Here's Our Updated List of 'Only Murders in the Building' Season 2 Suspects
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Hulu's comedy whodunnit Only Murders in the Building is finally back, and season 2's murder investigation is moving quickly. After Arconia board president Bunny's cliffhanger death, Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Sheen), and Mabel (Selena Gomez) are persons of interest, with the two-part premiere revealing that they're being framed for the crime. The trio now has to clear their names while unravelling the inner workings and mysteries of the historic building.
As the season goes on, we've met several new New Yorkers involved in Bunny's life, from her board president successor Nina Lin to her favorite diner waiter Ivan (Ariel Shafir). There are so many suspects that it's getting hard to keep track of who's probably innocent and who's still under suspicion. Read on to see our updated list of suspects, as we follow along with the winding investigation.
Nina Lin (Christine Ko)
Co-op board politics wait for no man. Bunny already has a replacement, as hedge fund manager Nina introduces herself and announces her presidency during her predecessor's wake. Howard doesn't have nice words for the expectant mother, with him telling the trio, "If you thought Bunny was a bitch, wait 'til you get a load of this one."
In the beginning of episode 3, Nina and Bunny's relationship is fond, with the courtyard scene showing a mentor who's knows everything about the Arconia, and her mentee who will be adept in filling her shoes. The camaraderie breaks down at the night's retirement party/board meeting, when Bunny decides not to step down and Nina reveals that she doesn't want to preserve the historical building as it is. She wants to lead a modernized, "monetized" Arconia, and Bunny says she won't let the "power-hungry, baby-bumpy bitch" get away with it.
Following their big fight, the expectant mother now has a powerful motive for getting rid of Bunny, depending on how much money she plans to wring out of the Arconia. Oliver and Mabel even overhears Nina's husband telling her, "You know as well as I do she had to go," while the gang are searching the passageways in episode 4. However, soon after, she seems to truly miss her former mentor as she goes into labor, saying that she wishes Bunny were there for the birth of her child, and demanding that Charles finds the murderer.
I personally still have Nina as a question mark on my suspect board, mostly because there's still a lot to learn about this character. She'll remain high on this list, partly as punishment for her plans to put a hideous blimp-like "space pod" on top of the building.
Alice Banks (Cara Delvingne)
New character Alice is an artist who reaches out to the podcaster amid "Bloody Mabel's" fifteen minutes of infamy. She invites Mabel to a swanky gallery opening and they hit it off pretty quickly, with Mabel hoping to establish herself as an artist and start a life away from death. Alice's DM seems completely out of the blue, like Mabel's painting could've popped up in her Explore page, but it's some pretty shady timing.
It takes six episodes for us to find out what is up with Mabel's mysterious new love interest, and unfortunately it's nothing good. Unlike what Oliver guesses, Alice and Mabel's relationship isn't exactly "the Jan thing all over again," but it's still very creepy. We learn that the gallerist is hiding something major during Oliver's Son of Sam game in episode 5 (she was lying about her posh pedigree), but Alice didn't even know Bunny, and she's probably no murderer.
Instead, Alice has befriended Mabel to make a performance art piece about "Bloody Mabel," recreating the Arconia apartment in her gallery and incorporating personal stories from her childhood. When Mabel finds the production rehearsing, Alice even has Tim Kono and Zoe stand-ins, as she claims to be "looking at trauma through a fine-art lens." The scene is gruesome and devastating for Mabel, but hopefully this is the only damage that Alice will do this season.
Lucy (Zoe Colletti)
Okay, of everyone on this list, Lucy's probably the most innocent. In addition to revealing several important details of the crime (the passageways! the murder weapon!!), we get to see exactly what Charles' ex-stepdaughter was at the time of Bunny's murder. Surprisingly, she was hiding in the Arconia's passageways after ditching her mom's wedding, where she hears the crime itself (though she doesn't realize it at the time). She only hears the murderer sneeze, but the audience sees the killer (some details: above-average height, rather small feet, wearing glasses or maybe goggles).
As for that mentioned murder weapon, it turns out that the killer used the secret tunnels to steal Oliver's knife for the crime. We're still iffy on exactly why the criminal is framing the trio, but the elaborate cover-up directs us towards another, familiar suspect...
Teddy and Theo Dimas (Nathan Lane and James Caverly)
The Dimases are back! The newly ankle-monitored father-son duo (who weren't Tim Kono's murderers but were shady jewel smugglers) arrive back at the Arconia in episode 4, as Oliver meets Teddy in the elevator. In an expectedly tense conversation, the dip king says that he's going to "fuck" Oliver over someday, and that Teddy is also "angry." Oliver later spies on the duo as Teddy tells and "obsessing" Theo, "We can fix this, alright? You just have to trust me!"
The argument is actually over Theo getting his own lawyer, and from a show point, it's unlikely that Teddy killed Bunny. His threat toward Oliver was probably hinting at the major personal twist the director learned in episode 5: his handsome son Will (Ryan Broussard) might actually be the love child of Teddy and Oliver's late wife Roberta (Marie-Françoise Theodore). Judging by the spiral Oliver's descending into by episode 6, Teddy may be successful in fucking over the showman.
Howard Morris (Michael Cyril Creighton)
The Arconia's resident cat lover was a suspect to watch in the last murder, and there's something about his behavior where we can't entirely write him off for this crime either. He's been slightly ominous all season, from his over-eagerness to help the trio investigate to him also sticking to Uma like glue as she went to collect Bunny's painting. Then there's his admitted lie about his suspicious black eye. In episode 4, he drops the "playing hide and seek with his cat" story and blames his injury on Nina, saying that she might have "front-stabbed" Bunny after backstabbing her over the board presidency.
His own backstabbing of Tina happens when the expectant mother is the prime suspect, before she reveals her true (likely innocent) colors as she goes into labor. I'm sensing deflection in Howard's behavior, likely from some other crime or shadiness within his previous dealings with Bunny. Either way, he has a way to get into the deceased's apartment (from putting up the surprise retirement decorations) and it really does look like the murderer was wearing glasses. He can't be written off just yet.
Ivan (Ariel Shafir)
During Bunny's flashback episode we meet Ivan, her regular server at the local diner. The pair are expectedly friendly during the exchange, but Bunny also gives him a large amount of money, which he seems reluctant to take. We later get an explanation for the money when Oliver circles back to the diner and interviews Ivan. It turns out Bunny has been giving him tips that have grown more generous over the seven years they've known each other, with Ivan guessing that she was fond of him.
We know too little about Ivan to guess whether he had a motive (I'm saying no at this point), but he does have answers. As shown on the diner's security tapes, Bunny met with someone the day before she died. Whatever conversation they were having upset Bunny, with the board president leaving in a huff. The clip is too grainy to see who the murderer is, but they did grab a matchbook on the way out. A matchbook that they later dropped while fleeing Mabel's apartment.
Uma Heller (Jackie Hoffman)
Bunny's BFF seems to be busy taking care of the deceased's estate in the first two episodes, from appraising the million-dollar erotic painting to finding a home for her parrot, Mrs. Gambolini. At the wake for Arconia residents, the curmudgeon is still Bunny's passionate defender and thinks Charles, Oliver, and Mabel probably did it. If she's involved in the murder, that's a very impressive poker face, especially in front of Bunny's glamorous mother (played by screen legend Shirley MacLaine). Also, we didn't see an escalation during Bunny's last day that would turn Uma from friend to fatal foe.
Lester (Teddy Coluca)
Amateur sleuths know that the murder's probably who you least suspect (see: Jan), so we can't forget to check out the Arconia's trusty doorman. His relationship with Bunny seems typical for a long-time employee and his ball-busting boss. However, he probably has just as much dirt on all the bulding's resident as Bunny does, and he could be one of the few people who knew about the value of Bunny's painting. We'll see what he gets up to as the season goes on.
