Only Murders in the Building has a habit of hiring every big name in the biz for interesting side roles in the show’s mystery. Tina Fey played bratty podcast competitor Cinda Canning in the first two seasons. Jane Lynch makes recurring appearances as Charles’ (Steve Martin) stunt double. Amy Schumer plays herself. Nathan Lane, Sting, and Shirley MacLaine have also guest starred. That’s not even mentioning Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd’s appearances in Season 3. But those two aren’t even the biggest names of this new installment.
Who is the biggest name, you ask? Why, that title belongs to Harry Styles. Kind of. Not really. While he doesn’t appear, Styles is briefly mentioned in Episode 2, “The Beat Goes On,” which made me believe he was going to have a cameo. Maybe later on this season we’ll see the former One Direction star in all his murderous glory.
Styles is mentioned at Ben’s (Rudd) funeral following his second, more permanent death in the elevator shaft. He’s meant to give a eulogy, but right as he’s about to step up to the stage, the show cuts away to another scene. Bummer. At least we’ve still got Rudd (in flashbacks), Streep, and, of course, Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez. Only Murders may not have Styles, but that’s not to say the show isn’t incredibly star-studded.
There are so many big names, in fact, that Martin, Short, and Gomez—playing Charles, Oliver, and Mabel, respectively—are all sent to the overflow room for Ben’s funeral. No, they can’t squeeze in besides the big name actors who make up the list of Ben’s friends. They watch the funeral in an LED-lit hotel room above the actual procession, where they see Ben’s casket on a TV that appears to be from 2004. What a lovely sendoff.
Of course, Charles and Oliver hated Ben, so their protests over being sent to the main room are just virtue signaling at its finest. Charles, in particular, had some destructive beef with the leading man of Oliver’s Death Rattle.
In flashbacks to opening night, we get more insight into their history. Ben was once a child actor on Brazzos, in which—as we already know—Charles played the titular detective. Charles loathed Ben, who was a terrible actor. Stuck up and egotistical, Charles refused to work with Ben and got him fired from the set. In the present day, Charles, regretting his actions, decides to confront Ben on opening night about his mistakes.
But the pair have an undeniably terrible relationship. Charles can’t even apologize without tearing Ben down. Ben wants Charles to understand that, while he was a bad actor (most kids are, really), he only took the gig to support his mom and brother. Now, doesn’t Charles look like a real asshole? Once again, Charles has the most fascinating backstory to unpack. Last season, it was the Brazzos reboot. Now, after letting Ben down on two productions, Charles must avenge his death out of pity.
Charles isn’t the only one who has a connection to Ben. Mabel joins him in that regard, but from a fan perspective—she used to watch Girl Cop on a loop, Ben’s cheesy teen TV show, following the death of her father. Mabel is a huge fan of Ben’s, not to mention the fact that she has a giant crush on the actor. Along with her desire to have one last podcast season before she moves out of the Aronia, Mabel’s affection for Ben leads her to go digging for some evidence.
Which is why she takes an immediate liking to Greg (Adrian Martinez), a fellow Girl Cop stan who promises that he has a lead on what happened to Ben. Charles tags along with Mabel when she goes to Greg’s apartment to crack the case with her new pal. Greg is a superfan in the weirdest sense. He collects everything short of Ben’s saliva, from the Girl Cop keys to every poster of all of Ben’s productions. A huge fan of Ben’s, Mabel is in heaven.
Until she’s not, because Greg suffocates both her and Charles and handcuffs them to a beam in his basement. Turns out he’s one of those creepy superfans who will kill anyone that might lay a hand on his favorite celebrity. Greg suspects that Charles killed Ben, knowing their behind-the-scenes tension. Luckily, the cops intervene before Greg can get his hands on either Mabel or Charles.
Meanwhile, after Oliver sits through the rest of Ben’s funeral, he confronts a popular play critic as she’s exiting the event. He begs her to spill on her thoughts of Death Rattle. They aren’t good. Ben would’ve received terrible critiques. The staging was boring. As she walks away, Oliver clutches his chest and falls to the floor. This isn’t Oliver being his usual, overly dramatic self. Oliver has a minor heart attack.
After Oliver recovers, his doctor and son Will (Ryan Broussard) warn him about being too active. The play should take a break. Any work in the theatrical environment, in fact, should be avoided at all costs. Oliver is compared to Bob Fosse—the doctor and his son use it in a negative light, but Oliver sees it as a compliment—which sends him into a Fosse-inspired fever dream, a la the death montage in All That Jazz. This is cute, but not as gripping as any of the stories related to Ben.
Oliver wakes up believing that he’s had an epiphany. Instead of a tired old play, he’ll turn Death Rattle into a musical. Charles and Mabel arrive at his apartment door in the middle of his realization with an even better idea: They’re ready to bring the podcast back. Though Oliver won’t turn away from his dreams of the musical, the podcast is probably a better fit for his declining health—especially as he grabs his chest in pain as the episode comes to a close.
Oliver needs to stick to the plot. No musicals, no strenuous activity, and no diversions away from cracking this case. That said, a musical episode of Only Murders—if done correctly—could be a lot of fun.
Clues From the Crime Scene
-Mabel is having visions of Ben in retro Girl Cop gear. Something feels a little fishy about this. Does Mabel know something we don’t? She knew an awful lot about the poisoning the first night. But I doubt Only Murders would actually make Mabel the prime suspect again, seeing as she was a suspect for quite some time in the first and second seasons.
-Greg was obsessed with Ben. Mabel and Charles are convinced he had nothing to do with the murder (see Clue 4 on this list), but Greg was at Ben’s place the night he died, hunting for new Ben relics. I just don’t feel like the Greg storyline is over quite yet. He’s such a good weirdo!
-Oliver was in the dressing room running lines with his lead star moments before Ben collapsed on stage. Again, I doubt any of the main trio are guilty. But Oliver should peel through his memory to see if there was anything suspicious about Ben’s dressing room the night he almost died and then did die.
-The biggest clue, however, is Ben’s opening night gift: handkerchiefs with rattles on them for everyone involved in the show. Greg (a completely uninvolved party) happens to have one of the handkerchiefs, which he confesses is Ben’s. He stole it from his apartment at the Arconia the day of the show. But in a photo Mabel took at the crime scene, Ben is holding another handkerchief. The murder, Mabel argues, had to have been committed by someone involved in the show—someone who had a hankie to spare.
