TV Recap: “Only Murders in the Building” Closes Season 4 with a Joyous Celebration

Who killed Sazz Pataki? Season 4 of Only Murders in the Building has led us to this moment, the exciting season finale. At the end of the previous episode, it seemed that the screenwriter did it, but is that really the case? This show loves to give us false clues. Find out the real killer in the season finale, and get a hint at what’s to come in Season 5.

Episode 10: “My Best Friend's Wedding” – Written by John Hoffman

Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch) has somewhat of a last word regarding her death as the narrator of the Season 4 finale. In a behind-the-scenes flashback from an episode of the Brazzos reboot, we see Sazz tap-in for Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin) to perform a stunt falling off a building. After landing on a mat, the director (Ade Otukoya) gives her a thumbs up. As Sazz grabs her own ice back and sits on a stool to ice her sore neck, she watches Charles being fawned over by a team of people. He tries to check on Sazz, but she let’s him know that she understands he’s too busy. As she sits, thinking about how a movie requires 100 people to work together to tell a story, she looks at the writer in the chair. They seem to have it easy.

Sazz’s narration continues as she talks about finding a hero for your own story. We see her at her apartment, sitting at an old typewriter, drafting a script inspired by her hero’s new podcast, Only Murders in the Building. “Happy endings are for movies,” Sazz’s narration concludes. “Life can have very different plans.”

In the present, Charles and Oliver Putnam (Martin Short) get to Charles’ apartment, worried that Mabel hasn’t texted them back. They feel like their close to solving the case, and Charles points out that the trend is everytime they solve one murder, another one happens. Oliver is worried that it could be his fiance, Loretta, who is on her way to the building for their wedding. Mabel finally responds to Charles’ warning. Or actually, somebody else responds from her phone: “Call the police or come anywhere near her door and I’ll kill her.” Charles and Oliver rush to the window, looking across the courtyard to the West Tower. They see Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) looking scared but brave as “Marshall P. Pope” (Jin Ha) holds her at gunpoint, closing the blinds.

Mabel accuses the screenwriter of killing Sazz for her script. He’s ready to kill her, but she buys herself some time, pointing out some of the terrible writing in his revised script. She sits on the bed to start making revisions. He vows to kill her when the script is done.

Charles realizes that Sazz’s killer could’ve been just one person, if they were agile enough to use the ledge to get from the East Tower to the West Tower. He realizes that Marshall threatened to kill Mabel if they go near her door, but he reasons that going to the window should be safer. Charles is ready to try to make it across on the narrow ledge, but Oliver suggests a somewhat shorter distance from Vince’s apartment nextdoor. On their way to the lobby, they pass the doorman, Lester (Teddy Coluca), who wants to talk. Oliver makes a joke about how Lester isn’t great at his job because he keeps letting murderer’s in the building. Lester tells Charles he got married in the courtyard, but Charles is too rushed to hear his story.

As the two walk across the courtyard to the West Tower, they find Oliver’s fiancé, Loretta Durkin (Meryl Streep), arriving. She hugs Oliver, telling him that she was just told her TV show is moving to New Zealand in 2 days. He’s in a rush, but he quickly promises to move there with her after the wedding.

Vince Fish (Richard Kind) is having an at-home exercise class from his new trainer, Rudy Thurber (Kumail Nanjiani), when Charles and Oliver knock on his door. They asks to use his window, filling the duo in on what’s happening next door. Charles steps out onto the ledge, prepared to make the vertigo-inducing narrow walk alone. He calls for his vision of Sazz to come “tap in,” but she isn’t the one who taps him on the shoulder – it’s Oliver. They treat the treacherous walk like a dance step. And as they get to Mabel’s window, they find that Vince and Rudy have pulled a “ding dong” on Marshall, asking for sugar through the door to distract him. Mabel opens the window and Charles and Oliver quietly climb in.

Charles grabs the Lady Longoria 19-in-1 multitool and uses it to surprise Marshall, shooting a nail at him. Oliver dives for the gun, stealing it from the killer. They force Marshall to sit down and tell his story. He talks about his childhood trauma, growing up with a father who wanted his son to  be a hunter just like him. His father didn’t believe in his son’s dream of being a writer, and when Rex (Marshall’s real name) left for Hollywood, his father gave him a six-month deadline.

After the Ron Howard incident, Sazz reasurred her protégé that he could now persue his real dream, writing. She even offered to read his latest draft. One night, Marshall visited Sazz’s apartment and she shared that he inspired her to write something. “You’re the only one who knows,” she told him, handing him the one and only copy of her screenplay. He read it in front of her, furious that on her first attempt, she wrote something better than he had in all his years of trying. “It’s not very good,” he lied to her, offering to make a copy and take it home to make some corrections. Instead, he put his name on it… well, not his name, but the name he came up with for himself – Marshall P. Pope. He sent the script around Hollywood in hopes of attracting an agent. Instead, it ended up in the hands of Bev Melon (Molly Shannon), who wanted to fast track the film into production.

Not long after, Sazz invited Rex over to her place for a drink. When he got there, he discovered that she had a copy of her own script, now with Marshall’s name on it. She told him that his betrayal hurt more than any physical injury she ever endured on set. She hadn’t yet told Charles about it, and she wanted to get his approval before sending it anywhere. On top of that, she was going to use the money from the screenplay to fund her real dream, her trampoline stunt park. “I don’t know what I’ll do if this gets out,” Rex said to Sazz. She told him she was flying to New York City the next day to see Charles’ Broadway debut, and then she was going to tell him what happened. Rex begged her not to, apologizing.

