‘Only Murders in the Building’ Showrunner on Season 1’s Bloody Cliffhanger, ‘Loose Ends’ to Be Tied in Season 2

(Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Season 1 finale of Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building.”)

Hulu’s true-crime-obsessed comedy “Only Murders in the Building” closed its first season Tuesday with the resolution to one murder mystery and the launch of a whole new investigation — into the show’s protagonists themselves.

In the final moments of the finale, “Only Murders” goes back to the scene of the very first crime it showed you in its series premiere, where a blood-covered Mabel (Selena Gomez) was sitting over the bloodied body of a tie-dye hoodie-wearing victim, telling Oliver (Martin Short) and Charles (Steve Martin) as they walked into her apartment that this mess was “not what you think.”

With more blanks filled in this time around, we know the body is actually that of the Arconia’s lead board member, Bunny (Jayne Houdyshell), who, apparently, was already in Mabel’s apartment when she was stabbed to death with Mabel’s knitting needle. “I just opened the door and she stumbled in on me,” Mabel told Oliver and Charles when they entered her appartment and found her covered in Bunny’s blood.

We also know that Mabel is telling the truth here, in terms of the order of events, at least, according to “Only Murders in the Building” co-creator John Hoffman. “Yes, that is correct,” Hoffman told TheWrap. “I will give a little bit of a– not a spoiler actually, an aide, a peek at Season 2, to understand what happened. Bunny was in Mabel’s apartment when she walked in.”

Of course we didn’t get time to hear anything else from Mabel on the matter, as the police burst into the room and promptly arrested Mabel, Charles and Oliver and perp walked them right out the front door of the Arconia, turning the Season 1 finale of “Only Murders in the Building” into “Only Murderers in the Building.” (But don’t tell Cinda Canning we used that, or she will try to ruin us.) And we didn’t get to find out who texted Charles and Oliver to get out of the building or who called the police in the first place or…

“There are some loose ends, beyond the return to the opening moment of the season,” Hoffman, who created “Only Murders in the Building” with Steve Martin, told us. “There are some loose ends. If you go back through the season, there are moments that we have not declared were Jan’s (Amy Ryan) doing.” (You know, aside from Tim Kono’s murder, and the attempted murder of Charles in the finale.)

But the “Only Murders in the Building” writers’ room for Season 2, which was picked up soon after the show debuted over the summer, has already been broken — and they, of course, know what’s going to happen ahead of production starting “very soon.”

“I would say there’s a lot to be addressed in Season 2, vis-à-vis the end of Season 1, absolutely,” Hoffman said. “How quickly we pick up [in the timeline after the finale], I’ll leave as a question, but I there’s a lot to be answered, and we dive in that way.”

Hoffman says “big, fantastic things” are being planned for “Only Murders in the Building” Season 2.

“I cannot wait. We’re starting shooting very soon. I believe in a little over a month,” the showrunner told us during this Oct. 5 interview ahead of Tuesday’s finale. “I’m very excited. There is a lot more to uncover and new things to investigate and explore.”

With the popularity of “Only Murders in the Building” only growing after its first season, Hoffman anticipates even more paparazzi problems ahead for the Hulu comedy, which had to contend with photographers snapping a shot of Gomez covered in blood that we now know the story of — but then was considered a potential spoiler about the first season’s plot. However, Hoffman says that particular Selena image was actually a lesser concern to him than other possible leaks.

“That was something I felt pretty assured about. There were other things I was concerned about because we had a lot of paparazzi around us when we were shooting. So there was a one-shot of Jan getting arrested, and there were paparazzi around for that, too. And so we had to have other people arrested and other people carried out in handcuffs to be captured, as well, that night, so as to hide Jan. It was a big night.”

Read more from our interview with Hoffman about the “Only Murders in the Building” Season 1 finale here.