Characters / Only Murders in the Building

Due to its nature as a mystery, many of the trope names themselves are spoilers. As such, NO SPOILERS WILL BE MARKED.

Main Characters

The trio in general

Left to right: Mabel, Charles, Oliver

Three residents of the Arconia who find themselves drawn together when they begin to dig deeper into an alleged suicide in the building.

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• Amateur Sleuth: Charles, Oliver, and Mabel have zero investigative experience but decide to look into Tim Kono's death because their shared love of True Crime convinces them that there's something afoot. Mabel is also partly inspired by The Hardy Boys mystery novels she read as a child, while Charles once played a TV detective and recalls some of the skills he learnt for the role, and Oliver is skilled at spotting peoples' tells which made him very good at murder mystery games.
• AM/FM Characterization: The songs that play over each of their introductory monologues in the first episode give some insight into who they are before their first proper scene:
  • Charles has "Manhattan" by Jan and Dean, fitting his old-school personality and outlook as well as his lifelong connection to the city.
  • Mabel's is "Don't Start Now" by Dua Lipa, an appropriate choice given that she's the youngest of the trio, as well as her Never Be Hurt Again attitude.
  • Oliver gets "You're Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile" from Annie, showing his upbeat showman personality and his background in the theatre.
• Breaking the Fellowship: In Season 3, each member is simultaneously hit with their own trauma^note Charles experiences multiple dissociative episodes and gets dumped, Oliver finds romance with Loretta but immediately suspects her for Ben Glenroy's murder, Mabel takes Ben's death hard and finds Charles and Oliver's preoccupation with their own issues frustrating and their inability cope with it in a healthy way leads to them declaring their collaboration on the Only Murders podcast to be over. While Charles and Oliver quickly make up, Mabel launches the third season of the podcast as a solo project with the help of Tobert and Theo.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: The trio come with their own share of quirks, but they turn out to be surprisingly effective sleuths.
• Commonality Connection: The three protagonists don't have much in common, but end up bonding over their shared interests in True Crime.
• Cool Old Guy: Despite their flaws, Charles and Oliver are both generally kind older men who get along great with younger people.
• The CSI Effect: invokedThe three of them attempt to apply what they've learned from True Crime podcasts to solve Tim Kono's murder. This immediately rankles Detective Williams, as she's come across so many true-crime fans who think they know better than professional investigators.
• Deadpan Snarker: All of them have their moments, Mabel and Charles more so than Oliver which is only natural given their actors.
• Foil: Charles and Oliver tend to act as an equal-opposite duo that Mabel snarks at. While Charles tends to rub everybody the wrong way but mostly tries keeping to himself, Oliver is a social butterfly who is good at talking people into things. While both have trouble reading social cues, Charles' Fatal Flaw is his fear of confrontation, while Oliver's is his habit of jumping headfirst into a project without considering the consequences. While Charles' apartment is tidy and minimalistic, Oliver's is crammed with things that reflect his flamboyancy and culture.
• Freudian Trio:
  • Superego - Charles (tries to rein in Oliver while pulling Mabel out of her shell)
  • Ego - Mabel (measured and most aware of social niceties, but with a dark and somewhat violent streak to defend herself and others)
  • Id - Oliver (passionate and impulsive)
• Genre Savvy: All three are familiar with murder mystery genre conventions. They're all fans of true crime, Charles once played a TV detective, and Mabel was obsessed with The Hardy Boys.
• Heel Realization: In the season 2 episode "The Last Day of Bunny Folger", the three have a moment of self awareness when they realize that not inviting Bunny to celebrate with them really hurt her emotionally and later on admit over their podcast that, while they didn't kill her, they could have saved her life with the simple act of including her as the killer wouldn't have been able to get Bunny alone.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Investigating the murder at the Arconia backlashes on the heroes and almost gets them evicted from the building. Their motivation for solving the mystery in the second season is to prevent their reputation from getting worse as Cinda makes them the subjects of her new podcast.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Charles and Oliver are both over forty years older than Mabel but the three form a friendship thanks to shared interests. Mabel's mother is slightly concerned by the age gap of her daughter's friends. Oddly enough, both Charles and Oliver get along better with Mabel than they do with each other.
• Intrepid Reporter: They actively investigate the crimes in the Arconia, using the podcast to report on their findings as they go. This often results in them being endangered.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Charles is aloof and unintentionally rude, Oliver is a shameless mooch and has a Small Name, Big Ego thing going on, and Mabel is distant and cold. All three are decent people underneath and care deeply for one another.
• Nightmare Fetishist: All three characters to an extent, due to their fascination with True Crime podcasts. Mabel a little bit more, since she actually has a recurring fantasy about being assaulted and killing the attacker, which helps her sleep at night.
• Odd Friendship: Charles and Mabel are introverted, put-together, and serious, while Oliver is talkative, flamboyant, and quirky.
• Primary-Color Champion: They are the heroes, and they are each associated with one of the primary colors: red for Charles, blue for Oliver, and yellow for Mabel.
• Put on a Prison Bus: They are all arrested at the end of season 1 because they were all at the scene of Bunny's murder (although we know that Charles and Oliver didn't do it, and Mabel claims she didn't do it either.) In the Season 2 premiere, they are able to convince the detectives that someone is setting them up, and they are released.
• Shipper on Deck: Oliver and Mabel both enthusiastically approve of Charles' attempt at wooing Jan. At first, anyway.
• Technologically Blind Elders: To an extent, Charles and Oliver. While they more or less understand how to use their phones, they have trouble looking things up online and texting.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: They snark freely at each other, especially Charles and Oliver, but they do care deeply for one another and have no issue showing it.
• Wardrobe Flaw of Characterization: When Charles, Oliver, and Mabel start snooping around the Arconia to investigate Tim Kono's death, they do so while wearing awkwardly large bright-yellow dish-washing gloves to show they are savvy enough to know they need to avoid contaminating scenes with their fingerprints but too amateurish to consider going out and buying latex/nitrile gloves that would provide them better dexterity.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: The trio of Charles, Oliver and Mabel seem to think they're part of a relatively straightforward True Crime situation, although Mabel is a bit more knowledgeable about their circumstances than the other two at first. In reality, they're part of a Agatha Christie style murder mystery with complex turns and motivations.

Charles-Haden Savage, Jr.

"Sometimes it's easier to figure out someone else's secret than it is to deal with your own."

Played by: Steve Martin, Matthew Lamb (young)

An actor who once starred in a hit TV series. He's now unemployed and dissatisfied with his life.

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• Acquired Situational Narcissism: Though Charles is not naturally an egotistical person (he comes across as very insecure), whenever he acts, he defaults to being arrogant and showing off to other actors and cast members.
• Actor-Inspired Element: In-Universe. Charles tells Mabel about the difficult relationship he had with his father. The next day she notices the same speech in an episode of his old TV show, and when she confronts him about lying, he says he wrote that speech himself^note and that it was the one time he got any creative control on the show and that it's true to his own childhood experiences.
• Big Ego, Hidden Depths: Much less obviously than Oliver, but Charles can be somewhat arrogant as detailed under Acquired Situational Narcissism.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Firing Ben, according to Ben himself. Though that gave Ben lifelong confidence issues (and potentially got him started on being an asshole), Charles doesn't remember ever doing it.
• …But I Play One on TV: In-Universe: he's constantly recognized as his old character Brazzos when walking on the street, and people frequently refer to him as just "Brazzos".
• Character Catchphrase: His Brazzos character had the line "This sends the investigation into a whole new direction." Jan borrows the phrase at one point.
• Cannot Spit It Out:
  • When he tries to ask Joy, his long-time make-up artist, out on a date, he gets so nervous that he can only croak out some vague noises. Luckily, Joy knows what he's trying to say and accepts.
  • He finds it equally difficult to tell Joy that he doesn't want to move in with her, and ends up accidentally proposing to her.
• Consistent Clothing Style: He's usually dressed in a sweater over a dress shirt and slacks.
• Commitment Issues: Charles starts the series nurturing a years-long hurt after being dumped by Lucy's mother and then gets put through another wringer after opening up to Jan and nearly getting killed in the process. Because of these traumas, Charles is unable to function normally in a relationship with Joy.
• Cynicism Catalyst: He used to be in a relationship with a woman who had a daughter, Lucy, and grew to love Lucy like she was his own. However, the girlfriend wanted an exciting, romantic relationship instead of a steady co-parent. When Charles booked a family fun cruise for their anniversary instead of a private retreat for the two of them, she took Lucy and left in the middle of the trip. This made him wary of relationships and opening himself up to others.
• Dating Catwoman: In Season 2, he finds himself drawn back toward Jan despite the fact that she's a Serial Killer who tried to kill him and almost blew up the entire Arconia.
• Deadpan Snarker: Often and usually towards Oliver. He is played by Steve Martin after all.
• Defrosting Ice King: Begins the story insisting on his solitude but slowly makes friends and opens up throughout the series, especially with Oliver and Mabel.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: His refusal to tip, difficulty remembering names, and overall aloof nature makes him unpopular among the residents and staff of the Arconia.
• "Friends" Rent Control: Averted. He's by far the most financially stable of the trio due to his time on Brazzos and presumably still getting residuals as well as money from a song he did in the 70's being a popular source of sampling, even with his subsequent career decline, and so has no issue staying in an expensive residence.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: invoked Charles put out a music album while starring in Brazzos. He says it did well in Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall put a stop to its rise in the charts.
• Honor Thy Abuser: Even though his father was emotionally abusive to Charles and Charles's mother, his Season 2 plot still concludes with the revelation that Charles's father helped Rose Cooper to escape her own abusive marriage, forcing Charles to reassess his father.
• Innocently Insensitive: For all his faults, he doesn't mean to offend anybody, and is surprised when he realizes how widely he's disliked.
• Jaded Washout: He's walled himself off from others since his glory days on Brazzos and has all but given up on friends and romance at the start of the series. Things slowly get better in Season Two as he reconnects with Lucy and starts acting again.
• Master of Unlocking: He demonstrates his lock-picking skills when unlocking Kono's front door twice. He teaches this skill to Mabel.
• Nosebleed: While he apparently gets them in moments of stress, the first time we see this is after flirting with Jan.
• Preferable Impersonator: A lot of his insecurities come from how people on the set of Brazzos seemed to prefer Sazz Pataki, his stunt double, over him. His girlfriend even left him for her.
• Secretly Wealthy: Subverted. While it's clear from the beginning that he's the most financially secure of the trio as Brazzos is still a popular show and it's assumed he still receives residuals, it is also revealed in S02Ep04 that due to musicians sampling a piece of music from a song Charles did in the 70's, he receives around $200,000 a year from that alone.
• Two First Names: A literal example as his given name is the hyphenated "Charles-Haden".
• The Unfavorite: Played for Laughs. Oliver is desperate to be Mabel's favorite of the two and consistently refers to this.
• White-Dwarf Starlet: He's famous for having starred in Brazzos, a detective series that ran for nine seasons on CBS. However, work has been scarce since that series ended and he's been scrabbling for bit parts ever since though he's still financially very well-off.

Oliver Putnam

"Stay out of the theater if you want a life. Trust me."

Played by: Martin Short, Samuel Farnsworth (young)

A theatrical director whose work was usually staged off and off-off Broadway. He hasn't had much work since his elaborate staging of Splash: the Musical turned into an expensive flop.

