RECAP: “Only Murders in the Building” Season 4 FINALE
First, apologies for no recap for Episode 9. I was traveling internationally and didn’t watch the episode until I got back to the States.
But more than that: we have hit the end of Season 4! Sazz’s murderer has been revealed! Many of the season’s biggest plot points have been resolved! And more than one mystery has been teed up for Season 5!
Overall I think Season 4 was satisfying, if uneven. Many of the Hollywood elements introduced early in the season paid off in delightful dividends, and the over-the-top wackiness of the Westies ultimately ended up feeling additive instead of distracting. I maintain that the middle of the season dragged, and I think the sequences in which Charles spoke to Sazz’s ghosts are some of the most overindulgent in the show’s history, almost bordering on cringe. But I think in the end, the good parts of the season outweighed the bad.
Read on for my take on the episode. Spoilers ahead! Consider yourself warned!
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The finale picked up right where the E9 cliffhanger left off: Charles and Oliver have realized, via drinks with Ron Howard, that screenwriter Marshall Pope was previously Sazz’s stuntman protege, and that he was the person Sazz was concerned about being “the death of her.” They text Mabel with their findings, unaware that at that very moment, Mabel is in her apartment helping Marshall do rewrites on the Only Murders in the Building movie script. Except that when she went to get beers from the box Sazz had brought to the Broadway premiere party, she discovered an earlier version of the Only Murders script inserted in it…written by one Sazz Pataki.
Marshall sees Charles’ text on Mabel’s phone (I cannot stress this enough: people, please put password protection on your phone; how many spots have been blown up by not taking this simple precaution, looking at you Stephen from “Love Is Blind” S7) and pulls a gun on her. Mabel asks Marshall to explain why Sazz’s name is on this script. He spills everything: he was an aspiring (terrible) screenwriter who met Sazz after she accidentally ran him over in a parking lot. She took him under her wing and trained him in the stunt arts. That was going fine until he blew it on the Ron Howard movie. In the meantime, Sazz decided to try her own hand at screenwriting, deciding to adapt the story of her friend Charles’ crazy murder podcast. She shared her screenplay with Marshall, who was blown away by how good it was, especially given that it was Sazz’s first attempt. He lied and told Sazz it was awful, but stole it himself, sold it to Bev Mellon at Paramount, and it got fast tracked. That’s when Sazz found out about the betrayal, and threatened to expose Marshall — but first she had to tell Charles, whose blessing she had never received to begin the project in the first place.
That brought us to the end of Season 3, with Sazz attending Charles’ Broadway premiere, telling him she needed to speak with him about something delicate, bringing the beer (with the script inside the box), and going to get the wine to celebrate. Marshall learned about the Dudenoff apartment from Sazz’s script. This part is fuzzy to me — so Sazz had used the HAM Radio to gather intel from other residents of the Arconia, and somehow got connected to the Westies, and went down a rabbit hole with that whole plotline even though it had absolutely no connection to the plots that would have been covered in Sazz’s script? That feels like a plot hole. Anyway, Marshall got into the Dudenoff apartment, shot Sazz, and then I THINK they’re suggesting that he shuffled along the ledge around the entire courtyard to get into Charles’ apartment, where he picked up Sazz’s body, and then dumped it in the incinerator chute. I get that we’re meant to believe that Marshall was in tip-top physical condition, but shimmying alongside the window ledge from the West Tower to the East Tower feels like it would take significantly longer than would make sense given the timeline.
Anyway: that’s the gist. There were not two killers, just Marshall. He deliberately killed Sazz, not Charles. Oliver was never the target at the photo-shoot shooting; Marshall deliberately shot Glenn because he was concerned that Glenn would recognize him as a fellow stuntperson. Dudenoff and the Westies had literally nothing to do with this, aside from providing Marshall with (an extraordinarily contrived) logistical opportunity to kill Sazz.
