Is there anything in New York City more hazardous than the regal Arconia neighborhood? The third season of Hulu’s cozy whodunnit Only Murders in the Building features the mysterious death of another resident at the upscale apartment building turned butcher.
Charles, Oliver, and Mabel, the live-in lobbying investigators played by Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, are once more keeping their eyes open for a suspect and their ears perked up for fantastic dialogue for their true-crime podcast. It doesn’t take a detective to figure out that this is largely more of the same, but in the case of a light and deftly made series, the same isn’t always a bad thing.
Shocking Revelations in ‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 3 Finale
In the Season 3 finale, “Opening Night,” it turns out that it was the producers of Oliver’s play, a mother and son, who did the deed. Their motive was simple: they had snagged a copy of an important review, and it showed that Ben’s performance was hurting the play. This would cost Cliff, Oliver’s son, his first Broadway producing credit.
Meanwhile, Donna, who was suffering from stage IV lung cancer, knew she wouldn’t be around to make sure Ben’s career got back on track, so she put rat poison on Ben’s cookie. “I didn’t mean to kill him, I just wanted him to go down,” she says to Charles, Oliver, and Mabel. Ben comes back the next night and finds out that it was actually Donna who tried to kill him. Cliff tries to stop Ben from going to the police, but Cliff accidentally pushes him down an elevator shaft and then blames it on Donna.
When do you reveal the identity of the murderer to your actors? Do they all learn the same thing at once?
This is a terrible situation to be in, as it places the burden of proof on the actors playing the murderer. I had a discussion with Wesley, Linda, and Jeremy Shamos, the actor playing Dickie, to allow them to uncover some of the secrets without revealing too much.
However, I had to tell them that they could not tell anyone in the cast about this secret. I wanted to keep it hidden until I was ready to reveal to Meryl what motivated her to be at the audition at the start of the season. I am excited to create a show where viewers can go back and watch it now that all of the secrets have been revealed and feel a sense of relief. It is a beautiful sight to behold.
When did you discover that Donna had also tried murder and that Cliff was the murderer?
When a season comes to a conclusion, the writers are constantly left wondering, “Tell us, who did that!” Early caller, it was. Sometimes it arrives soon, other times it doesn’t. The things that were hidden beneath the entire situation you were viewing in the last few episodes of Season 2 began Only Murders in the Building to unravel dramatically towards its conclusion. However, some of them were difficult to understand, such as “How could we have figured that out?”
I, therefore, wanted to provide a little bit more in this instance so that the clues felt like something that people might piece together. This time, the strategy was to give you three options, and if you chose one of them, you would gain a small triumph.