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• Actor Allusion:
  • Oliver is a washed-up theater director with money problems, similar to Max Bialystock, the lead character of The Producers. Martin Short played Max's partner, Leo Bloom, in a few productions. Amusingly, Nathan Lane, who plays Oliver's on-and-off collaborator Teddy, famously played the role of Bialystock in the original Broadway cast and the 2005 film version.
  • Oliver mentions Godspell. Martin Short was a part of the legendary 1972 Toronto production which launched his career, alongside those of Victor Garber, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Gilda Radner, Dave Thomas, and Paul Shaffer.
• Aesop Amnesia: Oliver is shown to be learning to be less self-centred and more appreciate of others' feelings, especially in attempting to atone for losing Will's college fund during his theatre career. However, when he gets a chance to get back onstage with Death Rattle, he is every bit as self-centred as ever, even fighting with Mabel about it.
• Attention Whore: Loves the limelight and seeks public attention. The murder case against him and his friends provides a welcome opportunity for him to get it. In a conversation with Teddy, he admits this largely stems from his desire to be noticed by his father, a travelling salesman who was seldom home, as a kid.
• Bait-and-Switch: When speaking in support of Mabel's bisexuality, he starts talking as if he's going to divulge that he's also bi. Instead, he says that he used to have a lesbian lover.
• Big Ego, Hidden Depths: Oliver is extremely egotistical and self-absorbed, but also shows himself to be surprisingly kind.
• Bizarre Taste in Food: He only eats dips, preferring those from Dimas Gourmet Deli, but notes that it hasn't been the best for his health.
• Buffy Speak: Speaks of "the thing" when referring to the duct tubes in the Arconia boiler room.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer:
  • Despite his big mouth and history of failure, Oliver can actually be very persuasive in the right circumstances. He manages to net the podcast a sponsor and build a fanbase, and his ability to mentally audition suspects helps steer the investigation, even if it takes them in wrong directions.
  • As seen in the fifth episode of the 2nd season, Oliver shows he knows when someone is hiding a secret. He may not know what they are hiding, but he can tell that they're hiding it, such as how he figured out through a party game that Alice's entire backstory is false.
  • He helps his son direct a school play and demonstrates that he does have genuine skills as a director and that he can get large, rowdy groups to listen and cooperate.
• Camp Straight: Oliver's got the flamboyant personality and dress sense one would expect for a hammy theatre director, and when introduced it wouldn't be hard for viewers to assume he's an elderly gay man. However, he flirts with women and had a marriage that resulted in a son. There's also a little Bait-and-Switch that plays with this when he seems about to divulge that he's bisexual, but he doesn't.
• Celebrity Lie: He's constantly referencing famous people he's supposedly known or worked with, and at least some of these stories are likely lies, if not all.
• The Charmer: Unlike the awkward Charles and shy Mabel, Oliver is extremely extroverted and appears to win over Teddy fairly easily even after years of misusing his money. Though some of this is at least a lie, since Teddy always wanted to be part of the podcast and control it from behind the scenes.
  Oliver: All I need is five minutes! Give me five minutes in a room, and I can convince anyone of anything.
  Charles: That is not true.
  Oliver: I convinced you to get Paramount+.
• Comically Missing the Point: In the Season 3 finale, when Howard drops blatant that he'd like to take over as the lead of Death Rattle Dazzle, Oliver takes the insinuations to mean that he should take to the stage.
• Cowardly Lion: Despite stating that he's a coward and useless in a fight, Oliver often manages to overcome his fear to stand up for the trio, such as at the end of Season 1, and when he joins the others in running after Lucy on the night of the blackout.
• Daddy DNA Test: His subplot for much of Season 2 involves taking a DNA test to determine if he's Will's biological father. When he finally gets the results, he tells everyone, including Will, that he is...but he's lying, and it's actually Teddy Dimas.
• Deadpan Snarker: Not as much as Charles or Mabel but he does have a very cutting, dry wit, particularly around Charles where the two regularly toss barbed remarks at each other.
• Determinator: Surprisingly enough. He managed to have a successful directing career, despite not being a successful director, because he always managed to push through and sell people with his enthusiasm and drive. He even still has some of it, managing to secure funding through the same hard-selling enthusiasm.
• Dramatic Irony: Oliver likes Dickie as a suspect when Mabel suggests him because he's not overly involved in the play. Little does he know that his Love Interest and Death Rattle cast member, Loretta, is Dickie's mother and that she has a breakdown and falsely confesses when Dickie is arrested.
• Foil: To Teddy Dimas in terms of their parenting styles. Both are overly involved in their children's lives to the point of imposing on them. But Oliver greatly cares for his son, and is happy having him live his own life. Meanwhile Teddy bullies and bosses his son around, pushing him into acts that he clearly doesn't want to do. This gets even more ironic once it's revealed that Teddy is actually William's biological father.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: His flamboyant personality and needling nature makes him quite grating to many people around him. The fact that he loses investors millions of dollars does nothing to help his popularity.
• "Friends" Rent Control: Averted, at least in the first season. He's near-broke at the start of the series and has clearly been living beyond his means for some time. His struggles to keep his lavish apartment are a key part of his character.
• Funny Flashback Haircut: He sports long hair in the flashback where he pitches Teddy Dimas the idea for the Splash! musical.
• Giftedly Bad:
  • Oliver has a long list of flops on his resume, but managed to work for decades thanks to his enthusiasm and salesmanship. He also has a gift for passing on successes, as he convinced Teddy Dimas not to invest in works like Les Misérables, Mamma Mia!, and Hamilton.
  • In Season 3, Maxine, a theater critic, notes that Oliver's productions are always bad but that he puts so much enthusiasm into them that they invoked "sing".
• History with Celebrity: Oliver is constantly talking about famous people he knows, knew, or encountered, especially during his wild history as a director.
• Hypocrite:
  • He's pretty delighted when Jan, Charles's Love Interest, turns out to be the killer in Season 1. When Mabel suspects Loretta of being the killer in Season 3, he gets angry, defensive, and shuts Mabel down, causing an argument between them.
  • He also tells Howard that he hates namedropping, despite being easily the worst name dropper on the show.
• Hypocritical Humor: He will sometimes tease Charles for being old despite the two of them being around the same age (their respective actors are only five years apart in age in Real Life).
• It's All About Me: Oliver is shown to be arrogant and self-important, though surprisingly tender behind all of that.
• It Will Never Catch On: He has a really bad track record of dismissing musicals that went on to be huge hits and an equally bad track record in putting his full support for spectacular failures.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He dismisses Jan's input into their investigation and accuses her of willfully screwing with their investigation. This later becomes an Accidental Truth when it is revealed that she was the one who killed Tim Kono and her attempts at making Howard a suspect were just her drawing attention away from her.
• Large Ham: He's easily the most expressive and theatrical of the three and he takes it to new heights when he steps in to play the lead of Death Rattle Dazzle at the last minute. Then again, being played by Martin Short all but guarantees he'd be this.
• Love Makes You Dumb: Downplayed. He argues cruelly with Mabel in Season 3, while hiding the evidence that Loretta may have killed Ben. However, he soon sees the error of his ways and tells Charles the truth.
• Memory Palace: Seen when he visualizes possible murder suspects by "auditioning" them in his mind as if they were trying out for one of his shows.
• Mock Millionaire: Oliver acts as if he's still living high thanks to his huge success on Broadway. In reality, he's barely scraping by, behind on his building fees and asking his son and others for money but refuses to move out of the building.
• My Greatest Failure: In a vulnerable moment, he confesses that his musical adaptation of Splash wasn't a failure because it flopped but because he'd drained his son's college fund to pay for it and that it resulted in a loss of trust that has yet to be repaired years later.
• Nice to the Waiter: In contrast to Charles, Oliver makes a point of befriending the staff of the Arconia.
• Parents as People: Both as a parent and as a grandparent, in this case. Oliver's a troubled but sympathetic man who is a constant source of frustration for his son, from whom he regularly tries to borrow money. His relationship with his family is strained to the point where he rarely gets to see his grandchildren despite his claim that he wishes to spend more time with them.
• Prima Donna Director: We don't get to actually see him direct besides giving a few indications when recording the podcast until Season 3, when he has Death Rattle, but he sure has the melodramatic and egotistical personality. When actually directing, he is as melodramatic and self-important as expected.
• Romance on the Set: invoked In Season 3, he and Loretta are smitten with each other but he refuses to act on his feelings, at first, because he has a rule about avoiding on-set romance. However, he eventually throws caution to the wind and kisses her passionately.
• Sleep Mask: Wears one when sleeping on the couch in Mabel's apartment, a place that doesn't seem to have any curtains.
• Speaking Like Totally Teen: Downplayed. Oliver will occasionally use modern slang (like referring to himself as "extra").
• Sympathy for the Devil: He spies on Teddy and Theo having a vicious argument and can't help but feel sorry at seeing the relationship between father and son fracture, even after Teddy declared that he'll find a way to fuck Oliver over. Oliver later tells the other two that it felt like seeing Darth Vader with his mask off.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: He becomes much more cutting in Season 3, openly disdaining Howard, fighting with Mabel and Charles, and alienating Mabel due to the pressures and ego boost of Death Rattle Dazzle and falling in love with Loretta.
• Verbal Tic: Often grunts or growls to show emotion when speaking.

Mabel Mora

"I don’t want my life to be all about the worst parts of it. I have more to offer than that."

Played by: Selena Gomez, Madeleine & Caroline Valencia (young)

A young woman who befriends the much older Charles and Oliver over their shared love of True Crime. She's cagey about her past and has a connection to the plot-triggering death in their building but keeps it hidden from her sleuthing partners.

