Photo: Patrick Harbron/Disney
Now that we know it was Nonna who stole the finger from Charles’s apartment, the question is why? After flashing back to catch glimpses of Nicky and Sofia’s love story, and their subsequent split over her infidelity, Nonna explains that back when they first brought the digit to Staten Island, she could tell that Sofia recognized it. Biblically. Without getting too graphic, it clearly belonged to Sofia’s lover. But why did Lester think slipping it to Oliver via his shrimp would be helpful? Why couldn’t he have just texted them the name of the killer, they wonder. “Because then there’d be no season,” Oliver says. I love when they use the podcast to break the fourth wall.
Back in the building, we hear that after today’s press conference, they’re officially demolishing the Arconia. But until then, the trio is going to try and figure out who in the gaming parlor that night could have been having an affair with Sofia and thus hiding a missing finger — even considering suspects with seemingly intact hands, just in case a fake finger is involved. They summon all of the billionaires back to the gaming parlor to investigate, leaning into this season’s mafia theme by calling in Nicky’s sons to be their muscle. “New mob, meet old mob,” they tell their billionaire suspects, before Mabel whips out the meat cleaver to get them talking. The first surprise comes when Jay reveals he actually still has his “missing finger” — and that the bandages were just a ruse to try and snag the loose one. Camila and Bash’s digits are also all accounted for, but then we get another surprise in the form of a new late-breaking suspect: Mayor Tillman.
As he enters, Mabel looks at her phone and something clicks. “I know who killed Lester,” she says, before slamming the cleaver down on the mayor’s hand, chopping off what was luckily a fake finger. “He did.” And what gave it away was the text she just got from Howard telling her that the mayor was on his way down, in which “Beau Tillman” autocorrected to “Beautiful.” When Lester sent his final text, “It’s beautiful,” it wasn’t about the fountain — he was trying to identify the killer.
Cue another flashback, this one to the night at the center of this season’s mystery, which would have been a typical night in the parlor, but Nicky had just found out that Sofia was having an affair with the mayor. So naturally, when Tillman asks for a finger of whiskey, Nicky decides to instead attack him with a meat cleaver. Lester jumps in to stop him with the elevator crank, finally standing up to his abusive boss, and in the shuffle Nicky ends up falling onto the meat cleaver and dying.
Lester grabs the mayoral finger and bolts, and when he’s cornered by Tillman, he refuses to give it up, no matter how much they’ll give him for it — he’s done being bought. Unfortunately, he also thinks he’s somewhat safe surrounded by the building’s security cameras, but when Tillman tells him Bash can wipe that footage, the true danger he faces sinks in, so he grabs the bird whistle. “My friends are gonna catch you,” Lester tells him, marking one of the sweetest murder scenes to ever grace a screen. Tillman cruelly tells him that he doesn’t have friends, he has tenants — at which point I want to see him lose even more fingers. As Lester fumbles for his bird whistle in the fountain to activate the camera, he gets thrown back in this tussle with Tillman and is killed.
The trio has finally solved the mystery, but just as they do so, Tillman has his army of crooked cops flood the gaming parlor and seize the three podcasters. They collect and destroy their phones, and thus Tillman’s confession, and chain up the trio in the stairwell so that they’ll be killed in the fast-approaching demolition. “The final murders in the building,” the mayor ominously says.
So how will they find their way out of this one? Naturally, Charles attempts to shimmy to the top of the pole he’s chained to so he can grab a laundry hanger to pick the locks. He does so successfully, if improbably, and slides down the pole in an ode to Bridget Jones at that fire station (or maybe that’s just top of mind because Renée Zellweger is here).
As that shimmying is happening, upstairs, the building’s garbage aficionado finds and brings the trio’s destroyed phones to Howard and Thē, who hatch a plan of their own. Thē announces to the casino press conference that she’ll be performing her hit song down in the gaming parlor, bringing the whole crowd down there just in time for the trio to burst into the room to announce Tillman’s guilt. Their phones might have been destroyed, but luckily, they had a secret recording device hidden in the roulette wheel to capture the confession.
It looks like, even though they were able to catch the killer, they weren’t able to save the building. But then again, this is a television show — one that is specifically set in this building — so let’s be real: The Arconia will be okay. Sure enough, Jay approaches Mabel, reattesting that he really does want to be different/better than his billionaire cohorts, and to prove it, he’s turning them (and himself) in for their role in these crimes. That means Camila is going away, so her casino is no more, and the Arconia will live to see another season.
As this season’s story finally wraps up, we’re reminded that at the end of every season, next year’s mystery begins. It’s already been reported that the show plans to head to London for season six, so it’s no surprise when the trio sits down to listen to Cinda Canning’s new podcast about a U.K.-set crime. That means Tina Fey is back — yay! — to recount the story of “the girl with the curls,” a young woman who is the prime suspect in the murder of a royal who Cinda thinks is innocent — so much so that she sends her to America for safety. We then see (presumably) this girl from behind, running toward the Arconia before collapsing at the gate. As the trio arrive, there’s some debate over what counts as “in the building,” and with one last gasp, the girl’s hand crosses the threshold, thus qualifying for an investigation. While the red curly hair initially made me wonder if we were getting a Natasha Lyonne cameo, when our victim turned over, I gasped. It’s none other than Cinda Canning herself in disguise — meaning Tina Fey is back, but she’s dead. Only Murders giveth, and Only Murders taketh away.
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