The Ending Of Only Murders In The Building Season 3 Explained
After three seasons of murder and friendship, "Only Murders in the Building" is one of the most reliable shows currently on the air. Even if you're not typically a fan of murder shows, you'll like "Only Murders" because it is so much more than that. It stars the unbeatable trio of Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, with the latter providing the perfect youthful counterpart to her co-stars. In addition to the natural chemistry between the leads, it also has enough clever plotting and silly asides to keep you laughing as you try to guess who the culprit is at the end.
If that wasn't enough, the show gives you plenty to think about, which this season includes the bonds of friendship, the pressures of fame, and what a mother will do for her child. In this season, the show takes a turn, spending just as much time in the theater as it does in the central three's apartment building, the Arconia, demonstrating the show can evolve too. In fact, "Only Murders in the Building" continues to get bolder and brasher while still maintaining the heart that we've come to know and love. But how did this season end and what did it all mean? And, perhaps most importantly, how did the final moments set up the next season? Here is the ending of Season 3 of "Only Murders in the Building" explained.
What you need to remember about Only Murders Season 3
"Only Murders in the Building" follows the story of Mabel, Oliver (Martin Short), and Charles (Steve Martin) as they track down the killers of people who are murdered in their apartment building. They first meet and bond when they realize they are all obsessed with true crime podcasts. After they learn someone was killed in their building, they decide to follow the clues and find the murderer while taping it all for a podcast.
After their successes in finding and locking up the murderers of people from the Arconia, something miraculous happens: someone calls Oliver with an offer to direct a Broadway play. Oliver is a theater director who had fallen on hard times, hence, his participation in the podcast. But directing theater is what he loves best and he is thrilled to return to the stage. He has a fantastic film actor, Ben Glenroy (Paul Rudd), for the lead in his play "Death Rattle" and he even throws Charles a bone and casts him as the constable.
Everything seems as if it is coming together perfectly for Oliver. That is until Ben collapses on stage and dies — or so we think — on opening night, giving the sleuthing trio another mystery to solve.
Ben's dead. Then he's not. Then he is.
Oliver and the cast are devastated following Ben's collapse, but then during the least festive cast party ever, Ben miraculously turns up alive. Though it seemed he was dead, he eventually wakes up and hot-foots it over to the party — ignoring the warnings from his doctors. Even though he had been awful to almost all of the cast and crew, he tries to make amends following his dramatic brush with death.
With that, the play is back on and Oliver is thrilled. However, just as Oliver, Charles, and Mabel are descending to the lobby in the elevator, the ceiling of their car bursts open and splayed out on the floor is Ben. This time, he's definitely dead.
While Mabel wants to get on the case immediately, Oliver is less supportive — and more focused on getting the play back up and running — and Charles is somewhere in the middle. Still, while Mabel does some of her sleuthing solo this season, eventually the trio comes together just in time to figure out "whodunit." The stakes feel even higher this time around, with Oliver's career comeback on the line and his fledgling romance with Loretta (Meryl Streep) on the knife edge as she is one of the suspects. Among the others accused are Ben's adoptive brother Dickie (Jeremy Shamos) — whom we later learn is Loretta's son — along with documentarian and Mabel's sort-of boyfriend Tobert (Jesse Williams), and one of Ben's co-stars, Kimber (Ashley Park).
What happened at the end of Only Murders Season 3?
As the net seems to be closing in on Dickie being the prime suspect, Loretta makes a shocking confession: that she is Ben's killer. However, as the penultimate episode unspools, our amateur detectives discover that Donna (Linda Emond, Oliver's producer, is Ben's killer. Just as Loretta is about to plead guilty, the trio gets to her just in time and works quickly to get Donna's confession. The final episode of Season 3 coincides with the re-opening of Oliver's show, now a musical called "Death Rattle Dazzle!" Before the musical starts, the trio gets Donna's confession on tape and she admits to poisoning Ben and subsequently pushing him down the elevator shaft when that didn't work. Donna asks them to hold off on calling the police so she can see the show, telling Mabel, Oliver, and Charles that she has stage four lung cancer. Knowing her time is limited, Donna wants to see her son's Broadway debut before facing justice.