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• Action Girl: A relative example. Given that both Charles and Oliver are elderly and not known for their physical prowess anyway, Mabel is portrayed as the most physically aggressive member, whether it's being framed for Bunny's death or stabbing Glitter Guy on the subway. Played realistically, though, in that she's outmuscled by Theo, for instance.
• Alliterative Name: Mabel Mora.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: She has dark brown hair and is rather cold to most people.
• Anxiety Dreams: Mabel is introduced through narration explaining her fears of being sexually assaulted and having a recurring dream where she wakes up in bed with a masked man standing over her. Rather than panic, she kicks him in the nuts and stabs him to death with a knitting needle. This actually calms her down enough to get back to sleep.
• Basement-Dweller: An Informed Attribute. Mabel feels insecure about her lack of traditional success, how she's never had a job, and lives in her aunt's apartment until the middle of Season 3.
• Beta Couple: She and Oscar begin dating after he gets out of prison, and it's smooth sailing compared to Charles and Jan. In Season 2, however, Mabel acknowledges that it was driven by the heightened emotions of the Tim Kono investigation and that they're letting things fizzle out.
• Broken Bird: She doesn't openly angst over it, but the dissolvement of "the Hardy Boys" with Zoe's death, Oscar's imprisonment, and Tim's refusal to vouch for Oscar clearly broke her heart. She doesn't appear to have any friends at all before she meets Oliver and Charles, and her mother is very worried about her, seeing the way the loss of her friends chipped away at her previously-happy disposition. She's hesitant to befriend Oliver and Charles at first, not least because they're in their old age and she knows they'll probably die sooner rather than later.
• Celebrity Crush: She had, and has, one on Ben Glenroy.
• Consistent Clothing Style: It's not all she wears, but Mabel consistently wears large sweaters paired with patterned skirts or plaid pants. In Season 3, she seems to prefer trench coats.
• Daddy's Girl: She was very close to her father before he passed away.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Mabel is aloof, dry, and has trouble getting close to people, making her come off as a bit bitchy before you get to know her. However, she has a good heart and is pretty nice once she decides to trust you.
• "Friends" Rent Control:
  • Charles and Oliver ask how she can afford to live in such a large apartment at the Arconia despite being so young and with no discernible source of income. She explains that the apartment belongs to her aunt and she's living there temporarily while it's being renovated.
  • In Season 3, she has to find her own place in Manhattan and finds that a cramped studio apartment costs $4800 a month in rent and the realtor reminds her that she'll also have to pay for utilities and maintenance fees and maybe slip the homeless guy at the entrance five dollars, daily, to keep the peace.
• Heroic B So D: Undergoes one in "Flipping the Pieces," where she struggles to remember whether or not she stabbed Bunny and begins to doubt herself. With Theo's help, she ultimately realizes she didn't.
• Improvised Weapon:
  • Her plan in case of a home invasion? Stab her attacker with her knitting needle. She actually nearly puts it to the test when she realizes Tie-Dye Guy is following her, and looks like she could've caused some real damage. Fortunately, she realizes it's just Oscar before she can hurt him.
  • It comes back to haunt her at the end of Season 1, when Bunny is found dead with a knitting needle sticking out of her chest.
• Insane Equals Violent: Invoked. Mabel suffers from dissociative blackout episodes when she's under stress, and she becomes known as a Femme Fatale called "Bloody Mabel" after one of these incidents results in her being covered with Bunny's blood, and another shows her stabbing a guy on the subway. However, it's revealed that she didn't kill Bunny, and Theo fills her in that she stabbed Glitter Guy because he attacked her first.
• In-Series Nickname: Becomes known as "Bloody Mabel" in Season 2 after photos of her in a blood-soaked sweater go viral. She doesn't appreciate it.
• Jaded Washout: An Informed Attribute. By Season 3, Mabel has solved two murders and run a successful podcast, but she feels as though she hasn't achieved anything because she doesn't have a career and didn't go to college. It's a Kick the Dog moment when Oliver throws this in her face.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's standoffish at first but is dedicated to solving Tim Kono's murder and forms a genuine friendship with Charles and Oliver. It's implied that she's usually so guarded due to the trauma of losing her friends.
• Kid Detective: As a child she was obsessed with mystery stories and formed a group of like-minded friends called "the Hardy Boys," though they disbanded after Zoe's death. While she's an adult in the present day, she shows aspects of this in comparison to her much older (and often less focused) partners.
• Lady Swears-a-Lot: She's by far the most likely to drop an f-bomb of any of the characters.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Mabel apparently experiences blackouts and amnesiac periods during times of great stress.
• Magnetic Hero: Mabel has a "tendency to make packs wherever she goes." This includes the trio, the Hardy Boys, and her new trio with Tobert and Theo.
• Memory Palace: In Season 2, we see her reconstruct her memory of the night of Bunny's murder by envisioning it as a series of puzzle pieces, similar to Oliver's method of imagining all of the Season 1 suspects auditioning for him onstage.
• My Beloved Smother: Even though Mabel is an adult, her mother continues treating her like a child and acts as if Mabel can only act if she has her permission.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Mabel enjoys the darker side of life. As a child, she adored the darker and gorier parts of The X-Files with her father, and she has a crush on Stabler from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. She has a more nuanced take on it since the deaths of Zoe and Tim Kono, but she's still a true crime fan.
• Only Sane Woman: Often takes this role when Charles and Oliver start bickering or getting off-topic.
• Outdated Name: When Charles calls all the hospitals to look for Mabel after her stabbing attack on the subway, he notes that the only Mabel he found was 99 and just died. When Mabel introduces herself to Charles and Oliver in the first episode after they're all at the same restaurant after having to stay out of their apartments for the time being due to a pulled fire alarm, they both laugh at first, thinking she's joking.
  Mabel: Hey. I'm Mabel.
  (both Charles and Oliver laugh)
  Oliver: No, really. What is... Oh.
  Charles: A great old school name.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Subverted. She pretends not to be familiar with Sting and makes a show of confusing him with Bono and Peter Gabriel, to the horror of Charles and Oliver, before revealing that she does know who he is and correctly pointing out that "Every Breath You Take" is more of a stalker song than a love song.
  Mabel: The guy from U2?
  Charles: Are you kidding me?
  Oliver: Sting!
  Charles: The Police..."Roxanne"...
  Oliver: "Every Breath You Take"... Only one of the biggest love songs of all time. Who educated you?
  Mabel: Oh, now I know. He's the guy who did "Sledgehammer"!
  Charles and Oliver: Peter Gabriel!
• Properly Paranoid: She's afraid of being sexually assaulted or killed, which is why she's so fixated on true crime. Given that two of her best friends were murdered (albeit one by accident), she herself has been the target of attempted violence more than once, and she's been sexually harassed by a former coworker, her fears are very justified.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Charles mentions her having "those damn cocker spaniel eyes".
• Queer Establishing Moment: She kisses Alice in the second episode of Season Two, revealing she's bisexual.
• Red Baron: In Season Two, she gets nicknamed "Bloody Mabel" by the media after a photo of her covered in Bunny's blood with the caption "Bloody Beauty" hits the front page. She doesn't really like it, though it does get used for her own solo podcast.
• The Snark Knight: Mabel has a strong moral compass and wants to do the right thing. She also thinks the world by and large is pretty terrible, is aware of her own shortcomings, and is unafraid to criticize everyone, herself and her friends included. She also makes a huge effort to save Lucy on the night of the Arconia blackout.
• The Smurfette Principle: Except the gender-equal Hardy Boys in her past, in both of Mabel's "trios" (the Only Murders trio with Charles and Oliver, and the Bloody Mabel trio with Theo and Tobert), she's the only girl.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Generally aloof and emotionally distant, but she's shown to be very empathetic and kind to those she cares about, such as Charles, Oliver, and Oscar.
• Sympathy for the Devil: In Season 2, she softens a bit toward Theo — despite how his actions led to Zoe's death and Oscar's imprisonment — after getting a glimpse at how scared and lonely he is.
• Territorial Smurfette: Mabel is not impressed by Jan's attempt to piggyback into the trio in Season 1. Justified, though, since Mabel was right about something being off with Jan — she's the killer.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Mabel cannot remember important details about the moment she found Bunny in her apartment. Bits and pieces come back as the investigation progresses. It becomes clear that this stems from her father's death.
• Twofer Token Minority: Mabel is the main woman of color in the cast who's revealed to be bisexual when she dates Oscar and then Alice.
• What the Hell, Hero?: She rightfully tears into Charles for starting to date Jan again in Season Two, since she murdered Mabel's friend Tim and tried to kill all of them, too.
• White Shirt of Death: Twice!
  • Once with actual death. Mabel is wearing a white sweater when she discovers Bunny's dead body at the end of Season 1, leaving her with blood all over her front.
  • One non-lethal variant. When Mabel is attacked by Glitter Guy, Kreps, on the subway, she's wearing a white coat that dramatically has his blood smeared all over it when she wakes up in Theo's apartment in the following episode.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Mabel's verbal reaction to the Broadway murder at the end of season 2.

The Arconia

Oscar Torres

"Just because you aren't locked up doesn't mean you aren't still in some kind of prison."

Played by: Aaron Dominguez

The son of the Arconia's superintendent and part of Mabel's childhood Hardy Boys gang. He recently finished a ten-year stint in prison after being accused of a crime he didn't commit.

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• Beta Couple: He and Mabel begin dating with little fanfare or drama. In Season 2, however, Mabel acknowledges that it was driven by the heightened emotions of the Tim Kono investigation and that they're letting things fizzle out.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Though Mabel does hand-wave his absence by saying that he's waiting for her breakup text, he doesn't appear throughout Season 2, though he and Mabel once appeared to be going strong.
• Iconic Outfit: Deliberately invoked with his tie-dye hoodie.
• Miscarriage of Justice: Both he and Mabel maintain his innocence in Zoe's death and that Tim kept mum about information that could have proved it.
• Nice Guy: He's sweet and supportive, and is remarkably easygoing for a guy who's been through the wringer like he has.
  Oscar: I'm positive as fuck! Figuring out why some asshole died doesn't do shit for my inner calm.
• Put on a Bus: For Season 2.
• The Reveal: "Twist" reveals that he's the "Tie-Dye Guy" that Charles has been obsessing over as a potential suspect.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: He and Mabel end Season 1 in a good place and seemingly on their way to a serious relationship. He doesn't appear in Season 2, and their relationship permanently stalls before he's replaced by Alice.
• Wrongfully Accused: The police pinned Zoe's death on him due to people witnessing a loud argument between the two of them. Unlike most other examples of this trope, he's less interested in clearing his name than just finding a way to move on with his life.

Jan Bellows

"You know, the sharing of stories is kind of transactional. When someone gives you a story, you owe them one of equal or greater value in return."

Played by: Amy Ryan

A professional bassoonist who strikes up a budding romance with Charles.

