Diksha Sundriyal
Hulu’s ‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 4 brings to a conclusion the murder investigation of Sazz Pataki as the whole truth about her final days comes to light. The penultimate episode ends with the revelation that her protege named Rex, the stuntman who burned off Ron Howard’s eyelids and had been hounding Sazz since he lost his career as a stuntman, is none other than Marshall Pope, the screenwriters of the movie based on Charles, Mabel and Oliver’s first case. The final episode, ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding,’ begins at a very delicate point for the trio, but the ending is even more shocking. SPOILERS AHEAD
Marshall Reveals the Truth About Jan’s Death
When Charles and Oliver find out Rex’s identity from Ron Howard, Mabel is with Marshall, completely unaware of the truth behind his actions. Eventually, she finds the script, which is credited to Sazz, and puts a few pieces together. By the time, Charles and Oliver arrive in the former’s apartment, wondering why Mabel hasn’t replied to their text about Marshall, the guy is already holding her captive. He sends them a text, telling them not to call the cops or he will kill Mabel. While Mabel borrows more time by telling Marshall that she will help him with the rewrites, Charles realizes that the killer, Marshall, shot Sazz and then used the ledge space outside the windows to travel from Dudenoff’s apartment to Charles’ to dispose of the body. This means that he never needed a second person to help him. It also made sense that he would be able to walk across the ledge easily because he was a stuntman, which means he was physically fit to do it.
Scared to lose, Mabel, Charles, and Oliver go to Vince Fish’s apartment, which is right next to Dudenoff’s, and walk across the ledge while Vince and Rudy distract Marshall at the door. Once they are in the apartment, they overpower Marshall, forcing him to confess everything. He reveals that he had been trying and failing to make it as a writer in Hollywood when he met Sazz, who was kind to him even when he messed up with Ron Howard. When he gave Sazz to read his script, she gave him hers, hoping to get an opinion. By that time, she hadn’t told anyone about it, so Marshall decided to use it to his advantage. He copied the script and sent it to Hollywood executives. He hadn’t expected much from it and only thought that it would at least get him an agent. But then Bev Melon liked it, and the movie directed by the Brothers sisters was greenlit, which is also when Sazz found out what Marshall had done.
Sazz confronted Marshall at her LA apartment, telling him that she is going to New York to get Charles’ blessing on the script, following which she will out Marshall as a fraud. Seeing a window of opportunity and being aware of Dudenoff’s empty apartment from the backstory about the Westies mentioned in the script, Marshall used it to shoot Sazz when she was in Charles’ apartment. But when he realized she wasn’t quite dead, he walked the ledge to enter Charles’ place. He asked a dying Sazz where her original script was, but her final words to him were that her “number one” would catch him. And she was right.
Marshall Meets an End Similar to His Victim
While Marshall has confessed, it doesn’t mean he is ready to give up. While the trio tries to hold him at gunpoint, he is quicker and more agile and turns the situation in his favor. With a gun in his hand, he decides to kill the trio, believing that they are the only ones who know the truth so far. For a moment, it looks like they are done for, but then, a gunshot rings through the window, and Marshall falls down. He has been shot in the back, and it looks like the shot came from Charles’ apartment, and the shooter is none other than Jan.
It turns out that Jan never really left Charles’ apartment. She’d been living in the walls all this time, using the secret passageways to get around and hear everything while the trio solved the case. She was waiting for them to find the identity of Sazz’s killer so she could kill that person with her own hands. She would have preferred to be face-to-face with the killer to see the light snuff out of their eyes, but circumstances forced her to adopt the same method that the killer had used to kill Sazz. Glad that she has avenged her lover, Jan leaves in handcuffs, back to the prison, which she’d escaped at the beginning of the season.
Once Sazz’s case is resolved, the trio focuses on Oliver and Loretta’s wedding. While they were still trying to figure out how to save Mabel from Marshall, Loretta told Oliver that the production of her TV show was moving to New Zealand, which meant she would have to move there for a couple of months. Charles doesn’t think twice before telling her that he will move to New Zealand with her, and she doesn’t need to worry about anything. At the wedding, however, Loretta says that she doesn’t want to rip Charles away from his life in the Arconia, so it would be better if she goes to New Zealand alone. This doesn’t affect their relationship in anyway, as it already had been rather unconventional. The couple part ways amicably the next day as Loretta leaves for another country. While it is difficult for them both not to be able to have more time together after the wedding, it turns out to be a good decision when another dead body is found in the Arconia.
Who is Nicky “The Neck” Caccimelio? Who Killed Lester?
Keeping with the tradition of every season, this season of ‘Only Murders in the Building’ also ends with another mystery knocking at the trio’s doorstep in Arconia. Following the wedding, Charles and Mabel are approached by a woman named Sofia, who tells them about the disappearance of her husband, Nicky Caccimelio. This is the same person whose disappearance was talked about in the previous episode in a news report, which Mabel sees on a TV in the hospital while visiting Glenn Stubbins.
For now, all we know is that Nicky “The Neck” Caccimelio, aka the Dry-Cleannig King of Brooklyn, has mysteriously disappeared. Not much information is given about him, but the background shows “Clean Up Crew Cleaners” at work, which seems somewhat suspicious. Sofia tells Charles and Mabel that the police believe her husband is dead, but she is convinced otherwise. She wants the Arconia trio on the case. Interestingly, when they mention that they don’t cases outside of the building, Sofia says that her husband’s disappearance has everything to do with the building. Charles and Mabel are not convinced, but something happens the next day, which might force them to rethink.
After Oliver bids goodbye to his bride, he walks with Charles and Mabel, reminiscing the success of yet another case and glad that another body hasn’t dropped. But he turns out to have spoken too soon when they find a dead body in the fountain, and it turns out to be the doorman, Lester. The mystery of his death is left to be solved in the next season, but it is clear that it is somehow related to the disappearance of Nicky Caccimelio. Interestingly, in one scene in the first season of the series, we see Lester delivering someone’s dry cleaning. He’d also been a rather obscure character so far, and his past is shrouded in mystery, apart from the fact that he is a Juilliard graduate and has done some off-Broadway work with Tracy Letts, who was also his rival. How he connects to Caccimelio and his dry-cleaning company remains to be seen.
Read More: OMITB: Is Concussions a Real Stuntmans’ Bar in New York?