Via text, Marshall informed Charles and Oliver that if they called the police he would kill Mabel then and there. Mabel wisely used workshopping Marshall’s terrible script as a way to bide time. Charles and Oliver decided to go to the Westies and partnered with Vince Fish and Rudy to pull a “ding dong” on the Dudenoff apartment, while Charles and Oliver used the distraction to slip in through the window (also using the external ledge as an entry point), where they confronted Marshall with, hilariously, Eva Longoria’s 19-in-1 beauty multitool. After a brief struggle, it really looked like Marshall had the Arconia 3 dead to rights, when a bullet burst through the window, killing him. Standing across the courtyard in Charles’ apartment, holding a high-powered rifle? Jan, who had been living in Charles’ closet and the Arconia secret passageways while she waited for Charles to kill Sazz’s killer. As she was arrested by police, she told Charles in no uncertain terms, “We’re endgame.” is it crazy that I kind of love those two together?
That wrapped up the main arc of the season. The movie appears to still be on track — we saw Eugene Levy, Eva Longoria, and Zack Galifianakis shooting scenes this episode. Charles got to say goodbye to his friend in a meaningful way. Mabel has a new apartment, some kind of new business (this was also poorly explained — Bev Mellon talked about a pitch session with Mabel, but I don’t think we ever got any real explanation of the terms of her deal for her life rights). And Oliver and Loretta got married in a lovely courtyard wedding, the only complication being that Loretta’s show is relocating to New Zealand “because the algorithm thinks it’s new and fresh,” and Oliver contemplated leaving the Arconia behind to be with her. Ultimately Loretta assured him that their relationship would be fine with him in NYC and her filming on the other end of the world, which gives the couple a satisfying happy ending, and also gives a plausible reason for Meryl Streep to not be present for most future episodes.
But don’t think this is the end for “Only Murders in the Building.” We got two teasers for next season: longtime TV actress Tea Leoni appeared as a woman who approaches Charles and Mabel about hiring them to find her missing, possibly dead, husband, Nicky Caccimelio, whose name was referenced in a TV report the episode prior. Charles explained that they aren’t actually detectives, and only investigate mysteries in their building. Leoni’s character explained that her husband’s disappearance had everything to do with the Arconia. I’m sure we’ll learn more next season.
Lastly, and more urgently, the body of kindly Arconia doorman Lester was found in the courtyard fountain, the water turned red with his blood. Why would anyone work or live in this building?! It’s a goddamned roach motel; you check in, but you don’t check out!
Aside from those two big mysteries going into next season, there are still a few lingering plot points that remain dangling.
The Hollywood 3 are right: there are numerous aggressive actions going back to Season 1 that have not been solved. Who poisoned Oliver’s dog? Who was leaving threatening messages about ending the podcast? It definitely wasn’t Marshall. He was totally unaware of anything in the Arconia while Season 1 was unfolding.
Who planted the first set of video cameras in the Arconia 3’s apartments? The ones discovered when removing the Brothers Sisters’ cameras? I don’t think it was Marshall; again, that person sent them an image that matched up to the threatening note from S1, which was pre-Marshall. Does whoever planted those cameras somehow also have Sazz’s phone? Or was it Marshall with the phone?
This is more of a longshot, but Marshall referenced his hunter father, who was pressuring his son into being a hunter himself. I will not be the slightest bit surprised if we end up getting introduced to this character at some point in the future. It’s possible it was just a contrivance to explain why Marshall was so good with a rifle, but a gun-obsessed creep just had his son killed. I suspect he will want some kind of revenge.
Did we ever get any kind of explanation for why Bev Mellon was at the nonexistent trampoline park Sazz was trying to build? That was such a strange moment.
Personally, I would rank Season 4 of “Only Murders” ahead of Season 2, but a distant third place behind Season 1 and Season 3, both of which I thought were very strong. I’m still so grateful that we have this show. Even when it’s not great, it’s so refreshing, and is giving these three leads — and the increasingly wild supporting cast — whimsical material that they elevate every single episode. Bring on Season 5!
What did you think of the season? Leave your takes in the comments!
