Only Murders In the Building is one of the contents for those who like to decipher “whodunit” or the old “who killed”. And its third season premieres on the 8th, free of competition and with the certainty that it will become – finally – a fever. Because you deserve it for years! Cult status, even a popular cult following, is little for this smart and funny series fronted by the (unlikely) trio of Martin Short, Steve Martin, and Selena Gomez.

The hint of what would entertain us in the third season was given in the last episode of the second when Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short), and Mabel (Selena Gomez) – the main suspects in the second crime in less than a year in Arconia – managed to unmask the real culprits. We had fast-forwarded a year, exiting the building and checking out the Broadway premiere of the play Oliver directed when the lead actor, Ben Glenroy (Paul Rudd), drops dead onstage. A new murder!

The second season of OMITB was uneven compared to its premiere, but it is a natural complex of many contents and that is why the third is so important to define its longevity. After all, the neighbors who created a successful podcast, who play with the worldwide consumption fever of true crime can easily repeat itself. One of the restrictions was precisely having a luxury building in Manhattan as the continuous scene of deaths. And that the three, in one way or another, are almost always among the suspects. At the end of the day, I made the mea culpa because I thought the second season was great, but I admit that expectations increased.

We’ve seen who killed Tim Kono, who killed Bunny Folger, and now the question is, who didn’t want to kill Ben Glenroy?

So we’re going to meet suspects and our podcasters in a Broadway theater where we left them a year ago and see how they solve yet another crime. If in the first season, we had a Sting living himself and among the suspicious neighbors, in the second, big names like Amy Schumer and Shirley MacLaine, to name a few, have already popped up. Now, in addition to a Paul Rudd (dead), the list of possible killers will have Meryl Streep among them, in a participation that rekindles her partnership with Steve Martin, after It’s Complicated.

Anyone who has seen the first two episodes is full of praise, claiming that it ‘compensates’ for the second hiccup in particular because it left the Arconia behind and explores Broadway as a backdrop, but finds intelligent ways to keep the building that is in the title of the series as part of the story. As we saw in the last episode, Ben Glenroy was detestable and therefore the ideal murder victim, full of enemies. For those who are not from the New York theatrical environment, the series will be fun, but those who know about the theatrical scene will have (according to experts) a brilliantly ironic content.

We must prepare for the trio to have their conflicts with this challenge. Mabel is about to leave Arconia and likes to resume the podcast, but Oliver focuses more on changing the play – Death Ratlle – to a musical (hello?) after the tragedy, but a way to make money, and Charles continues with his girlfriend, the makeup artist Joy (Andrea Martin), with whom he tries to solve his phobias. There will be romance for everyone, or potentially at least. Mabel becomes involved with a documentary filmmaker (Jesse Williams) who is also into true crime, and Oliver becomes involved with Loretta (Meryl Streep), a woman who has waited her entire life to be discovered on an audition and who doesn’t want death to derail her dream.

The great detail of this season of Only Murders in the Building is that it flirts heavily with the musical, something that made Yasper’s The Afterparty episode my favorite of recent years. Here’s one more detail: the song is signed by Justin Paul and Benj Pasek, from La La Land and has partnerships with Sara Bareilles, among others. We’ll have songs that will stay in our minds (again, hard to beat Yasper) but it’s guaranteed to revitalize a series that deserves all the praise it’s been collecting. And yes, it’s time to restart the theories!

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