ONLY MURDERS IN A BUILDING, Season 3. Does our favorite trio still have “it”?
Have you already seen the premiere episodes of the new season of Only Murders in a Building? The third installment of the production has been available on the Disney+ platform for a few days now. Oliver, Mabel, and Charles are once again playing detectives and asking who killed Ben Glenroy, who met his demise in the finale of the second season during Oliver’s play premiere.
My first time
When I first started watching Only Murders in a Building, I approached the series out of curiosity, wondering if the combination of two cinema and comedy legends – Steve Martin and Martin Short – with former Disney Channel star Selena Gomez could bring something good. I honestly thought that nothing good could come out of it. However, I found myself hooked and ended up watching the entire first season in one evening.
Only Murders in a Building captivated me with its humor, wit, and pacing, and the combination of Gomez with Martin and Short turned out to be exactly what I needed. The characters were flesh and blood, unafraid to break stereotypes, reaching for their dreams, and not caring whether the public would accept a friendship between people with such a large age difference. So, I eagerly awaited the premiere of the second season. When it arrived and delivered another plot twist in the final episode, I was literally dying of curiosity to see how this storyline would unfold in the next part of the series.
The only thing I was afraid of when starting the new season was repetitiveness. I was concerned that the creators might have exhausted the possibilities of the crime comedy genre. Did that happen? Here are my impressions from watching the premiere episodes of the third season of Only Murders in a Building.
Love from the very first sight... or not?
Only Murders in a Building is one of those productions that, unlike the typical Netflix model of releasing an entire series at once, publishes one episode per week. I consider this a great solution, especially for a crime mystery like Only Murders in a Building as it allows the viewer to independently concoct theories about who the killer might be. On the day of the new season’s premiere, Disney+ released its first two episodes, which were action-packed enough to allow viewers to start forming their initial theories about who and why killed Ben Glenroy. Let’s remind ourselves that Ben Glenroy is the actor playing the lead role in Oliver’s Broadway play, who meets his demise on stage during the premiere of the play in the final scene of Season 2. The question remains whether the series is worth further watching.
This time, it definitely wasn’t love at first sight for me, even though the queen of Hollywood, Meryl Streep, joined the cast. While the initial episodes possess all the elements that made me fall in love with the show, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen it all before. My concern about the series becoming repetitive somewhat obscured the true picture. Only Murders in a Building returns in a completely new form, even slightly altering the genre in which it was created.
Who killed Ben Glenroy?
Only Murders in a Building is no longer just true crime or a crime comedy, but also a musical. This provides the cast with new opportunities to present the story, and the setting itself – New York – makes it even more quintessentially… well New York. After all, there might not be a more New York location than one of the city’s most famous places – Broadway.
How do Oliver, Mabel, and Charles fare on Broadway? Oliver sees this as his grand comeback and a second chance to make it on Broadway. Charles feels like an actor again, something he missed so much. Mabel struggles with the encroaching adulthood. Perhaps that’s why she eagerly identifies the death of Ben Glenroy on the murder scene, wanting to create a podcast as a means of escape from reality. And this brings us to Ben Glenroy.
Ben Glenroy is a corpse unlike the victims from previous seasons. Though like his predecessors, few liked him, unlike them, he directly points out his potential killers. When he confronts his own sins in front of the cast of Oliver’s play – and he has quite a few – we realize practically each of them has a reason to kill him! It’s this very scene that made me realize the third installment of Only Murders in a Building is something entirely different, and answering the question “Who killed Ben Glenroy?” won’t be as easy. After all, our self-proclaimed trio of detectives must venture beyond the walls of Arconia. Will they manage to solve the mystery?
The subsequent episodes of Only Murders in a Building will be available every Tuesday on Disney+. Below you can watch the trailer for this season.
Martyna Janasik