Hold onto your magnifying glasses, folks, because Only Murders in the Building is back for its fifth season, and it’s already serving up drama hotter than a New York City summer. The premiere episodes, which landed on Tuesday, September 9, didn’t waste a second. They plunged our favorite amateur sleuths into a fresh batch of bizarre mysteries. We saw some unexpected touching at a funeral, a body moved in broad daylight, and an autopsy that was anything but typical.
The season kicked off at a frantic pace. Mabel (Selena Gomez), Oliver (Martin Short), and Charles (Steve Martin) dove headfirst into solving the murder of Lester (Teddy Coluca). They suspected the Arconia’s doorman had become the latest victim in their building. The trio first went looking for clues after finding a stray thumb in the shrimp cocktail at Oliver’s wedding to Loretta (Meryl Streep). This led to an awkward moment where Charles felt up Lester’s body in the coffin, just to make sure it wasn’t the doorman who lost a digit.
Later, our crime-solving crew connected Lester to the missing Nicky Caccimelio (Bobby Cannavale). Nicky was the person SofÃa Caccimelio (Téa Leoni) asked them to find in the fourth season finale. This trail led them to the Caccimelio family home, which they jokingly called "The Godfather house." There, they quickly learned that Nicky wasn’t actually tied to the mafia, unless you count his kids’ podcast about organized crime.
The search for answers pulled Mabel and Charles into a secret casino hidden right inside the Arconia. Nicky was involved with this gambling spot, and Lester had been recruited to let people in at night. Meanwhile, Oliver ventured to a dry cleaner connected to the Arconia. That’s where he stumbled upon Nicky’s body.
Episode two peeled back the layers of Lester’s past. Viewers learned how he came to work at the Arconia, why he gave up his acting dreams, and how he eventually met Nicky. Then, the story leaped back to the present. Oliver was seen moving Nicky’s body from the dry cleaner straight into the Arconia.
This set the stage for Mabel, Charles, and Oliver to live out their shared fantasy: performing a late-night autopsy. They confirmed Nicky had been murdered, but they were no closer to figuring out why. Adding to the confusion, Lester’s death was suddenly ruled an accident.
The crime-solving friends gathered clues about when the next casino meeting would take place. This led them to eavesdrop on a conversation between wealthy members Jay Pflug (Logan Lerman), Camila White (Renée Zellweger), and Bash Steeg (Christoph Waltz). It’s worth noting that Jay is missing a finger. This could be nothing, or it could be a vital piece of the puzzle for both murders.
Before the season’s launch, co-creator John Hoffman shared some thoughts on what to expect. "Our beloved doorman holds many secrets from the tenants in our buildings," Hoffman told Decider in October 2024. He explained that exploring different aspects of the doorman’s life was fascinating. "The nature of the doorman in a pre-war apartment building in a 2025 New York City – that was very interesting to look at in terms of what our show has always been about, which is the meeting of the classic and the modern."
Hoffman added that season five truly dives into a New York that feels like it’s straight out of today’s headlines. "We’re going to tackle a modern take on power in New York. We’ll ask questions like: ‘What happens with power in New York in relation to the classic respect and protocols that have always existed in these kinds of buildings?’" He said this includes the role of a doorman, the idea of respect, and how modern technology fits into it all. "So many of these themes will be present in the coming season," he concluded. "We’ll explore them in a comedic and fun way, but also, hopefully, with an incisive look we haven’t shown before."
New episodes of Only Murders in the Building drop on Tuesdays on Hulu.