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• Affably Evil: Her bubbly personality is shown not to be entirely an act and actually did fall in love with Charles. She also just happens to be an unstable, calculating murderer on top of that.
• Age-Gap Romance: Charles is almost twenty years her senior... while Tim Kono was over twenty years her junior.
• Always Second Best: A self-admitted trigger for her. Jan absolutely loathes coming in second, whether professionally or romantically and it turns out to be enough to drive her to commit murder.
• Ambiguously Bi: She seems to be quite aroused by Sazz when she's reading Charles' breakup letter, and she and Sazz are revealed to be dating in Season 3. Further muddying up any potential attraction to women is that Sazz is dressed exactly like Charles.
• Ax-Crazy: She poisons Charles, but because there are too many loose ends in Oliver, Mabel, Oscar, and to a lesser extent anybody who knew she was dating Charles, she decides to blow up the entire building in a gas explosion, not caring about how many innocents and children die in the process.
• Big Bad: Of season 1. She's the real murderer behind Tim Kono's death and eventually plots to destroy the entire Arconia.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Jan at first appears as a normal, grounded and warm woman. In the season 1 finale, she is ultimately revealed to be a serial killer whose latest victim was Tim Kono.
• But Not Too Bi: Sazz confirms that she and Jan are dating following their meeting in Season 2, but both of Jan's onscreen lovers are men.
• Cassandra Truth: Jan believes that Tim Kono's death is actually unrelated to the Dimases' grave robbing. This gets dismissed by the trio, who are fixated on the correlation. At the end of "Fan Fiction", it becomes clear that she's right. In an interesting case, it turns out that she is the murderer.
• Cloudcuckoolander: In addition to being Ax-Crazy, she's also surprised that Charles considered their relationship to be over. You know, after she tried to kill him and everyone in the Arconia.
• Consulting a Convicted Killer: In season 2, Charles visits her to get some insight on Bunny's killer's identity. It quickly evolves to something else.
• Criminally Attractive: The reveal in the season finale that she is Tim's killer retroactively turns her and Charles' relationship into this.
• Depraved Bisexual: Sazz casually reveals that she and Serial Killer Jan are dating (after she murdered Tim and at least one other male lover).
• Detective Mole: Becomes part of the Amateur Sleuth investigation of her own crime.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: As a side character with no apparent ties to Kono, the reveal of her as a Serial Killer and the villain of Season One comes quite as a surprise.
• Elevator Going Down: A flashback shows her engaging in sexual activities with Tim Kono in an elevator.
• Evil All Along: Starts dating Charles, joins the investigation, is friendly and helpful...and turns out to have been the murderer the whole time.
• Femme Fatale: Ultimately reveals herself to be one at the end of Season 1 and fully lives up to it when she and Charles reconnect in Season 2.
• Green-Eyed Monster: She was driven to kill Tim Kono out of the mistaken belief that he was cheating on her after discovering a large, emerald ring. She finds out later that the ring was actually a part of his investigation into the Dimases.
• Has a Type: She claims it's lonely men with noticeable age gaps from her that she meets in elevators. She was probably joking but it does fit the profile of both Charles (older) and Tim (younger).
• Hell-Bent for Leather: When she's revealed as the murderer and goes into a murderous rage, she's wearing a black leather coat.
• Master Poisoner: She did Tim in by poisoning his drink and subdues Charles by poisoning his handkerchief. Her expertise is to the level that she has an orderly pill case labelled "Jan's Little T♥xins".
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: An older example than most, but Jan is a playful and energetic woman who draws Charles out of his shell and has a lot of quirky hobbies. Deconstructed with The Reveal that she is a Serial Killer and at least part of her mania is reflective of this aspect of her personality.
• Meaningful Name: Her last name is "Bellows" and she's a professional bassoon player, meaning she uses her lungs like bellows to push air through her instrument.
• Mrs. Robinson: Is quite flexible with the age difference to her lovers. Tim Kono was probably 25 years younger than her.
• Not Good with Rejection: She can't stand anything that even so much feels a little like rejection; it drives her into a murderous rage.
• Nothing Nice About Sugar and Spice: Jan doesn't dress overly feminine, but she's prone to girly romantic behavior, such as labeling her poisons with hearts, and she's a Serial Killer.
• Not the First Victim: Tim Kono isn't her first victim. She reminisces about killing multiple lovers, and says that she once accidentally saved somebody's life by stabbing them with a knitting needle and taking out their appendix.
• Poisoned Weapons: Jan gloats about how she doesn't use the same weapon or tactics for every murder. That being said, she does favor poison, to the point of having a case of poisons labelled "Jan's Little T♥xins".
• Put on a Prison Bus: Season one ends with her getting pushed into a police car.
• Recorded Audio Alibi: On the night of Tim Kono's murder, Jan's signature instrument (her bassoon) is heard playing across the courtyard of the Arconia, as she does with Charles later and practices nightly. But, on the night of Tim's murder, it was a recording to cover up the fact she killed him.
• Serial Killer: She's apparently committed a string of murders over the years, but no one ever connected her to them.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: Her and Charles' overt affection to another annoys the heck out of Oliver and Mabel.
• Sixth Ranger Traitor: Midway through Season 1, she briefly seems to become an extra member of the team with her and Charles's hookup. She's revealed to be Tim Kono's murder before the end of Season 1.
• Villainesses Want Heroes: She is still attracted to Charles and refuses to break up with him despite her effort to kill him and his close friends. She was also in love with Tim, who didn't seem to be a hero, but was in secret.
• Walking Spoiler: One glance at these tropes will tell you everything about Jan.
• Woman Scorned: She murdered Tim for breaking up with her and apparently has done the same thing to other boyfriends when they ended it with her.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: She stabs herself near the end of Season 1 to throw Mabel and Oliver off her scent.
• Yandere: In "Open and Shut", she confesses to Charles that she's compelled to kill her boyfriends when the relationships come to an end — as she's in the process of staging his death.
• Yoko Oh No: Once she and Charles move onto the dating stage, Oliver and Mabel don't appreciate her attempts at contributing to their investigation.

Theodore "Teddy" Dimas, Sr.

"You'll make the right choice. And if you don't, well, I know where you live."

Played by: Nathan Lane, Dave Marr (young)

The owner of a chain of gourmet delis and another resident of the Arconia. He used to be Oliver's friend and financial backer before a multi-million-dollar loss fractured their relationship.

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• Abusive Parents: His father was a terrible person, and Teddy admits to having hated his guts. He desperately wanted to do better with Theo, but didn't entirely succeed.
• Affably Evil: He's introduced as a man who built his wealth through legitimate business and whose only real flaw appeared to be his inability to say "no" to Oliver's requests for funding. It's gradually revealed that his fortune is actually built on a shady side business where he and his son sell jewelry and fillings stolen from dead people who pass through their funeral home. He is, however, always extremely polite, even when he's threatening their lives.
• Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting: By his own admission, his father was a lousy parent, so he really wants to have a good relationship with Theo. However, even he can see he's not a very good parent himself.
• Broken Pedestal: He used to be an enthusiastic supporter of Oliver's theatrical ambitions, but the failure of Splash caused a years-long rift between them.
• The Bus Came Back: He returns to the Arconia under house arrest and awaiting trial in Season 2.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Once out of jail, he delivers a profane monologue to Oliver making it very clear he plans to fuck him (metaphorically).
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Despite his shady business practices and caustic nature, he does seem to genuinely care about his son, enough that he blackmailed Tim to keep his son out of jail.
  • Though it's unclear if he actually does care about his son or finds him useful as he seems to imply that having a deaf son is useful to him. It's also unclear if his covering up Zoe's death was done to protect Theo, or to keep the cops away from his grave robbery. Given Zoe's death is more her fault than Theo's it's possible it might be more the latter than the former.
  • When Oliver spies on Teddy in Season Two, it is made clear that Teddy really does care about Theo as he is seen weeping after a heated argument with his son and even tells Theo that he (Theo) is all Teddy cares about in the world.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Played for Laughs. Teddy tells Oliver that even at his worst, he's still a better parent to Will than Teddy himself was to Theo. Oliver then reveals he's recently encouraged Will to work in the theatre.
  Teddy: ...That is bad.
• Foil: To Oliver. Both are fathers with strained relationships with their sons, and lovers of musical theatre (which made them business partners in the past). However, Oliver is well-meaning and wants to repair the damage he's done, whereas Teddy is domineering and unapologetic about making Theo a part of his criminal organization, though Oliver notes the similarity between them. This gets even more ironic once it's revealed that Teddy is actually William's biological father.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: He bankrolls the Only Murders in the Building podcast with the smug notion that this will allow him to steer Charles, Oliver, and Mabel away from any clues that may point toward Zoe's death and his and Theo's involvement. Instead, the check he gives the trio provides a clue that links him to what Tim Kono was doing prior to his murder.
• Irony: Teddy clearly wanted his son to be able to enjoy the same love of music that he has, but his deafness prevents him from doing so and is a clear sign of disappointment for Teddy.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Revealed in the fifth episode of the second season that he's actually William Putnam's biological father.
• Not Me This Time: He runs a jewelry smuggling business, he forced Tim Kono into keeping quiet about witnessing Zoe's death, and he's perfectly willing to make death threats... but he didn't kill Tim Kono.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: He's so devastated by Theo turning on him that he breaks down and sobs after Theo storms out. Oliver is incredibly shaken to witness this.
• Papa Wolf: Upon finding out that Theo killed Zoe, he immediately threatened Tim Kono and Mabel to keep the secret and stop him going to prison. However, he also uses this to manipulate Theo into helping him.
• Parents as People: He's far from a perfect father, and isn't a very good person, but he loves Theo and did everything he could to protect him from prison.
• Pet the Dog: He agrees not to tell Will he's his biological father at Oliver's request, and joins him for wine and a surprisingly civil conversation on the matter.
• Put on a Prison Bus: He's arrested in episode 8 after the trio uncovers his smuggling ring and assumes that he killed Tim Kono. But since he's not the true murderer, this doesn't mean the series is over. He also commutes on that bus throughout Season 2, before leaving throughout Season 3.
• Robbing the Dead: His primary source of income turns out to be stealing jewelry off people before their cremation.
• Sarcastic Confession: Teddy tells Oliver and Charles that he dug up his father and ripped his family's heirloom out of his father's "cold, dead hands." He then laughs and celebrates having "got" them. The revelations in the following episode that Teddy is a grave robber heavily implies that he was telling the truth about digging up his father.
• Secret-Keeper:
  • He kept the secret that Theo killed Zoe.
  • He agrees to keep the secret that he's Will's real father, though Will figures it out by himself.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Has a sailor's mouth to rival Mabel's.
• Smug Snake: Believes he's smarter than everyone around him and has everyone wrapped around his little finger. However, it soon becomes clear that he's not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, and his arrogance causes the protagonists to include him on their lists of suspects which soon causes them to stumble onto his grave robbing operation.
• Tempting Fate: Even though the trio turn to him as a suspect, Teddy sees no danger because their previous main suspect was Sting. By the end of the episode, his son sends him a text that says "they know everything."
• Tragic Keepsake: He treasures a Greek coin passed down to him from his grandmother through his father. It had been a part of his grandmother's fortune before she traded it all away to flee the Greek genocide that killed much of her family.
• Uncle Pennybags: He's bankrolled many of Oliver's productions, finding himself compelled to open his checkbook thanks to Oliver's enthusiasm and refusal to take "no" for an answer.
• Villainous Parental Instinct: He's not a particularly good father, and he is a literal grave robber who manipulates Theo into taking part in his crimes, but he does immediately snap into trying to protect Theo, and threatening Tim to do it, upon finding out that he killed Zoe.
• Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: He brags about learning ASL to communicate with Theo — as many parents of Deaf children never do — while also saying that Theo's deafness has been a boon to his criminal activity because there aren't many people Theo can communicate with.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: We can surmise Teddy is in prison, but it's not clarified for sure where he is in Season 3.
• Worthy Opponent: By the end of Season Two, he and Oliver seem to have this relationship. The two of them have a heart-to-heart and Teddy agrees not to tell Will who his true father is (though Will figures it out anyway).

Theodore "Theo" Dimas, Jr.

"People talk way too fucking much in this city."

Played by: James Caverly, Nicolas Vitucci (young)

Teddy Dimas' son and accomplice in his grave robbing operation.

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• Accidental Murder: He didn't mean to kill Zoe. They got in a fight during which she began to shove him, he pushed her off of him, and then she tripped, going over the edge of the roof.
• Ambiguously Absent Parent: Only Teddy, Theo's father, seems to be in the picture with no clear mention of Theo's mother.
• Ancestral Name: His full name is Theodore, like his father's. This seems to have been intentional on Teddy's part, who also plays Theo a song about a father naming his son after himself.
• Anti-Villain: Theo is far from innocent; while Zoe's death was a horrible accident, he willingly allowed Oscar to serve ten years for it, and helped his father threaten Tim and Mabel to keep Tim quiet. He's also involved in Teddy's smuggling. However, Theo is still very sympathetic. He was clearly traumatized by Zoe's death, and while Teddy loves him, he's not exactly Father of the Year and can be very harsh and critical. There's nothing to suggest Theo would be a criminal if he weren't born into the business, making him seem more troubled than purely evil.
• The Atoner: After being let out of jail on bond, he seems to sincerely want to pull himself out of the mess that is his life, and expresses to Mabel how much Zoe's death traumatized him and how much he regrets it.
• Being Evil Sucks: While the family smuggling business affords Theo a fairly cushy lifestyle, and allowed him to avoid consequences for Zoe's death for ten years, it's hard to call his life a happy one. During an argument with Teddy, he even says (speaking), "You're killing me! I have no life anymore!"
• Beware the Quiet Ones: He primarily communicates through ASL, due to being deaf, and also has a shy demeanor. However, he's part of his father's criminal business, and is involved in at least one death (albeit by accident, but he did willingly help cover it up), and demonstrates a bit of a violent streak. Also, his ability to read lips allows means he means he can eavesdrop and learn other people's secrets even from far away. So long as he can see them, he can eavesdrop, with them none the wiser.
• The Bus Came Back: He is released from jail and put under house arrest in Season 2 and ends up helping Mabel with the investigation of Bunny's murder.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Theo is seen briefly before being formally (re)introduced to Oliver: he's serving deli food at Tim Kono's memorial.
• Creepy Mortician: Downplayed. He works as a mortician at the Dimases' funeral homes, which is where he steals jewelry (and helps his father in doing so). He's shown doing this when he corners Mabel and Oliver.
• A Day in the Limelight: He is the title character in "The Boy from 6B" and most of the episode is told from his perspective. Even the scenes that he isn't in don't have spoken dialogue.
• Disability Superpower: His ability to read lips allows him to eavesdrop across long distances with the help of binoculars. However, he confesses that he can only catch about a third of what people are saying.
• Easily Forgiven: By Season 3, he and Mabel appear to be actually good friends, despite his role in causing Zoe's death, Oscar's imprisonment, and kidnapping her and Oliver. While she's had a whole year to develop her Sympathy for the Devil attitude towards him, Tobert is understandably kind of shocked to meet him, suggesting the wider world is far more critical of Theo's past actions.
• A Friend in Need: Mabel largely forgives Theo after he goes above and beyond for her. He saves her life on Coney Island, and then she crashes with him in Season 3.
• Friendless Background: Theo doesn't seem to have had any friends before meeting Zoe and, even then, they only met because she broke into his apartment.
• Geek: Season 3 reveals him to be a big CoBro fan.
• Heel–Face Turn: Goes from an antagonistic figure in Season 1 (both in being Teddy's muscle for his gravedigging business and Zoe's (unintentional) murderer) to Mabel's ally in Season 2. In the year between Seasons 2 and 3 they appear to have become good friends, with Mabel even having learnt a little ASL.
• Hiding Behind the Language Barrier: In his introduction, he and Teddy use the fact that Oliver doesn't know ASL to disparage him in the open.
• Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All: The conditions of his house arrest are very generous as he gets to live in his own, luxury home and even venture out as far as Coney Island.
• Morality Pet: Whatever good is in Teddy only shows itself in his relationship with Theo—but even that can be pretty strained.
• My God, What Have I Done?: He's absolutely horrified when he accidentally pushes Zoe off the roof, and cries for a fair few minutes before he can manage to tell his father what happened.
• Not So Above It All: In regards to Mabel, Theo tells Tolbert via note, "I don't understand her either."
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Theo only talks out loud once in the show so far - when he tells Teddy that "he has no life anymore" and that Teddy is "killing" him.
• Only Friend: Theo really doesn't seem to have any friends (except his dad). Zoe is the only other person he's shown to have ever had a close relationship with, and after the year-long Time Skip Mabel has become this for him in Season 3.
• Painting the Medium: Scenes set from Theo's perspective completely mute the audio save for the quiet sound of his own blood circulating in his skull. When Teddy tries to get him to listen to some music through headphones in a flashback, it can be very faintly heard, but it's buried under the whoosh of his blood vessels, giving the audience an immediate understanding of the specific type of deafness that he lives with.
• Pet the Dog: After witnessing Mabel stab a guy on the subway, he takes her away from the crowd and lets her rest in his apartment, seeing how shocked and upset she is. When she wakes up and can't remember anything, he fills her in. It's also notable that while the internet frames the incident as "Bloody Mabel randomly stabbed someone again," Theo tells her that the guy was attacking her and she acted in self-defence.
• Put on a Prison Bus: He is arrested along with his father for assisting in his father's smuggling ring. Like his father, Theo is also falsely accused of killing Tim Kono. The Bus Came Back after he gets out on bail.
• Reading Lips: He acquired this skill through his disability. He notes however in Season 2 that he still misses a good chunk of words in contrast to the often perfect usage otherwise found in TV.
• Suddenly Shouting: During an argument with his father in Season 2, he ceases signing and vocally shouts instead to show how angry he is.
• Stress Vomit: Theo vomits at Teddy's apartment after the traumatic experience with Zoe on the rooftop.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His accidental murder of Zoe is the thing that not only kicks off the entire plot, but also threatens his father's grave robbing business.
• Villainous Rescue: Downplayed since Theo was always more of an accomplice to his father than evil himself, but Theo saves Mabel, who's vulnerable and in shock, manages to get her away from the crowd to his apartment, and drives her to Coney Island when she freaks out and stabs Glitter Guy on the subway in Season 2.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Although he's complicit in Teddy's crimes, killed Zoe, and threatened Mabel to keep Tim quiet, he's also very socially isolated (due to few people around him speaking ASL) and obviously lonely, has a frightening, controlling and borderline-abusive father, and was horrified by his accidental murder of Zoe.
• Why Couldn't You Be Different?: A flashback in "The Boy from 6B" shows that Teddy experienced frustration — which bordered on abuse — over Theo's deafness and how that prevented him from sharing his love of musical theater with his son.

Tim Kono

"Approximately 12 minutes from now, I will be murdered."

Played by: Julian Cihi, Maximilian Lee Piazza (young)

A resident of the Arconia, who was found dead shortly after losing his job as an investment banker.

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• Age-Gap Romance: He had a relationship with Jan, who is well into her middle age.
• Asshole Victim: Deconstructed and ultimately subverted. In life, he was an abrasive and antisocial person who rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, including his former friend Mabel who was angry at him for not defending Oscar when he was accused of murdering Zoe. Despite this, Mabel argues that Tim didn't deserve to die just because he was unlikable, and it is ultimately revealed that before his death, Tim was gathering evidence to prove Oscar's innocence to atone for not helping him years ago.
• The Atoner: It's gradually revealed that he'd been engaged in a years-long investigation into the Dimases' grave robbing to try and gain enough evidence to clear Oscar of Zoe's death, and make up for keeping silent while Oscar was imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit.
• Brutally Honest: To the point where, in the twenty years she'd known him, Mabel can only ever recall him lying once.
• Cruel to Be Kind: He's curt and aloof, but he's genuinely fond of Mabel. Circumstances beyond his control lead to Tim distancing himself from her to keep her from being caught up in his dangerous lifestyle, which hurt and upset Mabel. He also left Oscar in prison because he knew that Teddy and Theo were dangerous and they threatened Mabel.
• Deadpan Snarker: Flashbacks and Mabel's imaginary recollection of him making comments over his own crime scene show that he had an incredibly dry sense of wit and humour.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Has been curt and blunt since childhood, leading to very few people having any fondness for him in the present. Mabel, his oldest friend, can't decide whether or not she is sad over his passing, though this is because of him being responsible for putting Oscar in jail...which turns out to be something he did to help Mabel.
• Hated by All: At a memorial service, none of his neighbors can think of a nice thing to say about him and talk about how annoying he was.
• Hidden Depths: In life, Tim seemed like a selfish asshole who didn't care about the other Hardy Boys following the fateful New Year's Eve party; it's revealed that he was a loyal, but misguided friend who was passionate about atoning for his lie.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: A platonic version towards his good friends Oscar and Mabel. It is also revealed during a flashback that the reason Tim didn't testify on Oscar's behalf is because Teddy Dimas threatened to kill not only him, but Mabel as well. It gets a romantic version when Tim breaks up with Jan.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Once you get past his complete lack of tact and sour disposition, he was a genuinely good man who worked to exonerate his friend and expose his other friend's true killer until the day he died.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: The secret that he saw Theo kill Zoe destroyed his friendship with Mabel, alienated him from Oscar, and indirectly caused his death.
• Knight in Sour Armor: He was well aware of the danger he was putting himself in by investigating the Dimases, and was overall a very cynical person. He kept trying to expose the truth and rectify the damage he did to his friends' lives anyway.
• My Greatest Failure: Not coming forward to vouch for Oscar when he was accused of killing Zoe. He kept mum because Teddy threatened his and Mabel's lives if he incriminated Theo, but he was haunted by the fact an innocent man lost ten years of his life because of his silence. His actions in the last weeks of his life were an attempt to make up for it and clear Oscar's name once and for all.
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish": The password to Tim's phone is revealed to be "Theo" - a clue that he left behind to Zoe's killer because he thought he was in danger from the Dimases.
• Plot-Triggering Death: His death is what kickstarts the plot.
• Poor Communication Kills: Literally. Not telling Jan about his pursuit of the Dimases could've put her in danger, but then she would have understood that he didn't have the emerald ring for someone else because he was cheating on her - he was trying to prove Theo killed Zoe. As it is, Jan kills him without trying to find out if he had the ring for another reason (which he did).
• Posthumous Character: All we learn about him comes after his death.
• Posthumous Narration: Provides a bit of this in the season one finale.
• Sex God: Despite his abrasive personality, Tim is apparently very good in bed. Despite hating him, his next-door neighbor was impressed by his prowess when sleeping with his mystery girlfriend, Jan.
• Tragic Hero: Despite all evidence to the contrary, Tim is ultimately revealed to be one. He kept silent about Theo and let Oscar go to prison to protect Mabel from Teddy, which broke up their friendship. He was still looking for evidence that would implicate Theo in Zoe's death, which he finally achieved shortly before being murdered — for the ring, because Jan totally misinterpreted it.
• We Used to Be Friends: Tim was a childhood friend of Mabel, as shown in a Former Friends Photo.

Zoe Cassidy

"I wasn't aware boys were supposed to be good for you."

Played by: Olivia Reis

A member of Mabel's childhood Hardy Boys gang. Her family is so wealthy that they occupy an entire floor of the Arconia.

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• Asshole Victim: What little we've seen of her shows that she was a very conceited and elitist person, and she died because she was shoving Theo and he shoved her back to get her off of him. This is deconstructed as her death only made things worse and the fallout ended up mostly destroying the friendship between the other members of the Hardy Boys Gang.
• Death by Falling Over: She died by falling off the roof of the Arconia.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: She's angered by the idea of Theo feeling bad for her.
• Hidden Depths: She was fluent in American Sign Language due to having a deaf cousin and hung out with Theo Dimas on occasion because she could communicate with him.
• Kick the Dog: The two arguments she was involved in before she died show that she was capable of being nasty when angered. First, comparing her relationship with Oscar to "dating the help," a dig at his father's job as the building's super (and, given that Oscar is Latino, there's some pretty racist implications there as well), and then telling Theo he should be pitied because he's deaf when he was trying to comfort her.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: To Theo, though heavily deconstructed. She was the only one of the Hardy Boys who spoke ASL and was therefore both willing and able to communicate with him, and hooked up with him a few times so that he developed a crush. However, she could be a much nastier person than Theo realized, and he was very taken aback when she laughed at his heartfelt romantic advances and then again when she started insulting him as he was trying to give her advice.
• Posthumous Character: She died prior to the events of Season 1, so her appearances are through flashbacks only.
• Rich Bitch: She could be dismissive of others when angered, such as insulting Oscar by calling him "the help" and brushing off Theo's attempts at comforting her by saying that he's the one who needs pity due to his disability.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: And connections. Zoe is extremely wealthy, and she's the only Hardy Boy who doesn't show the slightest fear of being caught when they're sneaking into others' places. When Theo catches her breaking into his apartment, she took the opportunity to flirt with him rather than show any fear of being reported.
• Sticky Fingers: She liked to sneak into people's apartments and pilfer valuables and medications that caught her eye.
• Too Dumb to Live: Though her death is a genuine accident, she almost certainly would've survived if she hadn't started shoving Theo in the dark while standing on the edge of the Arconia's roof. He only has to push her back once to kill her.
• Token Evil Teammate: Granted, we only see her in a few brief flashbacks, but she's easily the least moral member of the Hardy Boys Gang so far as we can tell. Mabel is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, Tim is revealed to have been The Atoner, Oscar is just a Nice Guy... while Zoe was a Rich Bitch and a thief.
• Toxic Friend Influence: The Hardy Boys Gang was originally just an innocent way for the members to share their love of mystery novels and pretend to be detectives. She was the one who got them breaking into the apartments of other Arconia residents.
• Two First Names: Both "Zoe" and "Cassidy" are girls' names, though the latter is more commonly a surname.

Bunny Folger

"The rest of you, if you're a murderer...stop murdering!"

Played by: Jayne Houdyshell

Head of the Arconia's co-op board.

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• Alas, Poor Villain: "The Last Day of Bunny Folger," which showed a gentler, more vulnerable side to her character, revealing that, while she could be mean, she was also a lonely old woman who felt like her place in the world was slipping away, and was capable of genuine kindness. This earned her a lot of sympathy, both in-universe and out.
• Asshole Victim: A thoroughly unpleasant and tyrannical person who evicts Charles, Oliver and Mabel despite the fact they're attempting to solve a murder in the building she runs. She ends up dead by the end of the first season. Like with Tim Kono, subverted when her last day is explored and reveals she could be genuinely nice and charitable, and much of her unpleasantness stemmed from misery and loneliness.
• Cranky Landlord: Bunny is the co-op president rather than a landlady herself, but the spirit of the trope is the same. She greatly dislikes the trio (Oliver especially, because he didn't pay his bills) and tries to evict them multiple times due to the podcast.
• Death Equals Redemption: Bunny was not the most sympathetic character in life, as a constant thorn in the trio's sides. However, almost immediately before dying, she shows a softer side, as she hoped to be invited in with them while they were celebrating. The redemption becomes even more pronounced when we relive the last day of her life and see her kindness to Ivan, leaving him a large tip and giving him some sincere advice.
• Dirty Old Woman: According to Uma, Bunny had a large collection of erotic art, with the prize piece being a large and explicit painting showing two nude lovers.
• Grumpy Old Man: Gender inverted. She's a grouchy old lady who swears often and shows disdain towards most of her tenants. Season 2 subverts this with "The Last Day of Bunny Folger", revealing her Hidden Depths. While she is still strict on a number of things and doesn't like the trio parading around their victory for a week, she still has redeeming moments throughout the episode, as seen below in Pet the Dog and Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• Head-in-the-Sand Management: In the penultimate episode of Season 1, she evicts the main trio for their podcast in an attempt to shut it down, and tells the residents, including any murderers to "stop murdering", as if that was the end of it.
• Hidden Depths: "The Last Day of Bunny Folger" reveals that she is a deeply unhappy person who just wants to be accepted by the residents of the Arconia. She cries loudly when Charles, Mabel and Oliver don't invite her to join them in their celebration of solving Tim Kono's murder. Her only friends appear to be Uma Heller and her pet parrot Mrs. Gambolini.
• His Name Is...: Her last words, as Mabel heard them, were: "Fourteen" and "Savage". Season 2 is spent trying to figure out what she meant. Though it's a literal subversion. Mabel suspects that Savage might refer to the Haden-Savages, but Mabel actually figures out she misheard "sandwich" — identifying Poppy by her obscure sandwich order.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: On her last day alive, Bunny gives a very generous tip to a waiter, telling him to get the DJ equipment he wants and to love more than one thing. She also brings the trio some genuine champagne and tries on their merchandise. She is also shown generally to care about the Arconia and its residents, but she struggles to express herself.
• Morality Pet: She has two: her beloved parrot, and Ivan the waiter.
• Nice to the Waiter: She's kind to Ivan, the waiter who usually serves her at the Pickle Diner, and always tipped him generously. In "The Last Day of Bunny Folger" she's seen giving him an enormous stack of cash so he can buy the DJ equipment he wanted. Also, despite being pretty acerbic around Lester, she still inquires about his wife and knows the names of his kids.
• Pet the Dog: In the Season 1 finale, she reverses Charles, Mabel, and Oliver's evictions as thanks for catching the real murderer. It's Downplayed, however, by her lack of gratefulness and her vowing to Oliver to get rid of the trio yet... only to turn up dead in her next scene, with the trio framed for her murder.
• Retirony: Bunny was retiring from the board of the Arconia on the day that she was murdered.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: She and Oliver have an antagonistic relationship over his unpaid bills. She eventually extends this enmity to Charles and Mabel as they're his friends. She's constantly antagonizing the main trio over a rivalry with one, culminating in actively sabotaging an open murder investigation by evicting the only three tenants who want to help solve it and save lives, bullying almost everyone into agreeing with her under threat of being next to leave. She'd rather sweep the whole investigation under the rug since unless it personally involves her and her business, she's completely apathetic. Even her Pet the Dog moment below is rather backhanded, with her vowing to find another excuse to evict the trio later.
• Small Name, Big Ego: She revels in the power her position affords her and browbeats other residents into going along with her with the threat that she'll start an eviction campaign against them.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Bunny has a bitter and snappy exterior, but she is a lonely, melancholy woman on the inside.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Season 3 fleshes out her relationship with Uma a bit, showing that they bickered constantly but were also good friends who enjoyed each other's company.

Uma Heller

Played by: Jackie Hoffman

An older resident of the Arconia.

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• Grumpy Old Woman: Not the friendliest person in the building. She usually has a scowl on her face and biting remark ready to go.
• Jerkass: Though not as mean-spirited as her friend Bunny, Uma's still quite far from pleasant.
• Not So Above It All: As much as she seems to despise Charles, Oliver, and Mabel, she does join in on their scheme to out Bunny's murderer. She also steals stuff despite hating the trio's meddling.
• Replacement Flat Character: Bunny's similarly cantankerous sidekick who is still around after the former's passing. Unlike Bunny though, we've yet to see much in the ways of Hidden Depths from her.
• Perpetual Frowner: Her face seems to be locked in a permanent scowl.
• Sticky Fingers: Season 3 reveals she has a habit of taking other people's items, even sometimes pickpocketing them. In her narration, she rationalizes the habit by saying people come and go but their possessions remain so she's taking keepsakes in memory.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: She says that she considered Bunny to be dead to her many times over the course of their friendship but that they always made up. She also says that she was grateful that they were on good terms at the time of Bunny's murder.

Howard Morris

Played by: Michael Cyril Creighton

A resident of the Arconia whose cat Evelyn died the same night Tim Kono was murdered.

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• Acquired Situational Narcissism: When he is hired as Oliver's assistant in Season 3, he is frequently egotistical when left in charge.
• Afraid of Blood: Charles and Mabel try to weasel a confession out of him but when he Faints in Shock at the sight of Charles' bleeding nose, they realize he couldn't be the killer given how much blood was found at the crime scene; he would have passed out and likely been found at the crime scene before he came to.
• Bad "Bad Acting": His contributions to Season 2's climactic summation are a couple of stilted lines and a badly telegraphed faint. He also gets rejected for Death Rattle due to his apparent lack of talent.
• Beleaguered Assistant: Although he's pretty incompetent, Oliver hires Howard as his assistant for Death Rattle. Oliver then consistently insults him.
• Camp Gay: He's very flamboyant and much more feminine than the other men on the show, and in "Hello, Darkness", he is confirmed to be attracted to men.
• Consistent Clothing Style: Howard is always shown wearing a patterned wool sweater and slacks.
• Crazy Cat Lady: A Rare Male Example, though his Camp Gay nature helps with that. Howard is obsessed with his cats, is shown to have a gigantic picture of Barbara in his apartment, refuses to move or touch anything in the wake of Evelyn's death, and keeps her body in his fridge.
• Fake Faint: Faints presumably in shock when Charles comes back to life in the season 2 finale. But then reveals it was faked for Rule of Drama.
• Insecure Love Interest: In Season 2, Howard says that he doesn't know what Jonathan would see in him. He also gets Mabel and Tobert to follow Jonathan in Season 3.
• Introverted Cat Person: His apartment is devoted to his cats. His behaviour however skews toward Crazy Cat Lady territory in the aftermath of Evelyn's death as he doesn't clean his apartment so he can pretend she is still alive, and Charles discovers the corpse of Evelyn inside his freezer.
• It's All About Me: When Jonathan becomes incapacitated in the Season 3 finale, Howard shows very little concern about him, despite the fact that they're dating, seeing it as an opportunity to fulfill his Broadway aspirations. Oliver doesn't consider it for a second.
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish": Parodied. Howard is defined by his adoration of his cats, and he brags about how the trio could never guess his password. Mabel asks him if it's "Evelyn", the name of his cat. He denies it, but that sure looks like Blatant Lies.
• Promoted to Opening Titles: In Season 3, Michael Cyril Creighton is added to the opening credits and an animation of Howard walking his cat is included in the title sequence.
• Stereotypical Nerd: Howard is very insecure, wears Nerd Glasses, is obsessed with his cats, and wears old-fashioned sweaters.

Jonathan Bridgecroft

Played by: Jason Veasey

A new resident at the Arconia, an actor in Death Rattle, and Howard's boyfriend.

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• Beautiful Singing Voice: Jonathan meets Howard while singing in the blackout, sings in Death Rattle, and also has a night job as a restaurant singer.
• Intoxication Ensues: Due to opening-night jitters, he takes too much of the "leading-man cocktail" prescribed to him and he ends up too loopy to go on stage for Death Rattle Dazzle. What makes this worse is that there's no formal understudy who can take his place.
• Straight Gay: The only stereotypically "gay" thing about Jonathan is that he's an actor in the theatre, and that he's dating Howard.

Lester

Played by: Teddy Coluca

The Arconia's doorman.

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• Hero of Another Story: In Season 2, he reveals that he is a graduate of the Juilliard School, tread the boards as a theater actor, and had a rivalry with Tracy Letts.
• Hidden Depths: See above, and also that he tries to use ASL to communicate with Theo.
• Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: He says that he became the Arconia's doorman because it was the only job he could find after becoming an alcoholic and spending some time as a homeless person.
• Nice Guy: Shown to the be only one in the building (aside from Theo's father Teddy) who made an effort to learn ASL to communicate with Theo Dimas.

Ndidi Idoko

"That apartment is mine. I lived next to that miserable man for eight years and I need those extra rooms."

Played by: Zainab Jah

Tim Kono's next-door neighbor.

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• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: She is not seen past Season 1.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's rather brusque and direct, having only attended Tim's memorial to demand that she gets Tim's apartment because she believes she deserves the extra space for having to endure living next to Tim for so many years. She later genuinely assists the trio in solving Tim's murder, recognizing their efforts and that they are more competent than the police at this point. And she obviously doesn't want to continue living in the same building as a murderer.
• The One Thing I Don't Hate About You: Despite apparently disliking Tim Kono more than anyone else in the building, she is nothing but complimentary of his skills in the bedroom given how loud and enthusiastic his partner was.

Dr. Grover Stanley

"I live on six and I take Venmo!"

Played by: Russell G. Jones

A therapist who lives in the Arconia.

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• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: He is not seen in Season 3.
• Shipper on Deck: He encourages Howard to ask Jonathan out, since Howard has been wanting to get out more and is obviously into Jonathan.
• The Shrink: Is a therapist, but it's unknown how effective he actually is, since all his scenes involve him plugging his business and seems more concerned with how potential clients should pay him first.

Arnav

Played by: Maulik Pancholy

Charles' next-door neighbor.

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• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Isn't seen nor mentioned in season 2 other than Lucy namedropping his daughter.
• Nice Guy: One of the few friendly people who live in the Arconia, and one of the even rarer few who actually likes interacting with Charles. He makes a point of checking up on Charles and asking about his ex-girlfriend's daughter.
• Papa Wolf: In the first season finale, he thinks he smells gas in the building and immediately runs to get his daughter out.

Nina Lin

Played by: Christine Ko

Bunny's successor as president of the Arconia's co-op board. She has grand ambitions for the building.

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• Alpha Bitch: Charles, Oliver, Mabel, and even Howard think of her as such due to her bossy demeanor. Howard even reveals Nina punched him over a disagreement.
• Ambition Is Evil: She wants to add a large, glass-paneled pod to the top of the Arconia as part of a modernization plan. Bunny disagreed with this and wanted to go back on her decision to step down to prevent Nina's plans from happening.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: She wanted rid of Bunny...from the position of co-op board president. When Bunny died, she was shown to be genuinely upset and to be overwhelmed by her role, wishing for Bunny's input.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Nina Lin is not seen in Season 3.
• Good Is Old-Fashioned: The mirror image. Nina wanted to "modernize" the Arconia by putting a huge, albeit pointless glass pod on the roof and was pretty cruel to Bunny about stopping it. However, she's also not the murderer.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's ruthlessly ambitious and mean, but after bonding with Lester in "Hello, Darkness" she decides to keep him on instead of automating his job. She also genuinely feels bad about Bunny's death and wants the killer caught.
• Kick the Dog: During their last conversation, she rather cruelly told Bunny she was "a relic," that she only got the job as super because of her family, and that she was dragging the Arconia down.
• Obnoxious Entitled Housewife: Nina is the president of the Arconia co-op board, and enjoys bossing people around. When Lester shows reluctance to climb several flights of stairs with her package since the elevator is out, she threatens to replace him with a drone. She also punches Howard and backstabs Bunny in her effort to change the Arconia.
• Parting-Words Regret: Nina cruelly tells Bunny that she's "a relic" and she won't let her change the Arconia. She is shown to regret this deeply after Bunny's murder.
• Pet the Dog: Redeeming herself from the Kick the Dog above, Nina tells Lester that she wishes Bunny was here to see her daughter because Bunny was so excited for the birth.
• Red Herring: For Season 2. At first, her history with Bunny makes her a prime suspect, especially when Charles and Mabel overhear an incriminating conversation between her and her husband. However, the team decides Nina is innocent after hearing her exclaim how much she hopes they find Bunny's killer while giving birth.

Sting

Played by: Sting

The global superstar, who happens to live in the same building as the series' protagonists. He ends up on their suspect list.

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• Adam Westing: Plays an exaggerated version of himself. He's depicted as moody and cold, his song-writing abilities are mocked, and the creepy overtones of "Every Breath You Take" are openly called out by Mabel. He's also a suspect in the murder of Tim Kono.
• As Himself: Appears as a fictional version of himself who lives in the Arconia alongside the three protagonists. Even he turns out to be a suspect.
• Drowning My Sorrows: According to Lester the doorman, he did this after The Police broke up. And Lester promised not to tell anyone.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: First seems cold and standoffish, but the thought of causing Tim's death absolutely shakes him and he's much more affable once that weight is lifted from his shoulders.
• My God, What Have I Done?: He initially holds great guilt over Tim Kono's death as he got Tim fired and thought that it caused depression which led to suicide. He's relieved to find out that it might actually be murder.
• Pet the Dog: Acts annoyed by Oliver's dog Winnie. When Oliver asks if he doesn't like dogs, he responds that he has one himself. And doesn't like him.
• Put on a Bus: He moves out of the Arconia at an unspecified point after being interviewed during the Tim Kono investigation. The first episode of Season 2 shows his things being carted away and Amy Schumer moving in.

Amy Schumer

Played by: Amy Schumer

A stand-up comedian and actress who moves into the Arconia's penthouse previously occupied by Sting.

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• Adam Westing: Schumer pokes fun at public perception of herself, with the show version having an enormous ego and being eager to try more dramatic work to be seen as a serious artist.
• Ascended Fanboy: She's a huge Only Murders in the Building fan and wants to star in a screen adaptation of the podcast.
• As Herself: Schumer plays a fictional version of herself.
• Fun with Acronyms: She reveals that she once fantasized with marrying Charles when he was at the peak of his fame, and takes great delight in pointing out that, had that happened, her initials would have spelled out "ass" (Amy Schumer-Savage).
• It's All About Me: She wants to adapt Only Murders in the Building as a starring vehicle for herself where she gets all the attention as Jan, who, in Schumer's mind, will be the central character re-conceived as a sympathetic Anti-Hero rather than a cold-blooded Serial Killer.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: She disappears after the first two episodes of Season 2 and is not even considered a suspect like Sting was. She then moves out offscreen sometime between seasons 2 and 3, with Ben Glenroy moving into the penthouse during that time.

Family

Will Putnam

"Turns out, you can hide a secret from my dad. You just have to not know what you're hiding."

Played by: Ryan Broussard, Carter Harris (young)

Oliver's son, a veterinarian by trade who ends up getting involved in theatre by directing the school play at his children's school.

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• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Despite their strained relationship, Will genuinely loves Oliver and considers him his true father regardless of his actual ancestry.
• Broken Pedestal: Will used to be very close to his father but lost faith after Oliver drained his college fund to stage an expensive flop. This loss of trust only worsened as Will got older and Oliver kept coming to him for large loans that never go repaid. By the time of the series, the two are slowly rebuilding their relationship.
• Family Business: Oliver is amused and excited to hear Will is directing a School Play, joking it's in the blood. Ironically, Will is a vet, and his half-brother Theo works in a mortuary, suggesting that medicine-adjacent fields are in that bloodline, too.
• Small Parent, Huge Child: The fact that Will is twice Oliver's size instantly foreshadows the revelation that Oliver is not his biological father.
• Long Bus Trip: Will doesn't come to see Oliver (on screen, anyway) when he's in hospital with his second heart attack or to see Death Rattle.
• Not Actually His Child: He is shocked to find out that he's half-Greek through a DNA test, which hints that Oliver, who is of Irish descent, might not be his biological father. And indeed, his real father is revealed to be Teddy Dimas, but Oliver falsely claims to be Greek himself to keep him from finding out. Will ultimately does figure out the truth, though he assures Oliver that he's his father in every way that matters.
• School Play: As of season 2, he is busy with the rehearsals of a theatre adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz at his children's school, which he agreed to direct.

Lucy

Played by: Zoe Colletti, Francesca Rain (young)

The teenage daughter of Charles' ex-girlfriend.

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• Bratty Teenage Daughter: To her mother, though what we see of her implies that she has good reason. She repeatedly skips school and hides out at Charles's apartment, though it makes sense given that her mother seems to move on very quickly from man to man.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Joy takes her home in the first episode of Season 3 and she is not seen nor mentioned after that.
• Daddy's Girl: Played with. Charles isn't her biological father, nor was he ever officially her stepfather, but they lived together for six years and he adores her, and it's clear the feeling is mutual. She outright says that of the five father figures she's had in her life, he's the best one. It's heavily implied the reason she dislikes her new stepfather is because he isn't Charles. However, Charles not contacting after he and her mother broke up for several years also deeply hurt her, and she calls him on it when they finally reconnect. Luckily, she's willing to forgive and move on.
• Innocently Insensitive: She gushes over "Bloody Mabel"'s celebrity status and how cool it is, not realizing how traumatic the experience of seeing Bunny die and subsequently being accused of her murder was for Mabel.
• Motor Mouth: When she starts talking, she starts talking. Mabel is left to talk to her on the grounds that as a fellow young woman she'd be able to understand her, but Mabel can barely get a word in and is quickly intimidated by her rapid-fire questions and comments.
• Put on a Bus: Joy takes her home in the first episode of Season 3 and she isn't seen again for that season.
• Queer Establishing Moment: Downplayed, as nothing's definite, but she references "when I inevitably change my pronouns" while talking with Mabel, implying she's either done some gender questioning and perhaps isn't cisgender, or is at least open to the possibility that she might not be. Given how she talks about mental health, however, this might just be the writers parodying Gen-Z culture with how normalised mental health and the idea of transitioning and changing pronouns is among them.
• Totally Radical: Much of Lucy's dialogue is a succession of rapid-fire "Generation Z" speak and slang. It's so inexplicable that it baffles Mabel in about four sentences.
• TV Teen: The bulk of Lucy's characterisation is based on how Generation-Z is perceived by those older than them. She talks a lot and uses slang terms like "bet" that nobody understands, she goes on at-length about her use of TikTok, and her attitudes towards mental health and gender identity are extremely casual and simple, knowing a great deal about the terminology of the former and expressing envy at Mabel apparently having PTSD, and idealising the idea of changing her gender identity. She's also played by an actress older than her character while also being the shortest person in the cast, just to tick off some classic teen tropes.
• Unseen No More: She is only mentioned in Season One and does not actually appear in person until Episode Four of Season Two.

Charles-Haden Savage, Sr.

Played by: Ben Livingston

Charles' father, whom he has mixed feelings toward.

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• Broken Pedestal: Charles Jr. got along very well with his father and supported his aspirations for theater acting by attending his auditions. However, in the aftermath of Charles Sr.’s arrest and the reveal of his infidelity, Charles Jr. began to believe his father was secretly a “bad man” who didn’t care about him or his mom. However, Season 2 Episode 9 subverts this to Rebuilt Pedestal as Rose Cooper/Leonora Folger reveals that even in the midst of his shift in personality and the unsavory aspects of his secret life, he never stopped loving and caring about Charles Jr.
• Disappeared Dad: After years of aloof and neglectful behavior towards his wife and son, Charles Sr. eventually abandoned his family.
• Generation Xerox: In a speech to Mabel, Charles says that he and his father share many similarities, including both going gray at a young age and having a knack for music.
• Good Adultery, Bad Adultery: Charles says that his father had numerous affairs that hurt his mother badly.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Although Charles has apparently been haunted by his secretive behavior, Rose Cooper encourages him to see past that due to the fact that he loved his son and was haunted by her disappearance.
• Parents as People: He was a complicated man, who did in fact love his son and wanted to do well by him, but was also having an affair with Rose Cooper. Her disappearance broke his heart and apparently led to the emotionally distant behavior Charles experienced.
• Same Character, But Different: Season 1 strongly implies that Charles Snr. was abusive to his wife and son. The Charles we see in Season 2 flashbacks is much softer and kinder.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Very downplayed and Played for Drama. In flashbacks, he was an emotionally-present and kind father. However, it is indicated in dialogue that after the night of his arrest; along with both Charles Jr. and his wife’s discovering of his double life, he adopted a detached personality.

Silvia Mora

Played by: Mandy Gonzalez

Mabel's mother, who lives in Bayport.

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• Informed Attribute: Her overprotectiveness, aside from her attempt to stop Mabel from doing the podcast.
• Invisible Parents: Silvia appears for a single episode in Season 1, but other than that, she's not shown visiting Mabel or even talking to her despite Mabel's numerous near-death experiences.
• My Beloved Smother: Silvia is very protective of Mabel, and very concerned about her decisions, claiming only to "let her" live at the Arconia under specific circumstances. Somewhat justified by the amount Mabel has been through and her preexisting mental health conditions.

Salma Ramirez

Played by: Eva Longoria

Mabel's aunt, who owns the Arconia apartment in which Mabel is staying.

