Although Hulu’s Only Murders In The Building is good at many things—rapid-fire dialogue, depicting people being tremendously bad at actually solving murders, jokes where Martin Short makes fun of Steve Martin for being 5 whole years older than him—one thing it’s not great about is keeping track of its characters’ various romantic partners. Good news for plucky up-and-comer Meryl Streep, then, as Variety confirms that she’ll officially be back for the show’s fourth season, continuing in her role as Short’s recent love interest, Loretta.
Thus will Streep/Loretta avoid what we’ve come to think of as “The Cara Delevingne Hole,” i.e., that black abyss into which Only Murders shoves the numerous love interests that the series’ podcast-hosting leads tend to attract each season. (At least, the non-Amy Ryan-played ones.) The hole mostly consists of characters (briefly) attached to Selena Gomez’s Mabel at this point (shout-out to Aaron Dominguez, who has hopefully made a nice life for himself in The Hole), although Martin’s character Charles has shoved at least one character in there, too, in the form of Andrea Martin’s Joy.
Given that she’s played by Meryl Streep, the only real question about whether Only Murders would bring Loretta back was probably whether Streep could find the time to film; she’s listed as “recurring” in Variety’s story, so it sounds like she had a good enough time with season 3 to film at least a few scenes. The real question, now, is whether Mabel’s current love interest, Tobert, will also be coming back, after departing for Los Angeles at the end of Season 3; we imagine Jesse Williams sitting in his nice home somewhere, eyeing The Hole with a mixture of dread and anticipation. Is it getting closer? Is it calling to him? He knows what all Only Murders love interests know, deep in their hearts: Cara Delevingne comes for us all, eventually.