ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING Season 1-3 Recap | Must Watch Before Season 4 | Series Explained

Season 1 Season one of Only Murders in the Building  introduces Charles, Oliver, and Mabel,   three residents of the affluent Manhattan  apartment building the Arconia. Charles is   a semi-retired actor who starred in a popular  detective series in the 90s called Brazzos,   Oliver is a struggling Broadway director  who can barely keep up with his rent,   and Mabel is renovating an apartment for  her wealthy aunt. The three residents are   mostly strangers, but they do share one  thing in common: they’re all super fans   of a popular true crime podcast called All Is  Not OK in Oklahoma hosted by Cinda Canning. When fellow Arconia resident Tim Kono is found  dead, police Detective Williams dismisses it as   self-inflicted, but Charles, Oliver, and Mabel  believe it to be murder. They all witnessed Tim   making a frantic phone call before his death,  and when sneaking into his apartment to look for   clues, they find seemingly innocuous items like  a stash of sex toys as well as a more mysterious   cache of jewelry. And so, the three team up  to investigate Tim’s death and start their   own true crime podcast called Only Murders in the  Building. When Oliver goes to his old associate   Teddy Dimas to beg for money to help pay his  rent, Teddy agrees to sponsor the podcast. As the trio investigate, they discover that many  residents of the Arconia are happy Tim died,   as he was asthmatic and his death meant  that residents were now allowed to use   their fireplaces. And so, their initial  list of suspects is extremely long,   even including music superstar  and Arconian resident, Sting. Oliver’s adult son, Will, recognizes Mabel as  having been close friends with Tim, a detail   Mabel has kept a secret. It turns out, Mabel, Tim  and their other longtime friends Zoe and Oscar had   all been fans of the Hardy Boys book series and  solved pretend mysteries together. Years ago,   the four friends attended a rooftop party where  Zoe was later found dead. Since Oscar had gotten   into a heated argument with Zoe before her  death, he was arrested for her murder. When   Tim confided in Mabel that he saw someone else  arguing with Zoe before her death, Mabel ended   their friendship, as Tim refused to disclose this  information to the police to exonerate Oscar. In the present, Oscar has been released from  prison, making him the biggest suspect in Tim’s   murder. While Charles, Oliver, and Mabel  believe Oscar had a motive to kill Tim,   he professes his innocence and joins their  investigation, eventually entering into a romance   with Mabel. Also joining the investigation,  despite Mabel and Oliver’s objections,   is Charles’ new girlfriend and fellow Arconia  resident, the professional bassoonist Jan. As the trio’s investigation continues, their  podcast becomes massively popular, even getting   mentioned by their idol Cinda Canning on the  Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Due to this   popularity, Teddy’s business sees a massive boost,  and he pays Charles and Oliver an additional   $50,000. And that’s when Charles and Oliver  notice Teddy’s check is paid from an account   named “Angel”, the same name that Tim’s jewelry  cache came from. While investigating Teddy,   the trio discovers that he and his son Theo had  been stealing jewelry off of bodies at a funeral   home. It’s then revealed that years ago Theo  had had a crush on Zoe, but when she discovered   the Dimas family secret, he confronted her at  the rooftop party and accidentally pushed her   off of the roof. Tim was the only witness to this  crime, but was threatened by Teddy to keep quiet. While Charles is out on a date with Jan, Teddy  kidnaps Mabel and Oliver, threatening them to stop   their investigation, absolve the Dimas family,  and end their podcast immediately. Instead,   the trio use their final episode of the podcast  to detail all of the Dimas family crimes and label   them as Tim’s murderers. Detective Williams  begins looking into the case once again and   realizes that Tim’s death was caused by poison  and that it couldn’t have been the Dimas family,   as security footage proved they weren’t  in the Arconia the night of Tim’s murder. The trio are then forced to retract their  accusations of the Dimas family on their podcast.   The unwanted attention the podcast has brought to  the Arconia leads to the other residents voting to   evict the trio. Charles becomes disillusioned with  the case and quits the investigation, but Mabel   and Oliver aren’t ready to give up, and learn that  Tim had a secret girlfriend prior to his death.   