The tenth and final episode of Only Murders in the Building 5, the fifth season of the brilliant crime comedy series starring Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez, was released on Disney+ on Tuesday 28 October. As always, the season ended with the solution to the mystery that kept the protagonists busy in previous episodes, and then with a new murder that will be investigated in the already confirmed season 6, which will partly take place in London.
But Arconia, fortunately, is safe: or rather, he was saved by our trio of podcaster-detectives right in the season finale. To understand how, and above all to understand who killed the doorman Lester (Teddy Coluca) and the mafia-gambler-washerman Nicky Caccimelio played by Bobby Cannavale (which, remember, is probably the distortion made by the American customs officers of the surname Coccimiglio), here is our explanation-summary of the ending of OMitB 5. Obviously, from here on out it is full of every possible and imaginable spoiler.
The spoiler-free review of Only Murders in the Building 5
Who killed Nicky in Only Murders 5?
Let’s start from this point, which had already been understood in the finale of the penultimate episode of the season, when the robot doorman LESTR had shown the images of the moment in which the doorman Lester said he wanted to rebel once and for all against that mafioso who was about to transform Arconia into a large casino, complicit in Camila’s (Renée Zellweger) evil plan.
And so in the reconstruction of the tragic events of that evening, when Oliver was celebrating his wedding and blood was flowing in the basement of the building, what happened was that Lester went down to the secret gaming room and hit Nicky with the old elevator handle, from there a fight arose which ended when Nicky fell on top of Lester who was holding the cleaver used shortly before by Nicky himself, and on impact Nicky was hit in the abdomen and died from the wound inflicted on him unintentionally by Lester.
Whose severed finger ended up in Oliver’s shrimp?
So let’s take a step back: what was that cleaver doing in the clandestine casino under the Arconia? It was brought there by Nicky, who had discovered the affair between his wife Sofia (Tea Leoni) and the mayor of New York, Beau Tillman (Keegan-Michael Key). So, that night, when the mayor went down to the gambling den to, as usual, get filled with money by Camila, Pflug (Logan Lerman) and Bash (Christoph Waltz) to turn a blind eye to their dirty deals, Nicky loses his temper and hits Beau in the hand, who loses his finger…
Who killed Lester? And how?
The mayor got a fake finger thanks to his billionaire friends, but he never stopped looking for his missing real finger. Indeed, to have the three billionaires look for him, promising permission to build a casino to whoever brought it to him. This is because, between the cleaver blow inflicted by Nicky and his subsequent death by Lester’s cleaver hand, a bit of confusion arose in the room. Which Lester took advantage of, putting the finger in his pocket, escaped Beau, handed it to Randall (Jermaine Fowler) to hide in Oliver’s prawns so the three would have a clue to investigate, and escaped into the palace garden. Here he was joined by Beau, who pushed him into the fountain causing him to hit his head; shortly before his death Lester found a way to circumvent the tampering with the palace cameras, operated by a Bash company, by whistling his bird call and causing Vince’s (Richard Kind) bird watching cameras to turn on.
How did they find out that Mayor Beau was responsible for Lester’s death?
Mabel, Charles and Oliver had decided to put the three billionaires against the wall, and had rushed into the underground gambling den when there were only a few minutes left before the start of work to demolish the Arconia and build the casino “won” by Camila. But they weren’t achieving much, at least until Mabel gets a text from Howard (Michael Cyril Creighton), who was supposed to stop anyone from coming downstairs while the three grilled the other three.
Instead the mayor comes downstairs, and Howard warns Mabel that Beau Tillman is coming. But the phone’s autocorrect twice transforms “It’s Beau Tillman” into “It’s beautiful.” This text reminded Mabel of the message that Lester had sent to his wife Lorraine (Dianne Wiest) while running away from the mayor: the proofreader had also changed Beau Tillman to beautiful, and Mabel understands everything.
How do Charles Mabel and Oliver save Arconia?
The three billionaires, indeed especially Camila, have no particular interest in the truth emerging, and so the mayor has an easy time telling the corrupt policemen who work with him to take the three detectives and lock them up in the basement, so that they die crushed by the rubble in the imminent demolition of the building.
Howard at a certain point realizes that his friends are in trouble, and with the help of THE (Beanie Feldstein) they overcome the checks of the corrupt policemen and take all the journalists who came to the press conference to present the casino into the basement. Thanks to Charles’ magician skills, the three free themselves from their chains and appear before everyone to accuse the mayor. He still tries to deny everything, counting on the fact that there is no proof of his guilt, but Mabel Oliver and Charles take out the turned on recorder from the secret drawer under the roulette wheel on which the mayor’s confession is recorded, who is then arrested together with the corrupt agents.
But it’s still not enough to save the building, and so Pflug carries out the gesture of kindness that Mabel has been asking of him for some time, and confesses to the police his and his billionaire colleagues’ complicity in hiding Nicky’s body to help Beau. Even the billionaires are then arrested and Arconia is fortunately saved. This case is also closed.
The epilogue of OMitB 5 the new case for next season: the dead woman is Cinda Canning
Of course, our friends can’t talk about the case on their podcast, since they are under contract with the three billionaires who bought the production company to silence them. And so, while Lorraine moves to Arconia thanks to the money received from Sofia (the result of the investment in the theatre), who finally goes to Positano where she is reached by the news of her elderly mother’s death, Mabel Oliver and Charles console themselves by listening to the latest podcast of their mentor-rival-friend Cinda Canning (Tina Fey), a case that comes from London.
But while Cinda’s voice explains the case, we see a woman who responds to the description given by the podcaster wandering around in pain near the Arconia, and then collapses in front of the gate just as Charles Mabel and Oliver are leaving.
Howard points out that technically that person didn’t die in the building so it doesn’t really fit the title of the podcast (and the TV series), but in that moment the woman has a last gasp of life with which she extends her arm to touch the gate. And the woman, who dies at that moment, is Cinda Canning herself, who evidently used her last energies to get to the building of her three colleagues and be so sure that the three of them will take care of her case. And they solve it, next season.
