the Arconia will be returning to Hulu for Season 3 of Only Murders in the Building.