They then realize that what they had originally  thought were Tim’s sex toys were actually bassoon   cleaners. It turns out, Jan was the murderer,  killing Tim after they broke up. Mabel and Oliver   break into Jan’s apartment and discover that she  has a whole box labeled “Jan’s Lil Toxins” which   she was going to use to gas the entire Arconia  via the newly reopened fireplaces. With Charles   now back on the case, the podcast trio race to  the Arconia’s basement to stop Jan and save the   hotel. With Tim’s murder solved, Jan arrested,  and the Arconia saved, Charles, Oliver, and Mabel   celebrate their victory. As Mabel leaves to get  champagne, Charles and Oliver receive a mysterious   text message warning them to leave the building  immediately. As they go to warn Mabel, Charles   and Oliver find her covered in blood, hunched  over the dead body of Bunny, the Arconia’s board   president who had tried to get the trio evicted.  Charles, Oliver, and Mabel are then escorted out   of the Arconia in handcuffs, the prime suspects  in Bunny’s murder. And now, the trio found   themselves as the main subjects of Cinda Canning’s  newest podcast: Only Murderers in the Building. Season 2 In season two of Only Murders in  the Building, Charles, Oliver,   and Mabel are arrested for Bunny’s murder  and questioned by Detective Williams and her   new partner, Detective Kreps. The trio are  released, for now, due to lack of evidence. Mabel tries to lay low and pulls away from all  things crime related, including her podcast with   Charles and Oliver. While trying to return  to her normal life, she meets and befriends   a local artist named Alice who encourages her to  pursue her own passion for painting. As Mabel and   Alice work closer together, they develop romantic  feelings for each other and begin to date. Due to   the popularity of the story, thanks in large  part to Cinda Canning’s new podcast, Mabel   also begins developing a strange cult following  online from fans who deem her Bloody Mabel. Charles is cast as Uncle Brazzos in a new,  modernized reboot of his classic television   series. He is visited by the teenage daughter of  one of his ex-girlfriends, Lucy, who helps him   discover secret tunnels that run all throughout  the Arconia, leading to the two developing a   father-daughter like bond. Charles also finds  a painting belonging to Bunny in his apartment   and realizes that someone is trying to incriminate  him. When he fails to sneak the painting back into   Bunny’s apartment, he is forced to throw it away  to get rid of it. The comedian Amy Schumer is a   new resident of the Arconia and takes a liking  to the painting and nabs it for herself, only   for the painting’s artist, Rose, to reveal the  painting to be a fake. Charles also learns that   Rose had once been madly in love with his father,  and helps Charles come to terms with his death. Oliver discovers that he is not actually  the biological father of his adult son,   Will. Oliver learns that Teddy had an affair  with his wife, and is therefore Will’s father,   but Will assures Oliver that blood related  or not, he will always consider him his   true family. As Oliver bonds with Will,  giving him advice on directing a play,   Oliver also convinces Charles and Mabel to join  him back on the podcast to solve the murder of   Bunny and clear their names. While trying to set  a glitter bomb trap for the supposed true killer,   the bomb explodes and Mabel is attacked  by the bomb’s glitter-covered target. Charles then finds the knife used to murder  Bunny in his apartment in another attempt   to incriminate him. He turns the knife over to  Detective Williams, and Mabel relays the strange,   seemingly innocuous words Bunny had spoken  as she died, “Sandwich” and “Fourteen”. As the season comes to a close, Charles, Oliver,  and Mabel host a killer reveal party, where all   of their suspects are invited. Mabel declares  that her new girlfriend, Alice, is the killer,   leading Alice to stabbing Charles and trying to  escape. Cinda congratulates Mabel on solving the   case, leading to her obsessive assistant, Becky,  accidentally revealing information that only the   killer could possibly know. Charles then reveals  that the stabbing was fake, as it was merely a   trap to force Becky into incriminating herself.  It turns out, her DNA was on the knife planted   in Charles’ apartment, and her favorite order  at the local diner is Sandwich 14. Years ago,   Becky was a super fan of Cinda Canning who faked  her own teenage disappearance and supposed murder,   inspiring Cinda’s hit true crime podcast All  is Not OK in Oklahoma, in the hopes of working   closely with her idol. Realizing Cinda would  never give her the respect she craved, Becky   murdered Bunny to solve the case on her very own  podcast, alongside her boyfriend and accomplice,   Detective Kreps, who just so happened to  be Mabel’s glitter bomb assailant. Becky   and Kreps are officially arrested for Bunny’s  murder, exonerating Charles, Oliver, and Mabel. One year later, Oliver is directing  a new broadway play starring Charles   and an actor named Ben Glenroy.  