While Donna is sitting in the audience with her son and fellow producer, Cliff (Wesley Taylor), she tells him what happened and he absconds to the rafters. Mabel follows him and realizes the truth: while Donna did attempt to kill Ben with the poison, it was Cliff who pushed him down the open shaft. Cliff threatens to kill himself by throwing himself from the rafters but eventually, he relents when his mother appears. Following the curtain call for "Death Rattle Dazzle!" Cliff and Donna are taken away by the police.
What was the significance of the handkerchief?
One of the major clues in Season 3 is a blood-splattered handkerchief, one of several that was gifted to the cast and crew of "Death Rattle Dazzle!" — then just called "Death Rattle" — by Ben on opening night. Loretta has the handkerchief and she says Dickie was afraid it would implicate her when she took it from the crime scene, but now she felt it would help the trio — and she was right.
Along with all the blood stains, the handkerchief also has a telltale smudge of lipstick on it. We later learn that the mark was left by Donna after she'd used it to blot her lips before kissing Cliff on the mouth, an unusual practice for mother and son, but one that Cliff and Donna engage in regularly. While Donna had denied it previously, when she sees the lipstick on the hanky she admits to killing Ben. She says it was because she couldn't risk him performing the next night. Having read Maxine's (Noma Dumezweni) scathing review — which was particularly harsh on Ben — Donna took drastic action and put rat poison on a cookie that she knew Ben would be tempted by.
Why did Donna confess to something Cliff did?
It turns out though that Donna didn't do it — or at least she didn't do half of it. The handkerchief was Cliff's, and Donna confesses so that Cliff won't go to jail. Donna poisoned Ben — her confession to that wasn't a lie — but she seems genuinely confused at first when she's accused of throwing him down the open elevator shaft. The trio sees Donna's confession as a reaction to seeing the handkerchief. They thought they had a piece of evidence about Donna's guilt that couldn't be denied.
It turns out though that Donna knew the truth from the handkerchief. When Donna and Cliff kiss, she takes her handkerchief, blots her lips on it, and then puts it in Cliff's pocket, so when she sees the trio has a hanky with her lipstick on it, she realizes it was Cliff who killed Ben, not her. But she didn't want anything to ruin her son's life and certainly not his Broadway debut as a producer, so she confessed. She has cancer, so she wouldn't be in jail long. As Loretta says, there's almost nothing a mother won't do for her child, and Donna exemplifies that.
Why does Cliff admit to killing Ben?
While Cliff doesn't exactly admit to killing Ben, Mabel deduces that he did it because she observes Donna doing her usual ritual with the handkerchief with Cliff earlier that day. She accuses Cliff and we see in a flashback what really happened.
In the flashback, Ben figures out that Donna brought the cookies to set, and since that was the only thing he ate, he comes to the conclusion that Donna tried to kill him. It turns out Cliff's protective instincts over his mother are just as strong as hers over him, plus he never liked Ben personally or professionally, so he kills Ben.
Though he doesn't admit to the actual act, he does say he'll kill himself if Mabel tells anyone, and backs it up by dangling himself over the stage. While Charles and Oliver come to try and help Mabel, it's Donna who prevents him from throwing himself out of the trapdoor. Ultimately, both Cliff and Donna are arrested for their part in the murder of Ben Glenroy.
Why isn't the reveal as big a deal this season?
The reveal of who killed Ben Glenroy feels like a bit of a letdown this season. While it's still a surprise up to the last minute, part of the reason it feels less interesting than other seasons is that the culprits are of such little consequence to the wider series. In Season 1, it was Charles' serial killer girlfriend, Jan (Amy Ryan), and in Season 2, it was Poppy (Adina Verson), the assistant to crime podcast rival Cinda Canning (Tina Fey), but Donna and Cliff don't have the same cachet.
While they both went down for moments of insanity, they can't hold a candle to the others' motives: a woman who routinely killed and a woman so neglected and tortured by her boss, that she killed because of it. The reveal of Donna and Cliff is juicy but not as juicy as the others. As a result, the reveal this season is ultimately underwhelming.
Who killed Sazz in Charles' apartment?
Having successfully solved another murder, the end of this season sees the trio celebrating at a party. Joining the gang is Sazz (Jane Lynch), Charles' former stunt double, who comes over to party at Oliver's place. However, when she runs to Charles' apartment to get something, she is shot and killed.
