There’s a running gag in Only Murders in the Building: kill Paul Rudd, then bring him back. It’s not just a narrative device — it’s a wink at the audience, a showrunner’s indulgence that has turned Rudd’s character(s) into one of the series’ most meta and beloved jokes.

Rudd first appeared as Ben Glenroy, the Broadway star who collapsed from poisoning in the Season 2 finale — only to be revived just long enough to meet an even more dramatic end, shoved down an elevator shaft in Season 3. That double death could have been the end of the story, but Only Murders never resists a good resurrection.

Season 4 brought him back again, this time as Glen Stubbins, Glenroy’s Irish stunt double — a wonderfully absurd twist that doubled down on the joke. Naturally, Stubbins also met a violent end, killed by Marshall P. Pope. By then, it had become almost a game: just how many times could the series kill Paul Rudd and still make it funny?

Series co-creator John Hoffman has never been shy about his love for this running bit. In interviews, he played coy about Rudd’s future on the show, but he always hinted that nothing was truly off the table. And Season 5 proved him right — delivering Rudd’s most unexpected “return” yet.

In Episode 4, Charles and Mabel come back from their morning coffee run to find the Arconia forever changed: beloved doorman Lester has been replaced by a Logic-Engineered Secure Tenant Robot — or, as it’s known, L.E.S.T.R. At first, it seems like just another satirical comment on technology creeping into New York life. But listen closely to the robotic voice and something feels… familiar.

It was Hoffman who later confirmed the secret: yes, L.E.S.T.R. is voiced by Paul Rudd. This wasn’t part of the original plan. The team experimented with several different voice versions during production, only deciding very late in the season to bring Rudd back in this unexpected way. “When we were shooting Episode 9, I called Paul and said, ‘We have nothing else to give you, but we have a thought…,’” Hoffman recalled. “And the best man in the world said, ‘When do I come and do that?’”

The result is a hauntingly funny cameo: Rudd is there, but invisible, turned into the ghostly mechanical voice guiding Arconia residents. It’s an Easter egg for the fans who have followed his short but chaotic history on the show. Hoffman couldn’t stop praising Rudd’s delivery: “He gives reads that don’t make sense for a human being,” he said, laughing — exactly what makes L.E.S.T.R. so unsettlingly hilarious.

This creative choice underlines one of the central ideas of Only Murders: nothing truly stays dead at the Arconia — not the mysteries, not the jokes, and certainly not Paul Rudd. His presence has become part of the show’s DNA: he is the body that always returns, the voice that refuses to be silenced.

And if Hoffman has his way, this won’t be the last we hear of him. “Dramatically, I can’t take anything off the table,” the showrunner said, teasing that Paul Rudd might keep haunting — or delighting — the Arconia in seasons to come.