Speaking of the painting, the show gave another hint this week that the painting is heavily involved in the murder. During her walk with Uma, Bunny yells at someone on the phone to stop calling, after saying that she doesn't want to talk about the painting. The caller may be the person Bunny met at the diner the day before, whom she says isn't her friend. There's definitely a big secret behind that erotic art (besides Bunny maybe being Charles's half-sister.
Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez)
The biggest answer that we get in the season's first episode is that Mabel did not kill Bunny. Though she tells Detectives Williams (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) and Kreps (Michael Rapaport) that she can't recall what happened in her apartment, we see in flashbacks that Bunny was already bleeding with the needle sticking out of her chest when Mabel walked in. Both the needle and Bunny's painting have planted to frame our main trio for the murder.
Though the audience knows it wasn't Mabel, it's going to be hard for her, Charles, and Oliver to prove that to the cops. The detectives say there was a separate murder weapon, a knife, but it's now missing. Since Mabel found Bunny alive, the real murderer was in the apartment right before she got home. She could even have seen them, and hopefully by the end of the season she'll regain her memory of the incident and clear her name. For now, as Detective Kreps says, there's more holes in Mabel's story than the eight holes in the victim (yikes).
Unfortunately, the detectives can't travel back in time to see Bunny's final interactions with Mabel aren't antagonistic at all. Mabel compliments the elder as they get stuck in the elevator, saying that she regrets the damning "cranky old bitch" comment, and the whole trio are kind when Bunny thanks them for saving the building, even though they don't invite her in. Also, for anyone who was still doubting the stylish true-crime buff, episode 3 confirms that Bunny was stabbed in her apartment while Mabel, Charles, and Oliver were celebrating on the roof.
Oscar (Aaron Dominguez) and Jan (Amy Ryan)
These fan-favorite characters are unfortunately missing in action during the first two episodes. Jan has an excuse, seeing that she's in jail for killing Tim Kono. She was also arrested prior to Bunny's murder, so she couldn't have done it. Though she gets the spotlight from jail in episodes 5 and 6, that's more because Charles was seeking out the familiar, rather than Jan having any involvement in the new mystery.
As for Oscar, there's no hint of his involvement in the crime, and apparently he and Mabel are already over. She tells Oliver that though "the trauma bond is strong," their relationship only lasted the length of all the Tim Kono drama. Hopefully our Tie-Dye Guy is off living a chill life somewhere in the tri-state area.
Cinda Canning (Tina Fey) and Poppy White (Adina Verson)
The two-part premiere sets up the war of the true-crime podcasts, as Cinda follows through on her show covering Charles, Oliver, and Mabel as the most-likely killers. She and her assistant Poppy are digging through the trios' pasts using their format, while the hosts of "Only Murders" season 2 are focused on clearing their own names. In episode 6, we see that Cinda values compelling lies over the probably-boring truth, as she helps Jimmy Russo's turn a workplace accident into a "Bloody Mabel" tale. Cinda's "Only Murderers" podcast is a serious invasion of privacy, but not a crime.
We also learn more about Cinda's assistant Poppy in episode 6, even hearing her narration. Unlike her boss, she values the truth over entertainment, and the Jimmy Russo interview, combined with a snub from Cinda, prompts her to warn Mabel that Cinda is going after her. Though Poppy uses the phrase "where the bodies are buried," it's still unlikely that Cinda has crossed over from sketchy reporting to literal murder, but either way, she's a strong adversary as a rival podcaster.
Amy Schumer (Herself)
Previous tenant Sting has vacated the Arconia's penthouse, and the new celeb moving in is none other than Amy Schumer, who's a fan of the trio's podcast. The newfound fan of "murder...podcasts, murder podcasts" is even interested in adapting the show for the screen, and she quickly wins over showman Oliver. It's a fun role, but she's definitely more of a side plot than a suspect. Her quick run-in with the fake painting is probably the last of her involvement with the case. (If not, that would be a major twist!)
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