Only Murders In The Building Season 3, Episode 8 Recap

#1: Dickie

Poor dang Dickie. On top of being Ben’s beleaguered assistant, he’s also been working alongside his birth mother for months and didn’t realize it.

Dickie’s conversation with Loretta at the episode’s end leads her to take the fall for him, adding another data point to our suspect board. Dickie confesses to Loretta that he had an opening night fight with Ben, who told Dickie that he was dead to him. Most concerningly, Dickie says he felt free after Ben’s initial death and “couldn’t take it anymore” after Ben returned to life.

But did Dickie kill Ben? We already know that Dickie’s relationship with Ben was conflicted, but we wouldn’t call his motive clear-cut. On the one hand, Dickie’s lost ownership over the CoBro franchise and his anger at Ben points towards “he did it.” On the other hand, his defensive outbursts about Ben and last week’s reveal that he bought Ben’s bloody hanky suggest he’s still working through some things.

With only two more episodes left, we’ll bring back our “We’re doing a Murder on the Orient Express!” theory and start slotting in characters for a formal prediction. Dickie didn’t do the murder, but he sold out Ben to the killer (killers?) to get him out of the picture.

#2: Loretta

Loretta’s big reveal gives us a likely answer to her feud with Ben Glenroy. Maybe it wasn’t simply two stars feuding for center stage—perhaps Loretta was ready to go nuclear once she saw how badly Ben was treating Dickie.

But Loretta’s maternal instincts throw a wrench into her spot on our suspect board. Her confession at the episode’s end kept Dickie from going to the police, but we don’t know whether or not it was a false one.

And now that Loretta’s scrapbook is off the board, it’s a little more challenging to figure out a clear motive on her end. As Loretta mentions, Death Rattle would be her big Broadway break after years in the audition trenches—murdering the leading man wouldn’t be a great way to keep the show running. Loretta holds her spot on our big board for another week, but we reserve the right to bump her down depending on next week’s episode.

#3: K.T.’s office

We finally got an answer to last week’s Chekhov’s paper shredder: Howard realizes someone was shredding documents in K.T.’s locked office during opening night. Howard’s also working to piece together that document from the shredder’s trash bin.

Next to the paper shredder, Mabel also finds an opened box of rat poison that could’ve been used during Ben’s initial poisoning attempt.

#4: Kimber

As Detective Williams points out, Ben’s poisoning timeline means that the killer had to be someone in the Death Rattle cast or crew. (Sorry to everyone who had Tobert in their betting pool.)

Kimber keeps her spot as our cast murderer front-runner for another week, but as with Loretta, consider this blurb to be written in pencil until further notice.

#5: Donna

But what if the killer’s not a cast member? In the interest of going full Reddit and throwing out one left-field suspect, Donna (Linda Emond) pointedly tells Loretta that mothers would “do anything” to ensure their kids are okay.

What if Donna was talking about protecting Cliff? Death Rattle would be Cliff’s first production as a producer, but what if Linda—knowing she had a turkey on her hands—secretly insured the show and had Ben killed to stop its run without losing any more money? (Before she ran into Loretta in the theater’s bathroom, she was also hurling her guts out in a stall.)