Closing on this shocking cliffhanger, we don't yet know who killed Sazz and we'll have to wait until Season 4 to find out. Sazz is Charles' former stunt double, and because she's shown up in every season of the show, she's a friend of each member of the trio. No one wanted to see her go. She's a lot of fun, whether she's demonstrating her ability to do stunts or she's having Charles play a game to reveal what he really wants. But that makes her the perfect person to center next season on.
It's hard to imagine who would want to kill Sazz. It could have been Uma (Jackie Hoffman), the woman who was the best friend of Bunny (Jayne Houdyshell) — the Season 2 victim — as she isn't exactly amused by Charles, Oliver, and Mabel's podcast. Or it could be Jonathan (Jason Veasey), the new lead in "Death Rattle Dazzle!" who took too many drugs on opening night which led to Oliver taking his place. But honestly, why would either of them do it? Or anyone else for that matter?
How will Charles react to Sazz's murder?
Charles is likely to take Sazz's death hard. While she wasn't there all the time, she was a fairly reliable presence in his life and his righthand woman during his time on "Brazzos." More to the point though, Charles is likely to take Sazz's death hard because the murderer probably mistook Sazz for him. It's hard to say why anyone would want to kill Charles, just like it's hard to imagine anyone having a motive to kill Sazz, but Charles will be especially invested in solving this murder for both his and Sazz's sake. If it was a case of mistaken identity, then Charles' life is in danger for as long as the killer is still out there.
The other thing is that Sazz had asked to talk to Charles before she passed away, something she said was "a little sensitive," so there may be something there that points to her murderer. Of course, with her dying so suddenly it's hard to say. Sazz looked to be drawing something in her blood on the floor, though, so it's possible she communicated something to Charles, even if it's not as much as she had originally wanted to.
Will the next season be set in Los Angeles?
For the first time, it looks possible that the action will move outside of New York for the next season. While Sazz was murdered in the Arconia in New York, both Mabel and Oliver look to be heading to Los Angeles — at least to visit but perhaps for longer. Oliver because Loretta may go there to film a show or record a voice role for an animated feature, and Mabel because Tobert is going there to shoot an independent film. While they're there, though, the investigation into Sazz's death can't stop. After all, what kind of friends would they be if they let her death go?
With Charles in New York and Oliver and Mabel possibly in Los Angeles, the trio could get into some sort of bicoastal search for answers. After all, the nice thing about show business — which both Charles and Sazz are in — is that it has hubs in New York and Los Angeles, making it possible there could be clues outside of the Big Apple. While it's not a certainty, the possibility of having part of next season take place in L.A. is intriguing.
What's been said about the ending
"Only Murders in the Building" co-creator and showrunner John Hoffman has spoken about the ending of Season 3, acknowledging that it was awful that they killed Sazz, but confirming that Jane Lynch loved the idea. "It's one of the great characters. We've loved writing Sazz so much, and that's the beauty of the show is, you get a lot more time with the victims," Hoffman told The Hollywood Reporter. "And that's, I think, also why Jane said she was excited because it's a good opportunity to go deeper with Sazz." So whatever else happens next, we can count on a big juicy story involving her.
Of the big reveal that Donna and Cliff were Season 3's murderers, Hoffmann said, "I like that the producers Donna and Cliff are first presented in our season as rather larger-than-life, ridiculous characters — the kiss is very strange. But then being able to sort of really deepen that and go into our theme mothers and then surprise hopefully that there is a lot more underneath this connection that they have and was never intended to be murderous — either one of them." So while Donna and Cliff were initially presented for laughs, over time, they became a mother and son who would do anything for one another, even accidental murder.
Will there be another season of Only Murders?
On the day the Season 3 finale dropped, Season 4 of "Only Murders in the Building" was announced. According to Deadline, it's Hulu's most-watched original comedy ever and it has been nominated for an Emmy for outstanding comedy series as have Martin Short and Nathan Lane for their roles in the second season, so there was a pretty good chance that the show would be renewed for Season 4, even without the official confirmation.
John Hoffman told The Hollywood Reporter, "I love doing it. They love doing it. Until we don't, I can imagine there's plenty of ways to play with this title too and how deep it goes." So we can expect the series to continue at least for another couple of seasons if not longer. As long as the powers that be at Hulu appreciate the number of people watching the show and the people making it enjoy it, the show will continue. And though there are no definitive answers on whether or not they'll be back, Hoffman said he'd welcome Meryl Streep, Jesse Williams, and even Paul Rudd to the fourth season.