That’s when Rex remembered a detail from Sazz’s script he cut out of the draft he sent around, a seemingly redundant bit about an empty apartment across from Charles’ with a passcode inspired by the card game Oh Hell. He went there with his sniper rifle, waiting. He missed his first opportunity to murder Sazz when she entered the building with a case of beer. But luck was on his side when, not long after, she appeared in a window directly across from him. He didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. But then she didn’t die right away. Fearing she might live, he used his stunt skills to get across to the East Tower via the ledge, entering Charles’ apartment through the window. He saw her message in blood on the floor – “Tap in.” Rex asked Sazz where the copy of her script with her name on it is. “He’s gonna get you,” she responded. Rex asked who. Using her last breaths, through labored breathing, she said, “My number 1.”

As Rex finishes his confession, Charles is so angry about the way Rex disposed of his dear friend like she was nothing. He presses a button on the Lady Longoria, but is frustrated when all he does is turn on the personal massager inside it. Rex uses the moment of confusion to leap out of the chair at Oliver, getting the gun from him. He turns with his back to the windows, ready to fire at the trio. “Welcome to the end of your movie,” he declares, about to kill Charles, Oliver, and Mabel. But then there’s a “pop” sound. Rex’s face goes white as he falls forward. There’s a bullet hole in his black. He’s bleeding. The trio rush to the window to look across, seeing Jan Bellows (Amy Ryan) smiling at them from Charles apartment with a rifle in her hand.

Charles’ apartment is buzzing with police activity and Jan has been handcuffed when they get back to the East Tower. Jan reveals that she never left Charles’ apartment living in his closet and The Arconia’s secret passageways this whole time. She knew Charles would solve Sazz’s murder, and she wanted to be there to get revenge against the person to killer her girlfriend. Charles says goodbye as Jan is taken away. “It’s not goodbye, Charles; It never is with us,” she tells him. Oliver turns to Charles and Mabel, saying he has an out-of-the-box idea.

The trio visit the set of the Only Murders in the Building movie. Zach Galifianakis (Himself), Eugene Levy (Himself), and Eva Longoria (Herself) finish a scene directed by Trina (Catherine Cohen) and Tawny Brothers (Siena Werber) in which they discuss how they don’t know how many more podcasts they can do if they keep their podcast limited to just murders in the building. Oliver once again fears that they are dooming Loretta. As the actors finish their scene, the trio congratulate them. We see the script they’re using, one marked as being written by Sazz Pataki.

Bev Melon approaches Mabel, wanting to meet next week to discuss her idea about buttons for a potential film, which the algorithm likes. Mabel suggests instead a story about a stuntwoman who dedicated her life to protecting her friend, and Bev passes. Mabel says she doesn’t think she’s meant for the film industry.

Charles walks over to the empty folding chairs, the one marked “Writer” being empty. And now, the vision of Sazz he wanted to see with him on the ledge appears. “Sorry you’re missing all this,” he tells her. “Yeah, would’ve been nice,” she agrees. He motions for her to sit in the writer’s chair, and she does, but she points to the stunt person’s stool and confesses that she misses it. “You did good,” she congratulates him. Charles and Sazz tip their hats to each other. Mabel and Oliver watch Charles tip his hat and talk to the air, but they aren’t judging him for it. They seem to understand what he’s doing.

It’s at last time for the wedding of Oliver Puttnam and Loretta Durkin. The procession begins with Howard Morris (Michael Cyril Creighton) pushing Oliver’s dog Winnie in a stroller, the rings tied to Winnie’s vest. Mabel and Charles walk Oliver down the aisle. Loretta appears, slightly delayed, escorted by her son, Dickie Glenroy (Jeremy Shamos), and Oliver’s son, Will Putnam (Ryan Broussard).

Loretta Durkin is now Loretta Durkin-Putnam as she dances with her husband, congratulating him on catching a murdered and dancing the merengue in one afternoon. She notices Charles and Mabel across the way, and she tells her husband that she can’t imagine him being away from them. She says they have their happy ending, and that nothing about their relationship has been conventional. The two decide that they need to talk about their next steps as a married couple.

Charles and Mabel enter the West Tower’s lobby, ready to head back upstairs. Charles reveals that he kept Sazz’s ashes with him during the wedding, and that he plans to spread them at her trampoline park. The elevator opens and an elegant woman steps out, Sofia Caccimelio (Téa Leonii), with Uma Heller (Jackie Hoffman) cutting in to take the elevator up to her floor. Sofia introduces herself to Mabel and Charles, saying she was looking for them and couldn’t find the doorman. She wants them to investigate the death of her husband, Nicky Caccimelio (the dry cleaning king of Brooklyn from the news story in the previous epiosde). Charles and Mabel remind Sofia that they only work on cases that happened in The Arconia. ‘What happened to Nicky has everything to do with this building,” she assures them, offering to pay well if they can do what the police couldn’t. They still decline her offer. She hands Charles a card, asking them to call if they change her mind.

The next morning, Oliver helps his wife Loretta get loaded into a black SUV to send her to New Zealand. He will visit her in a few weeks, but they’ve agreed to be long distance while she films her series. They say their “I love you”’s, blowing kisses as Loretta leaves.

Oliver returns to the courtyard where Charles and Mabel record their podcast, wrapping  up the season. Wedding decorations still adorn the courtyard, and the scene is very tranquil. Oliver joins his friends as they walk by the fountain, which only adds to the calming atmosphere… until Mabel notices the color of the water… blood red. They collectively gasp as the camera pans back. There’s a dead body in the fountain. Lester, the doorman.

Only Murders in the Building will return for Season 5 in 2025.

Songs Featured in This Episode: