‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 2 Ending: How the Sneeze Almost Gave Away the Killer
One of the major clues in Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building Season 2 was the killer’s sneeze. Whoever killed Bunny (Jayne Houdyshell) escaped through the hidden passageways, and Charles (Steve Martin)’s stepdaughter Lucy (Zoe Colletti) heard the killer sneeze. That sneeze almost completely exposed the actor playing the killer before the Only Murders in the Building Season 2 ending.
[Warning: This article contains spoilers for Only Murders in the Building Season 2.]
Adina Verson was a guest on the Only Murders in the Pod podcast on Aug. 24, the day after the season finale aired. Verson played Poppy, assistant to the rival podcast Only Murderers in the Building host Cinda Canning (Tina Fey). Poppy was the killer who sneezed, but she worried she already gave away too much.
The crew knew who the killer was when they filmed this ‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 2 scene
Verson played the hooded figure Lucy hides from in the secret halls. Once Verson appeared on set, the crew figured out she was the killer.
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“I think I was originally supposed to do all of that but I only did episode 4 where I’m in the passageway and I sneeze,” Verson said on Only Murders in the Pod. “I put on this creepy outfit and walked down to the soundstage. Passing crew members I saw them all do double takes. You could hear the whispers, ‘Oh my God, it’s Poppy.’ So the crew all knew so that was really fun. Whenever I was on set after that, there was always a wink and it was fun to have that secret with them.”
Adina Verson couldn’t take credit for her ‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 2 sneeze
Technically, Verson was entitled to a credit for filming the sneezing scene. However, since Poppy doesn’t appear elsewhere in that episode, it would have given her away had they credited her. The producers of Only Murders in the Buliding tried to be cagey with Verson’s agents, too.
“That’s why the negotiations were taking so long,” Verson said. “When you have a certain contract with the union, you’re supposed to be credited a certain way. They kept going back and forth, my agents being like, ‘We’re going to pay her this much but we can’t credit her.’ They were like, ‘Why not?’ And finally, they were like, ‘Okay, we’ll tell you’.”
The sneeze was originally something even wilder
The sneeze ultimately gave away Poppy’s allergies. However, Verson revealed the first time she filmed her escape for Only Murders in the Building Season 2, she did something else.
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“Originally I was barking like a dog,” Verson said. “I think that they were originally going to have a part of Becky’s backstory that I had used that as self-defense when I was Becky. Something about barking, I was hiding and I would bark. There was something feral about me but it had scared somebody off in my past.”
Co-creator John Hoffman asked Verson if she could bark like a dog. It was only later they decided to change it to a sneeze.
“So when we shot that in the passageway I was barking,” Verson said. “Then when we shot episode 6, they were like, ‘So now we need to record you sneezing because we changed it. You’re going to sneeze. But make it a deep sneeze.’ So then after we shot the scene with Jimmy Russo, just in a room full of crew standing, watching me and a boom mic, they were like, ‘Okay, just sneeze a bunch of times.’ A choo. Aaaaa choo. Then they put it in in post.”
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