Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Only Murders in the Building’s Season 5 finale.
The highly anticipated ending to Only Murders in the BuildingSeason 5 has finally arrived, promising to answer the season-long question of who killed the beloved Lester (Teddy Coluca). After the previous episode revealed that Lester himself killed Nicky Caccimelio (Bobby Cannavale) to stop him from turning the Arconia into a casino and that Sofia Caccimelio (Téa Leoni) was having an affair, the final episode, “The House Always…” brings Mabel (Selena Gomez), Oliver (Martin Short), and Charles (Steve Martin) to the truth.
‘Only Murders in the Building’s Season 5 Finale Brings the Billionaires Back One Last Time
“The House Always…” opens with a flashback to a young Nicky reciting one of his poorly-constructed poems to Sofia at the Arconia’s Clean-Ups. In a voiceover, Mabel talks about how there’s no bigger mystery or risk than love. Another flashback shows us the moment Sofia ended her marriage to Nicky, telling him she’s tired of their life and how he doesn’t really love her; he’s just used to her. Nicky guesses that she’s having an affair and promises to find the guy and kill him.
Back in the present, right where the previous episode left off, the trio asks Teddy (Nathan Lane) to ask Nonna (Elizabeth D’Onofrio) why she stole the finger. She reveals that Sofia immediately recognized the fingerall the way back in Episode 1, when Oliver accidentally dropped it on her dinner table. Nonna implies the finger belonged to someone Sofia knew intimately, meaning it was probably from her paramour. Back at the Arconia, the trio learns that Camilla (Renée Zellweger) will actually tear down the building to build the casino because it’s cheaper to just start from scratch.
At Oliver’s, the trio goes back to basics — maybe the finger did belong to one of the billionaires. After all, Camilla is always wearing gloves, Bash (Christoph Waltz) has replaced other parts of his body before, and Jay (Logan Lerman) is literally missing a finger. So which of them was sleeping with Sofia? The trio then decides to pull another one of its famous games and summons the billionaires to the Velvet Room with a note saying the casino bid is still in play. There, they do their best attempt at an Italian mob accent (spoiler alert: it’s awful, but hearing Gomez try is really fun) and pull out an ace up their sleeve. They’ve invited the dimwitted Caccimelio sons; it’s old mob meets new mob.
As expected, the boys are more enthusiastic than effective, and the billionaires are unmoved. That is, until Mabel takes out a cleaver; they remain unmoved, of course, but are slightly more impressed by her efforts. Jay talks first and removes his bandage to reveal a hand with five fingers; he never lost a finger, he just really wanted to find the missing one to coerce the person who had it to give it up. Charles pulls Camilla’s fingers (they’re real), and Bash voluntarily offers to have Oliver pull his finger, much to the delight of the Caccimelio boys.
Their mood changes when the conversation turns to which of the billionaires was sleeping with Sofia. The boys say their mom never kissed anyone… well, except Jesus, of course, that’s how they were born. Realizing they are now hindrances, Charles tells them to leave, but to leave their weapons at the bar. Suddenly, Mayor Tillman (Keegan-Michael Key) arrives, telling Camilla the conference is about to start. Mabel then gets a text and, shocked, declares she knows who killed Lester. Still brandishing the cleaver, she chops off one of Tillman’s fingers to reveal a fake.
‘Only Murders in the Building’s Season 5 Finale Revisits the Night of Lester’s Murder
Mabel reveals she figured out Tillman did it by reading Howard’s texts: “Someone’s coming down. It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. Sorry, autocorrect, it’s Beau Tillman.” In Episode 6, Rainey (Dianne Wiest) showed them the last text she got from Lester, which said, “It’s beautiful,” and a picture of the fountain. Everyone thought he meant the fountain itself, since it was decorated for Oliver’s wedding, and Lester had always loved the Arconia. However, he had actually meant to say, “It’s Beau Tillman.”
Tillman accepts that he was indeed at the poker game the night Lester died. Whenever the billionaires needed something, they would invite him to the game, “lose” a ton of money to him, and walk away with whatever permits they needed from him. That night, however, Nicky had just learned that Beau was sleeping with Sofia and was having a bit too many lines of coke. The billionaires were there, and so was Lester, dealing the cards. When Tillman asked for “one finger” of Scotch, Nicky picked up a cleaver and… well, took one finger from him. Camilla and Jay stood up, scared, and Nicky kept brandishing the cleaver at Tillman. That’s when Lester hit Nicky in the back with the elevator crank, finally standing up to him.
Lester (quite foolishly, if we’re being honest) revealed he’d been writing about the card games to take to the cops. Nicky ripped out a page and ate it (explaining the paper the trio found on his mouth), but Lester took away the cleaver from him, proudly telling him the Arconia is “my building.” Nicky fell on top of him and impaled himself with the cleaver. As the billionaires tried to figure out what to do with the dead mobster (“Does anyone have a guy for this?”), Lester grabbed his ledger, picked up the finger, and ran away in the confusion.
Tillman ran after him, but Lester had already placed the finger on the shrimp and sent it up to Oliver’s. Tillman and the billionaires can all compensate Lester, but the doorman is done being bought. Lester grabbed his bird whistle and ran away to the courtyard, hastily trying to send Rainey a text and dropping the crank. He dropped the whistle in the fountain and went into it to retrieve it. Tillman struggled with him and pushed him into the fountain, where Lester bumped his head and opened his skull. With his dying breath, he blew the whistle, ensuring the bird-watching camera began recording. As Tillman drove away, Randall (Jermaine Fowler) arrived, picked up the bloody crank, and ran off.
