The following story contains spoilers for Only Murders in the Building season 4, episode 9, “Escape From Planet Klongo.”
WE CAN SAY with certainty that season 4 of Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building has been far and away its most self-aware, meta season yet. While earlier seasons included celebrities playing themselves (think Sting in season 1, the unfortunate Amy Schumer cameo in season 2, and Matthew Broderick in season 3), season 4 has leaned all the way into it. Not only have Eugene Levy, Eva Longoria, and Zach Galifianakis played heightened versions of themselves as the actors portraying Charles, Mabel, and Oliver in the in-universe Only Murders in the Building film, but the characters (typically Oliver) have referred to things happening “this season,” where they mean the season of their podcast, but we all know they really mean this season of the show.
It’s a basic, straightforward comedic storytelling device that nonetheless works like gangbusters when you have the right talent deploying it. And as all of us watching Only Murders In The Building know, Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez are absolutely the right talent! The mystery of season 4 has stemmed on our wonderful trio investigating the death of Charles’s old friend and stunt double Sazz Patacki (Jane Lynch), and while the events of the season have largely surrounded the production of the Only Murders film, we haven’t gotten a ton of answers just yet.
In fact, one of the season’s big leads—the “Westies” storyline, which brought Richard Kind and Kumail Nanjiani, among others, into the cast—proved to ultimately be a red herring, although it was a nice story that centered on a great guest role for Griffin Dunne as Professor Milton Dudenoff.
But still: who killed Sazz? As the season went on, it felt like we had very few actual hints or answers. That is, until we learned about Sazz’s stuntperson protege, who would seemingly have a motive, after a disastrous outing on a previous film. And, as the trio learned, no one knew what really happened except for Sazz, the protege, and the film’s director: Ron Howard.
Ron Howard? Ron Howard! Only Murders has a number of funny jokes in the rest of the episode about Oliver’s past history with the Happy Days star and A Beautiful Mind director, including him calling him “Ron-Ron” and Ron, in return, calling him “Ollie.” But in typical Oliver fashion, of course, we’re led to believe that he’s just being delusional. So, as a result, Oliver, Mabel, and Charles try to get onto the set of his supposedly very personal $200 million dollar passion project. And it doesn’t really go anywhere!
But by the end of the episode, after a very touching moment of friendship between Oliver and Charles at a Chinese restaurant (in tribute to Oliver’s Ron-Ron story), Ron Howard actually shows up. Oliver had mentioned throughout the episode that he wanted an A-lister to be involved with his bachelor party (which this lunch is proving to be), and there he was.
Howard shows up and is instantly funny. Obviously, the man has experience in television comedies; The Andy Griffith Show was a staple of the ’60s, he led Happy Days, and he even provided the always funny deadpan narration of Arrested Development. A self-deprecating cameo as himself makes perfect sense (and the moment where Ron gets mad at Charles for mentioning “the fishing hole,” a reference to Andy Griffith, is golden).
But outside of bringing one of the episode’s great running jokes full circle (and providing a major A-list guest star), Ron Howard’s appearance also helps to nearly solve the season’s great mystery. As it turns out, Sazz’s protege on the movie set wasn’t, in fact, Glen Stubbins (Paul Rudd), as the end of episode 8 had led us to believe. In fact, it was a clumsy, blonde-haired man named Rex Bailey—who, after succeeding in a stunt that Sazz coached him through, didn’t follow proper safety protocols, and induced a major accident on the set of Ron Howard’s movie, costing Ron his eyebrows, and costing Rex, presumably, his aspiring screenwriting career.
Who else is an aspiring screenwriter? Oh, yes, that’s right: Marshall P. Pope (Jin Ha), who has suddenly returned to the show this week, and is currently with Mabel. Marshall actually smothered Glen Stubbins to death earlier in the episode with a pillow (RIP Glen, kind of funny how Paul Rudd has now died in this show three times), because earlier in the season Glen recognized him and asked about his beard; he knew the truth. And one more layer of truth for you: Mabel, now with Marshall, found a version of his Only Murders in the Building script… but it says it was written by Sazz Patacki.
Of course, this is Only Murders in the Building, and there’s still a full episode left. This show almost always makes us think one thing at the end of one episode, only to totally make it mean something else at the very beginning of the next one. But considering we’ve literally seen Marshall murder Glen, it’s going to be pretty hard to explain that one away.
For now, while we wait for next week’s season 4 finale, we’re just going to have to be thankful that Ron Howard helped point us to at least some of the answers we’ve been waiting for all season long.
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