But on the play’s opening night,   Ben suddenly collapses dead on  stage, the victim of a new murder. In season three of Only Murders in the Building,   Season 3 after being officially pronounced dead by  the authorities, Ben Glenroy miraculously   wakes up and explains that his clinical  death must have been the result of food   poisoning. He apologizes to everyone involved in  Oliver’s play, Death Rattle, for his arrogance   throughout their rehearsals before falling down  an elevator shaft, murdered for real this time. Mabel learns that her aunt who owns her  Arconian apartment intends to sell it,   forcing Mabel to move out soon. And  so, in an attempt for one final hurrah,   she tries to convince Charles and Oliver to  restart their podcast and solve Ben’s murder,   but unfortunately, Oliver refuses. And so,  Mabel begins her investigation on her own,   before being joined by Tobert, a documentarian  who had been chronicling Ben’s broadway debut,   but now wants to pivot to solving his murder.  As Mabel and Tobert investigate Ben’s murder,   they develop romantic feelings for each other  and come up with a very long list of suspects. Loretta is an older and inexperienced  actress who Ben demanded that Oliver   fire. Ben was having a contentious affair  with a co-star named Kimber that ended on   very bad terms. In Ben’s dressing room,  the word “pig” was written on the mirror   using lipstick that belongs to Charles’ new  girlfriend, Joy. Ben’s understudy, Jonathan,   is dating fellow Arconian resident and Oliver’s  assistant, Howard. Mabel and Tobert catch Jonathan   having a secret meeting with Ben’s doctor,  where a bottle of pills are exchanged. And   then there’s Dickie, Ben’s older, adopted  brother who is bitter over Ben’s success,   especially due to the fact that Dickie was  the true creator of Ben’s most popular role. Elsewhere, Oliver discovers that his play,  Death Rattle, was going to be panned by critics   before Ben’s death shut down any possible  bad press. Trying to salvage his work,   he pivots Death Rattle from a play  to a musical. As he reworks the show,   he discovers that Loretta is massively talented  and the two begin to fall in love. Unfortunately,   Oliver grows suspicious of Loretta when  he discovers a secret scrapbook she has   made which contains extensive newspaper  clippings chronicling Ben’s career. Oliver   reluctantly shows the scrapbook to Charles  and shares his growing concerns. It turns out,   Loretta is actually Dickie’s biological mother,  who kept tabs on him and Ben throughout their   lives. Loretta auditioned for Oliver’s play to be  closer to her son, Dickie, and his brother, Ben. Meanwhile, Charles begins suffering from anxiety  due to now having to perform a musical number in   the reworked Death Rattle and the fear that  his new relationship with the makeup artist,   Joy, is moving too quickly. Charles  is comforted by his longtime friend   and stunt double, Sazz, though Joy  does eventually break up with him. Charles and Oliver finally agree  to work with Mabel on the case,   and the trio most strongly suspect Dickie,  though Loretta refuses to believe that her   son is the culprit. To protect Dickie,  Loretta confesses to Ben’s murder and   is arrested. This causes Oliver to have  a heart attack, but after he recovers,   he becomes determined to find Ben’s true killer  and clear both Dickie and Loretta’s names. The Arconian podcast trio discover that  Jonathan was actually just receiving   anti-anxiety medication from Ben’s doctor, and  that it was actually Ben himself who wrote “pig”   on his dressing room mirror with his makeup artist  Joy’s lipstick after breaking his diet and eating   a cookie. And after Howard reassembles a shredded  negative review of Ben’s performance from Death   Rattle’s opening night, the trio realize that  the play’s producer, Donna, had poisoned Ben to   stop the bad press and protect the burgeoning  career of her producing partner son, Cliff. Charles, Oliver, and Mabel trick  Donna into confessing to poisoning   Ben, while Cliff guiltily confesses to pushing  Ben down the elevator shaft. In the end,   the mother and son are arrested, as Oliver’s  new musical opens to rave reviews. Loretta and   Dickie are finally reunited as mother and son,  and travel to Los Angeles together for work.   As everyone celebrates another case solved and  the huge success of Death Rattle the musical,   Sazz arrives and asks to speak with Charles.  But as Sazz enters Charles’ apartment,   she is shot by a mystery killer, who  was seemingly trying to target Charles.