‘Only Murders in the Building’s Season 5 Finale Reveals Who Killed Lester
Tillman is very calm because the group of crooked cops that Charles saw picking up Nicky’s body has arrived. The cops take the trio’s phones, bash them, then take them to the room behind the Velvet Room, where they chain them. Tillman says that, since no one knows about that room, the trio will go down with the Arconia, thus becoming “the final murders in the building.” He then leaves to go to the press conference, where a scared Howard tries to reach the trio via text. Meanwhile, the cops drop the trio’s destroyed phones into the garbage disposal shoot, where they reach Miller (David Patrick Kelly), who takes them up to Howard.
Charles wants to say many things to Oliver and Mabel, but he wrote them on the Notes app of his phone. He also reveals that the testosterone trial he was in had him in the placebo group, meaning he never received any testosterone at all. Mabel, however, says all the “great” things Charles did were purely because of him. Since he’s the one chained to a pole, for some reason — Oliver and Mabel are chained to the wall — Charles agrees to “shimmy” up to the Clean-Ups upstairs, where he can maybe find a hanger to pick the chain locks.
Upstairs, Howard and Miller try to figure out how to get past the crooked cops. Luckily, THÉ (Beanie Feldstein) is there to help. With L.E.S.T.R.’s help, THÉ pulls attention from Camilla’s announcement at the press conference, saying she’s about to give an impromptu farewell to the Arconia “in the secret gaming room parlor downstairs.” As the reporters follow her, Camilla and Tillman try to retake control of the situation.
In the Velvet Room, THÉ is in full concert mode. In the secret room, Charles gives Oliver and Mabel instructions about how to get themselves released from the chains, leading to one of the season’s funniest sequences. Short and Martin are hilarious at physical comedy, but Gomez really steps up here, too. Charles manages to shimmy up the pole, grab one of the wire hangers from the dry cleaners, then slide down the pole, stripper style. Freeing themselves, the trio bursts out of the secret room and accuses Tillman of murder in a room full of reporters.
‘Only Murders in the Building’s Season 5 Finale Sets Up the Trio’s Next Mystery
To the shock of everyone, Mabel reveals a secret recording device hidden in the same compartment where they found Lester’s notes. Tillman tries to run away from the Velvet Room but is stopped by a flock of birds released by Randall and Vince (Richard Kind). Jay then reveals to Mabel that Tillman bribed them to get his finger back by saying that whoever had it would win the casino bid. Since they couldn’t call their assistants, Jay, Camilla, and Bash used one of her paint tarps to get Nicky’s body out, explaining the white paint on his suit. To avoid connecting Nicky’s death to Lester’s, Bash held him for a week in his crio chamber before Jay himself took the body back to the dry cleaners.
Jay actually confesses to the cops, and the billionaires are taken away, all three still fresh as a cucumber; after all, they have all the time (and money) in the world. As they’re taken away, Sofia returns and confesses that she indeed seduced Charles to distract him and allow his mom and boys to break into his apartment and steal the finger, which she then sold to the millionaires. She invites him to go to Positano with her, but Charles, for the first time ever, says no to a dangerous woman.
Three months later, Sofia uses part of the money to set herself up in Positano and gifts the other part to Rainey, who finally fulfills her and Lester’s dream and buys an apartment at the Arconia. Nonna dies, much to the boys’ pain and Sofia’s ambivalence, and the Arconia stays intact and receives a fresh batch of tenants. Meanwhile, Howard starts a relationship with Vinny (Evan Mulrooney), one of the Caccimelio boys.
The trio is about to start listening to a new Cinda Canning (Tina Fey) podcast. She is in London, telling the tale of a woman with curly red hair who is the prime suspect of a member of the Royal Family. Cinda says her instinct to protect this girl leads her to send the girl to America, the only place where she’ll be safe. Intertwined with her voiceover, we see images of a woman with red hair running through the streets of New York, coughing and leaving bloody prints on the walls. She reaches the Arconia and collapses in front of it. As the trio walks down, they find Howard and a bunch of people gathered around the woman. Howard laments how she seemingly died only inches outside the building gate, thus disqualifying her from being the subject of the trio’s podcast. As they argue about the semantics of what “in the building” means, the woman wakes up long enough to grab the Arconia’s gate. Turning around, she reveals herself as Cinda Canning, blood coming out of her mouth as her life slips away.
That’s it for Only Murders in the Building Season 5, which was a definitive improvement over the weaker Season 4. The mystery was compelling, the guest stars were effective, and, most importantly, the trio was front and center, each receiving considerable character growth. The now-confirmed Season 6 will revolve around Cinda’s murder and take the trio to London, but we’ll have to wait another year before we see Charles, Oliver, and Mabel again. Until then, it’s been a hell of a ride!
Only Murders in the Building
‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 5 ends with a great episode that sets up yet another season of murder and mystery.
- Release Date
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August 31, 2021
- The mystery resolves in a logical and entertaining way, actually tying up every loose end.
- I wasn’t the only one surprised by how much of a nothing burger Keegan-Michael Key’s role was in the early episodes. Luckily, he goes out with a bang.
- Howard’s new romance with Vinny is so promising, and I hope it carries on to Season 6.
- The character growth for Charles, Oliver, and Mabel was so good this season, and I can’t wait to see how it progresses in Season 6.
- Seriously, Hulu, where is the full version of THE’s “Wish That You Were Me?” It’s a banger!
- Now that Rainey is at the Arconia, Dianne Wiest better come back next season. She was such a delight this season.
- The whole chained sequence is fun, don’t get me wrong, but also a tad too silly.
- It’s a shame we couldn’t squeeze one final Meryl Streep cameo.
