Only Murders in the Building Season 5’s three-episode premiere continues the cozy, murder mystery’s evolution as Charles, Oliver, and Mabel enter new chapters with varying degrees of success. The show seamlessly falls back into its charm with how Only Murders in the Building Season 5, Episode 1, “Nail in the Coffin,” leads into the title sequence. A severed thumb, previously thought to be a shrimp, landing on the right key on the piano? Genius!
Refreshingly, the latest investigation’s twists come less from a revolving door of guest stars (so far) and more from that at the Arconia. Where Only Murders in the Building Season 4 expands to Los Angeles, this season world-builds by positioning the titular building’s doorman at the story’s center. Lester keeps everything and everyone moving so that these three episodes can begin to ask what the Arconia is like without its heart.
MORE: Selena Gomez To Guest Star In Season 2 Of ‘Wizards Beyond Waverly Place’
Remembering Lester
This show knows that Charles, Oliver, and Mabel aren’t the most reliable narrators – Charles calls them “flawed heroes.” These episodes tease how that perspective influences their memories of Lester. For example, Oliver wants everyone to know that he cares (fear of failure and all). Nevertheless, he is one of three who don’t remember that Lester says, “After you.” In turn, Only Murders in the Building Season 5, Episode 2, “After You,” binds the three-episode premiere with flashbacks through Lester’s eyes. Well-timed vignettes into the Arconia’s history — known and not — are intriguing. Emory Cohen’s convincing performance as a younger Lester makes the episode a success.
“After You” gives the audience more information about Lester than Charles, Oliver, and Mabel know. Cameos from Jayne Houdyshell as Bunny, Jane Lynch as Sazz, and Nathan Lane as Teddy work for the season. They also feel nostalgic for the series. Plus, Lester comforting Howard after his mother’s death and Lester knowing Mabel for nearly her entire life are moving. With a few more scenes, the same could be true for Lester and Lorraine’s love story. Maybe that’s to come if Dianne Wiest, hopefully, makes more appearances as Lorraine.
Similarly, Beanie Feldstein’s Althea or THĒ doesn’t land — yet. When Julian Cihi reappears as Tim Kono, Only Murders in the Building doesn’t reunite Mabel with her Hardy Boys. It introduces THĒ, who is meant to make Mabel feel unsteady in her progress. However, THĒ’s reappearance comes too soon after Mabel’s confidence boost for THĒ to be successful from this viewer’s perspective.
MORE: Selena Gomez Talks About What Steve Martin & Martin Short Have Taught Her
Discovering Nicky
Alternatively, these episodes creatively feature Bobby Cannavale’s Nicky Caccimelio, who is dead by the end of the first episode. Meeting him through everyone’s eyes but his own builds anticipation around an episode that can do the opposite. For now, though, Charles’ insecurities playing out through a reanimated Nicky is a silly yet effective. It compounds on Charles talking to Sazz last season. Perhaps surprisingly, there’s also plenty of physical comedy around Nicky and Lester. Steve Martin’s Charles does anything he can think of so that Charles can count Lester’s fingers. Everything that Martin Short does when moving Nicky’s body off of Oliver and to Charles’ apartment is hilarious.
From using kitchen utensils on a corpse to the Chinese food inspiring their ideas, Charles, Oliver, and Mabel doing Nicky’s autopsy on Charles’s kitchen island is comedic gold. Steven Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez fire on all cylinders. Martin and Short are too good in Charles and Oliver’s aside about cocaine. Gomez doesn’t miss a beat in Mabel’s (loving) needling of Oliver from the other room. This trio’s chemistry never misses! Mostly, the new procedure on the first victim that the trio didn’t know when Nicky was alive, as well as the growing context around Lester’s death, proves that Only Murders in the Building still has new ground to cover in murder, podcasting, and the Arconia.
MORE: Television Critics Association Announces TCA Awards Winners
Meeting the New Mob — CEOs
The show’s world, like the increasingly impersonal real one, moves away from Lester’s compassionate efforts that give sentiment to something as mechanical as an elevator crank. These three episodes mourn a man who makes the many feel elite and face a world where it’s increasingly more likely for the elite few to gain at the expense of others. Even with Charles, Oliver, and Mabel at the beginning of their double-murder investigation, this show has something to say.
So, Only Murders in the Building Season 5, Episode 3, “Rigor,” does what that show does best. It combines hilarity and sincerity; the charming and chilling. Charles’s commentary about how the world is changing plays over the three billionaires’ supervillain-esque entrances. Of whom, Logan Lerman’s Jay Pflug appears to be the one missing a shrimp-like, if you ask Oliver, finger.
Also, “Nail in the Coffin” introduces Keegan-Michael Key’s mayor, who is so desperate for votes that he turns a memorial service into a campaign stop. However, that interaction doesn’t feel as insidious as it does a representation of how politics often play out. It’s another thing entirely for Charles to call Renée Zelwegger’s Camila White “the human incarnation of a Nancy Meyers kitchen.” (It’s Complicated stars Meryl Streep and Steve Martin!) Those people and details may become suspects and clues, or red herrings for them. They also orbit around Season 5’s themes that aren’t so different from those in Only Murder in the Building’s other seasons — human connection still matters.
MORE: What’s New and Leaving Hulu in September 2025
—
What did you think of Only Murders in the Building Season 5’s three-episode premiere? Let us know in the comments below!
New episodes of Only Murders in the Building Season 5 stream on Tuesdays on Hulu.
