While I totally get that actors and crew need time to create a whole new season of our favorite shows, it poses quite the pickle for me. As by the time the new season is FINALLY released, I’ve completely forgotten the last one. Especially when it comes to a show like Only Murders in the Building, where so much happens all the fucking time. It’s frustrating to be cursed with such a terrible short-term memory, and it means that whatever time I’m not bingeing shows is spent looking up what actually happened in them. But for my fellow forgetful girlies, I gotchu, I gotchu right here with a complete Only Murders In The Building season 3 recap. You’re SO welcome, xoxo
What was season 3 of Only Murders in the Building about?
After two seasons, and podcasts, set in the absolutely cursed Arconia, our fav trio — Charles, Oliver, and Mabel — were off to Broadway. Season three takes place a few months after season two finished and Mabel had been cleared of Bunny Folger’s murder. They were watching Oliver’s new “hit” play, Death Rattle. Obviously, someone was going to die, and the sleuthing of the season would largely take place in the backstage theatre.
The leading man, a diva of no limits, Ben Glenroy, is poisoned on stage and dies in front of the audience. Big yikes. Oliver invites the cast and crew back to his place in the Arconia to try to rally them up and stop them from quitting. All of a sudden, Ben arrives!! It turns out that the star was clinically dead for almost an hour (which Ben’s doctors revealed was a new record), but after they pumped his stomach, he miraculously recovered.
Ben’s brush with death has convinced him that he wants to be a better person. He goes around the party apologizing to his cast and crew, and we learn that everyone had a reason to hate his guts (and thus try to kill him). Two of the people most angry at Ben are Charles and Loretta (Meryl Streep).
But before the episode is over, Ben dies again, and for real this time. He is pushed down the elevator shaft in a classic soap opera-style death. Now it’s time for our amateur detectives to work out who killed Ben… both times.
What happens in season 3?
The stress of his leading man dying twice and other directorial issues causes Oliver to have a heart attack. In his very brief rest period, he has the epiphany to turn the play into a musical and name it Death Rattle Dazzle. He and Charles have to focus their energy on making this odd transformation work, and Mabel feels left out.
She starts working with Ben’s documentarian, Tobert (1. What is that name? 2. Why is Jackson Avery from Grey’s Anatomy here?), to try and solve Ben’s murder. Obviously, they start having the hots for each other, as Mabel can’t go a whole season without getting shagged by a sexy guest star. She goes solo and produces an episode of the podcast without the oldies — BETRAYAL.
Charles is struggling with his girlfriend, Joy, as he keeps blacking out when things get too serious. At one such time, he apparently proposes to her. He is also trying to overcome his fear of singing on-stage as he’s now found himself as the star of a musical lol. Oliver has the hots for Loretta, who comes with secrets of her own — and people speculate that this romance went off-camera too…
SO WHO DID IT??
Who killed Ben in season 3?
Let’s consider our suspects.
- Charles’ girlfriend, Joy. Her lipstick was used to write an intimidating message on Ben’s dressing room mirror. He had known beef with Charles and she’s a protective mama lion when it comes to him.
- Loretta. Ben’s adoptive brother Dickie is her biological son (wtf???), and Ben was awful to him. Maybe she was trying to protect Dickie.
- Kimber. She and Ben shared an inappropriate and flirtatious relationship; maybe she was a woman scorned.
- Tobert. His documentary was fucking boring, maybe he wanted to spice it up??
As always, things are not as simple as they seem, and the real killer only turns up in the finale.
Donna and Cliff were a mother-son producing duo with a relationship that bordered on hella inappropriate — the kind that breastfeeds until he’s twenty, I bet. Donna found an unreleased draft of a review panning the original production. She was worried that Cliff’s first show would be a flop, so she poisoned Ben’s cookie. Honestly, if anyone is trying to poison me, a delicious giant cookie is the way to go.
But Donna claims she didn’t push him down the elevator shaft. She intended for him to be too sick to perform, never to die. The trio corners her with the handkerchief Ben grasped in his final moments – the leading clue of the season – and the lipstick on it perfectly matches Donna’s. She admits to killing Ben and asks to watch the show before they turn her in.
Is that it? NOPE. Mabel witnesses the heartfelt bond between Loretta and Dickie as she reveals herself to be his biological mother, and she has an epiphany: Donna was just trying to protect her adult baby, Cliff!!
It turns out that Cliff bumped into Ben after the apology round at the party, just as Ben was getting off the phone with his doc. The doctor revealed that Ben had rat poison in his system, and the only thing he’d eaten was the cookie gifted by Donna. He plans to report Donna to the police, and he pushes Cliff’s buttons about his mom, until Cliff is the one pushing. And so, Cliff killed Ben to protect his mom.
How did season 3 end?
In the final moments of season 3, we see Sazz (Charles’ formal stunt double, played by Jane Lynch, AKA Sue Sylvester) ask to speak to Charles. She leaves to grab a bottle of wine from his apartment, where she is suddenly shot through his kitchen window. Charles’ apartment is several floors up, so this means the bullet came from across the atrium pow pow. Sazz falls to the ground and begins to write something in her own blood, leaving us with another murder in the Arconia — everyone should move immediately!!!
Season four will likely revolve around Sazz’s murder. Who is this mysterious sniper? Did they intend to shoot Sazz or mistake her for Charles? What did she write in her blood? Will more murders follow? LET’S GO!!
