‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 2 Ending: 3 Tricks That Hid the Actual Killer
The Hulu series Only Murders in the Building revealed its killer in the season 2 finale. If they kept you guessing until the ending, that means their tricks worked. Co-creator John Hoffman and the actor who played the killer revealed three ways the show hid their identity.
[Warning: This article contains spoilers for Only Murders in the Building Season 2.]
Hoffman and actor Adina Verson were guests on the Only Murders in the Pod podcast on Aug. 24, the day after the Only Murders in the Building Season 2 finale aired. Now that Verson’s character, Poppy, was revealed as the killer, they shared how the show threw viewers off her scent.
Poppy actor Adina Verson wasn’t always the sneezing figure in the passageway
After Bunny (Jayne Houdyshell) was killed, the masked killer fled into secret passageways between apartments. Verson portrayed the masked Poppy in one of those flashbacks, sneezing as a clue. However, other doubles were used to so fans who paused the Only Murders in the Building Season 2 episode wouldn’t be sure it was her.
“After that shot, with the lighting, they had me in leggings under the suit and you could see my legs,” Verson said on Only Murders in the Pod. “I’ve got skinny legs and they were like, ‘That’s weird.’ Then they put on men’s Carhartt pants under it so you couldn’t see it. They could see my boobs and they were like, ‘Hunch more.’ After that they were like, ‘Let’s just get a body double.’ Sometimes the body double was a man and sometimes it was a woman. I think it was for the best.”
The body doubles helped even more when they filmed the scene where the killer begs Bunny for the painting in the diner.
“Thinking of in the diner scene, there’s people who watch when you’re filming on location, fans or paparazzi,” Verson said. “If people were like, ‘Why was Bunny having a scene with Poppy?’ [it could give it away.]”
‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 2 didn’t credit Adina Verson in this episode
Verson also had to be a team player in the episodes where the killer remained mysterious. She worked in episode 4, but never appeared visible on screen. Technically, she was entitled to a credit, but Hoffman asked her to go without it so it wouldn’t give away the season 2 ending.
“That was episode 4 and she should be credited for being in that episode,” Hoffman said. “So God love her, I had to talk to her and say, ‘Can we not have you credited?’ [Verson said,] ‘Oh my God, no, of course, are you crazy? Don’t give it away with a dumb thing like that.’ It was a dance of that. There were enough people on message boards who were looking and wondering. Cara Delevingne wasn’t in that episode so they were thinking that’s Alice who was in that episode,but that was a different contract negotiation.”
‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 2 gave Poppy her own episodes before the ending to misdirect sleuth fans
In the writing of Only Murders in the Building Season 2, Hoffman centered some episodes around Poppy, narrating her past as Becky Butler. Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short), and Mabel (Selina Gomez) talk to Poppy about her boss, Cinda Canning (Tina Fey), who is another red herring suspect.
“Many times by giving her an episode where she was the narrator and the perspective and give her a story that points to what could help to motivate her to do a thing like this,” Hoffman said. “But also what makes us feel for her and make us imagine it could go either way. She’s either going to turn on the person who really did it or she’s going to dive deeper in trying to get herself outside of the situation in a way that saves her ass. So that all felt structurally interesting but ultimately we were really excited by pulling the threads together in the finale.”
