Diksha Sundriyal
With the Westies in the clear and the case of Dudenoff’s death closed, Charles, Mabel, and Oliver turn their attention back to Sazz and her murder in the penultimate episode of Hulu’s ‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 4. The previous episode ended with Helga, one of the Westies with whom they’d communicated once on the ham radio and brought back in the hopes of exposing the Westies, revealing that she did, after all, talk to Sazz, who mentioned her protege, a stuntman who had turned into a bother. All fingers point towards Glenn Stubbins, who is already recovering from a bullet wound, but there is much more to the story, and only one person has the answer: Ron Howard! SPOILERS AHEAD
Project Ronkonkoma and the Case of the Mysterious Stuntman
Helga reveals that Sazz told her about a young stuntman she took under her wing on a movie titled ‘Project Ronkonkoma.’ The movie has Glenn Stubbins listed as a stuntman, but it turns out he wasn’t the stuntman Sazz was talking about. Because Glenn is still unconscious and unable to talk, the Arconia podcasters aren’t able to clear the air with him. They do, however, talk to the barman from Concussions, who tells them that the only other person who knows of the mysterious stuntman’s identity is the director of the unfinished film, and that is Ron Howard.
Through Bev Melon, Mabel discovers that Ron Howard is in New York, filming another movie. Charles, Mabel, and Oliver decide to visit him on the set, with Oliver claiming that he is friends with Ron-Ron and can get them the meeting they want. The plan doesn’t turn out as expected, as the trio is forced to audition as background actors. At the same time, Oliver is thrilled about his upcoming wedding with Loretta, but more than that, he is concerned about the bachelor party Charles is to throw for him. Before they can get on set and come face to face with Ron Howard, Mabel receives a call from the hospital about Glenn waking up.
Mabel rushes to the hospital, but by the time she gets there, it turns out that the murderer got to him first. The nurse reveals that she only called two people, Mabel and Sazz because the latter was listed as an emergency contact. She also confirms that a man picked up Sazz’s phone, which leaves no doubt in Mabel’s mind about the mysterious stuntman being the culprit. With their only lead gone and another person dead, a deject Mabel goes back home, only to find scriptwriter Marshall by her door. He wants her to help him rewrite the lines to make them feel more Mabel-y, which is what Mabel promised to Bev Melon. Despite her not being in the mood, Marshall forces his way into the apartment, and a few moments later, Mabel makes a shocking discovery.
Who was Sazz’s Protege?
While Charles, Mabel, and Oliver chase down leads to solve her murder, we get a flashback of Sazz from two years ago. This is when Project Ronkonkoma was in its early days and Sazz was called to get a team of stuntmen for the project. When she hits a man by mistake while reversing her car, she notices that he flipped pretty well. She sees potential in him and gets him to work on Project Ronkonkoma. The stunt with the fireworks works out well, but then something bad happens. While it plays out from Sazz’s perspective, we never see her protege’s face or what happened to him in the end. Not until Ron Howard comes into the picture and recalls the entire incident.
Charles and Oliver’s effort to meet Ron Howard while working as a background actor in his film doesn’t work out as expected. Instead of acting as they are told, they start fighting about the bachelor party, which means very different things to the men. At the end of the day, Charles talks to Oliver about how he feels like he is losing Oliver to Loretta and how the bachelor party was a way for him to celebrate their friendship rather than Charles’ upcoming wedding. Oliver understands his emotions, and the two make up. Later, Charles takes Oliver to a restaurant to celebrate the bachelor party, which is when Ron Howard shows up. Turns out, he really is friends with Oliver, but that’s not the most shocking thing he reveals. It turns out that the stuntman Sazz had been talking about was none other than Marshall.
Going back to the flashback, we discover that it was Marshall that Sazz hit with her car and offered a job as a stuntman. As a budding writer, Marshall saw it as an opportunity to get on a set. He did the job well and used the opportunity to give his script to Ron Howard. However, the timing of it turned out pretty bad because he went up to the director immediately after getting hosed down by a fire extinguisher. It turns out that the fire wasn’t extinguished completely, and the moment he handed the script to Ron Howard, the fire sparked again and burned Ron Howard’s eyebrows off. Since then, the director has carried his picture, as he does of all the people he never wants to work with again. This is the picture he shows to Charles and Oliver, which leads them to the shocking discovery. They text Mabel at the same time, not realizing that she is with Marshall at that exact moment, having made another shocking discovery.
Is Marshall the Murderer? Why did He Kill Sazz?
It is confirmed now that Marshall is indeed the murderer. We see him killing Glenn Stubbins, who had previously recognized him in an earlier episode, which makes sense now because it was Glenn who replaced Marshall after the fire fiasco with Ron Howard. Now that his identity has been revealed, the bigger question is why he killed Sazz, the one person who had tried to help him get his foot in the door of the very industry he wanted to crack into. Going back to the moment when we met Marshall for the first time this season, the focus is on how he had struggled to produce a good script until he came across the podcast and decided to write about it. Turns out, it was never his script to begin with.
With Marshall in her apartment, Mabel feels she has no choice but to help him with the dialogue. But it’s been a bad day, so she feels she should get a beer. Luckily, the six-pack of Olde Belgium Lager that Sazz had brought on the night of her murder is still there. Interestingly, inside it, Mabel finds a script, which turns out to be the script of the film that is being made with Bev Melon and the Brothers and sisters; only the credit on the script goes to Sazz, not Marshall. When Mabel confronts Marshall about the script, his eyes go to her phone, where she receives a text from Charles and Oliver informing her about Marshall being the murderer. While this is where the episode leaves us, it does give us a hint of the motive.
Most likely, Marshall killed Sazz to steal her script and pass it off as his own, considering that his own scripts weren’t selling. This also explains why Sazz had been looking into their first case and tried to clear up all the loopholes. She wanted to solve it properly because she was writing about it. When Marshall saw the script, he saw how great it was. In a moment of weakness, he decided that he wanted the script for himself, even if it meant killing Sazz. Still, it leaves an even more important question. By now, we know that two people were involved in the murder. If one of them is Marshall, who is the other murderer?
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