This article contains spoilers for the third season finale of Only Murders In The Building.
Boy, does that building have a lot of murders! And lucky for us, too, because it means Only Murders In The Building will continue. The third-season finale featured a fakeout in which, momentarily, it seemed that Charles (Steve Martin) was the Arconia’s latest victim—but it actually turned out to be his stunt double, Sazz (Jane Lynch). In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, showrunner John Hoffman teased what’s to come with the mystery of who was trying to assassinate Charles now that the show has officially been renewed.
Hoffman, of course, wouldn’t spoil exactly what Sazz was trying to spell out in blood in her final moments (“We thought to keep it oblique as possible for now, just to keep our options open”). However, he did point to the fact that Sazz had been trying to communicate something to Charles all season: “She’s hinting to him in episode five that she’s picking up some ham radio chatter, certainly, right when she arrives in the finale, she’s saying, ‘Can I grab you for a few minutes? It’s a little sensitive.’ So, there’s something on her mind and something she may know but to be found out.”
Lynch apparently loved that her character was chosen to be the latest murder victim, partly because OMITB’s victims usually get even more fleshed out after they kick the bucket. It’s an opportunity to plumb Charles and Sazz’s connection, and “a good opportunity to go deeper with Sazz and find out what the whole big life and everything else was with her and the world of stunt doubling,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman said he’d love to have Meryl Streep and Jesse Williams back as Loretta and Tobert respectively, but cited Selena Gomez, Martin Short, and Steve Martin as “holding the center of the show in the way they do and nobody else could do.” Their chemistry is “lightning in a bottle that you just don’t walk away from,” he said, adding that he “could imagine going a bit longer” with the show even after the fourth season.
But first thing’s first: the fourth season is about “the idea of what you create is a thing you put out to the world, and sometimes you can’t be prepared for the repercussions of what potentially the world does with your thing, and how they feel about it,” Hoffman teased of the murder mystery. “That’s a challenging line to walk, and sometimes you have to face it in that way. So, the podcast and everything else that’s happened, and what it all means, and what it could have been meaning all along. That’s a really interesting world to look at for these three who stepped in that way.” You can read the full interview here.