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• The Ghost: Mabel and her mother talk about her aunt, but she isn't seen or heard, not even in photographs or flashback, so far.
• Uncle Pennybags: She is quite wealthy^note since she can afford to own a large apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side and had Mabel come live with her over the summers so her niece could experience big-city life. In the show's present, she lets Mabel renovate her apartment so that Mabel can use the experience to kickstart a design career.
• Unseen No More: She isn't seen throughout Seasons 1 to 3.

Joy Payne

Played by: Andrea Martin

A professional make-up artist who handled Charles back when he starred in Brazzos. They reconnect decades later and start a relationship.

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• Crazy Cat Lady: Except with fish. She has a large tank that holds precisely 62 fish, reasoning that 61 is too few but that 63 is too crowded. She regularly visits fish stores so she can buy new tank accessories to keep her pets amused.
• Flanderization: Joy starts off as a quirky but still kindly woman. By Season 3, she's extremely possessive and annoys Charles.
• Punny Name: Her name is "Joy" and "Pain". Season 3 lampshades this by saying Charles's insecurity in the relationship is because he's afraid of joy-lowercase- rather than Joy-uppercase.

Death Rattle

For Death Rattle participants Howard and Jonathan, see their profiles above under "The Arconia".

Ben Glenroy

"Is he a cobra? Yeah! Is he a bro? Yeah! That's how you gross two bil, Oliver!"

Played by: Paul Rudd

An arrogant actor best-known for popcorn flicks such as Cobro. He attempts to prove himself as a serious actor by performing the lead in Death Rattle, a production helmed by Oliver.

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• Actor Allusion: Ben is best-known for starring in the Cobro series of movies, which are about a bro who turns into a cobra. Somewhat similar to how Paul Rudd has become famous for starring as Scott Lang/Ant-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A Meaningful Background Event also reveals that Ben Glenroy played "Papa Ant".
• Asshole Victim: Zigzagged. As his storyline progresses, Ben's character is fleshed out more and more. His assholeness and putting people down, including his brother, stems from his own insecurities. When he is killed, people believe him to be an arrogant actor through and through and only the Trio finds out that Ben was deeper than what he let on.
• Berserk Button: Being called a "phony", after his experience as a child actor in Brazzos. Cliff throws it back at him in response to Ben calling him a nepo baby, triggering a fight between the two that led to Ben's death.
• Casting Gag: Ben Glenroy was written with "a touch of asshole" (per series creator John Hoffman) specifically for Paul Rudd because Rudd is known as one of the nicest people in Hollywood.
• Cheated Death, Died Anyway: Ben collapses and dies from poisoning, but he's then revived and killed from being pushed down an elevator shaft.
• Dawson Casting: In-universe. Ben says he was twenty-nine when he played a high schooler in Girl Cop.
• Dead Star Walking: Despite being played by movie star Paul Rudd, he dies within minutes of his introduction at the end of season 2, but returns after showing he survived his murder attempt, only to be killed by the end of the episode.
• Faux Death: Ben is clinically dead as the result of a poisoning but doctors pump his stomach and manage to revive him. His new lease on life does not last, as he is later pushed down an elevator shaft in the Arconia and dies for real.
• Forgotten First Meeting: As a child actor, Ben was set to appear on Brazzos as Timothy Bush, a boy genius. However, Charles viewed him as a "phony", and pushed for the director to have Ben fired. Charles doesn't remember any of this until Ben brings it up during a confrontation following the first table read for Death Rattle.
• Fatal Method Acting: In-universe. Ben dies onstage partway through his opening night performance.
• Freudian Excuse: He claims that his jerk-ish behavior is because Charles got him fired off of Brazzos when he was eight-years-old and that this left him with lifelong self-esteem issues that caused him to overcompensate.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: His brush with death causes him to realise what a jerk he's been to his fellow cast members. When he shows up alive, he promises to treat them better. But he's murdered before he can make good on that promise.
• Hidden Depths: Ben had a fair amount of self-loathing due to his weakness for cookies. He even agreed with Loretta when she called him a "fucking pig" and wrote it on his dressing room mirror.
  • "Thirty" reveals he was learning to sew with a group of older women as a way of coping with his addictions and sewed the hankies he was going to give the rest of the cast and crew. His sewing circle not making it to opening night was part of what led him to eat the poisoned cookie and collapse onstage.
  • He manages to figure out that Donna poisoned him, along with her motive, in the space of roughly 20 seconds.
• Hypocrite: He has a grudge against Charles because the latter viewed him as a "phony" and pushed for the director to fire him from his first acting role. Yet, he viewed Loretta the very same way during the first script reading and tried to get Oliver to fire her.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Right as he is taking the stage, he is seen coughing from the fog. A minute or so later, he is coughing up blood and dies on the stage. Turns out he was poisoned with a cookie that was left for him.
• It's All About Me: Ben has Hidden Depths, but he's still an egotistical jerk who bullied Dickie for most of their lives and viewed himself as the protagonist.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Ben was a jerk to most people, including his brother Dickie. But he apparently felt guilty about the way he treated his fellow cast members so he joined a sewing circle to make special handkerchiefs for them.
• Manipulative Bastard: Dickie says that their relationship would break repeatedly when Ben was alive, but that Ben would always find a way to guilt him back.
• Nervous Wreck: In "Thirty", he descends into going into one through many things happening in his life, including his brother quitting on him, fasting, and his sewing circle not being at the performance. This leads to him eating a cookie left for him that was laced with rat poison.
• Obsessed with Food: As Ben suffered from an immense amount of Weight Woe, he was both disgusted by and obsessed with food, often remarking on what he could and couldn't eat. Donna exploited this by persuading him to eat a poisoned cookie.
• Plagiarism in Fiction: Cobro was based on a comic that Ben conceived as a child — or so the world thought until Mabel saw the original artwork and realized that the original author for "R. Glenroy" (Richard Glenroy, aka Dickie, Ben's older brother) and that Ben had added a line to the first letter to make it look like a "B" and stole the concept for himself.
• Posthumous Character: He dies at the beginning of Season 3 but remains a presence in most of the remaining episodes through flashbacks and imagine spots.
• Spoiled Brat: Even now in his forties or fifties, Ben was the beloved Baby Of The Bunch of his family, and he's just as spoiled.

Loretta Durkin

"Theater is all about choices."

Played by: Meryl Streep, Taylor Colwell (teen), Willa Dunn (young)

An unsuccessful actress who's spent decades waiting for her big shot. She seems to have finally found it in Oliver's new production.

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• Bad "Bad Acting": She wows Oliver with a moving monologue during her audition. However, she gets a touch of nerves during the table reads and goes over the top, to the horror of everyone else.
• Casting Couch: This is implied to be how Loretta falls pregnant with Dickie.
• Casting Gag: Meryl Streep has had an extremely successful fifty-year career in Hollywood. Her character, Loretta, is very unsuccessful and is still hopefully searching for her big break.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After decades of hard work at her career and even being willing to confess to murder to protect Dickie, Loretta ends the season having finally reconnected with her son, now her manager, with the world of acting finally opening up for her.
• Lethal Chef: Her oven-roasted pork chops are so tough that Oliver loses a tooth when he tries biting into one.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: It's eventually revealed that she is Dickie Glenroy's birth mother.
• Mama Bear: Loretta immediately turns on everyone else in the show the minute that she thinks her biological son, Dickie, is the killer. When she sees him being arrested, she confesses to the crime.
• Motherly Side Plait: Loretta always wears her hair in plaits, and she is Dickie's biological mother.
• Put on a Bus: Season 3 ends with the strong implication that Loretta is leaving to go to L.A.
• Romance on the Set: In-universe example. She and Oliver are smitten with each other but she intends to honor his rule about avoiding on-set romances. However, he eventually throws caution to the wind and the two kiss passionately.
• She Really Can Act: invoked After making a bad impression during Death Rattle's table reads, Loretta show's she has what it takes to move audiences when she previews "Look for the Light".
• Shown Their Work: At the first table read for Death Rattle, she demonstrates that she's studied the script in detail by trying out a Scottish accent (because her character mentions Scottish ancestry) and a French-Canadian accent (because the play is set in the Canadian Maritimes).
• Star-Making Role: In-universe. Her role in Death Rattle is this for her, though it may have more to do with getting Dickie as her manager.
• Stalker without a Crush: She has a scrapbook filled with news articles about Ben Glenroy. It turns out that she was not stalking Ben but keeping track of her long-lost son Dickie.

Donna Demeo

Played by: Linda Emond

A controlling and flamboyant producer who has a strange relationship with her son.

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• Alliterative Name: Donna Demeo.
• Blood from the Mouth: Donna vomits in Foreshadowing of her cancer diagnosis.
• Evil Counterpart: To Loretta Durkin. Both are mothers with only sons who go to extreme lengths to protect them. But Donna is an attempted murderer, while Loretta is innocent.
• Expy: Alongside the Stephanie Seymour similarities noted below, the rest of Donna's character is based on Daryl Roth, an extremely wealthy theatre producer whose son Jordan has followed her into the Family Business.
• High-Powered Career Woman: Donna is a very famous producer with theatrical mannerisms. She is even shown as being on the phone at the moment that she gives birth to Cliff.
• Mama Bear: She is so protective of her son Cliff that she is willing to resort to attempted murder to make sure his first play does not fail.
• Mother Makes You King: Cliff isn't shown to be a particularly competent producer, but his mother Donna is, so she is shepherding Death Rattle to the stage (while insisting that she isn't producing it, Cliff is).
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: The physically intimate relationship Donna has with Cliff is brushed off as being OK because Cliff is gay. This is similar to Stephanie Seymour and her tendency to be photographed in intimate poses with her sons and the family brushing it off as nothing scandalous because her sons are gay.
• Power Hair: Donna is an important producer with short and pretty solid hair.
• Refuge in Audacity: Donna justifies her touchy-feely relationship with her son by saying that he's gay.
• Secretly Dying: Donna is revealed to have stage 4 lung cancer in Season 3 finale.
• Terminally-Ill Criminal: Donna has stage 4 lung cancer, and she killed Ben (the first time) by giving him a poisoned cookie in order to protect Cliff's reputation. Though it was Cliff's own attempt which stuck and killed him for real.

Cliff Demeo

Played by: Wesley Taylor

Donna's effeminate and pampered son, and also a producer.

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• Accidental Murder: He accidentally pushed Ben down the elevator shaft during a fight with him.
• Ambiguously Absent Parent: Only his mother Donna is mentioned, with no clear definition of who or where his father is.
• Berserk Button: Being described as a nepo baby and dismissed as a boy angers him.
• Camp Gay: Donna delightedly tells the cast that he's gay, and he has traditionally camp mannerisms and dances flamboyantly when stressed.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: He contrasts the first two seasons' killers, Jan and Poppy/Becky, on several points: he's male, the murder he commits is not premeditated (he claims it's an accident, although this is open to interpretation) and he is so far the only killer to never serve as opening narrator.
• Expy: Excluding the Stephanie Seymour parallels, he's a copy of the flamboyant and openly gay producer Jordan Roth, the "nepotism son" of Daryl Roth (herself an inspiration for Cliff's mother Donna).
• Extremely Protective Child: A combination of his love for his mother Donna and his frustration with constantly being connected with her leads him to push Ben down the elevator shaft.
• Haunting the Guilty: A variation; as he threatens to leap off the Broadway attic after Mabel confronts him regarding Ben's murder, he looks down and sees Ben in Oliver's place in Death Rattle Dazzle's opening night.
• Meaningful Name: Death Rattle is set on an island populated by three killer babies. Ben played the detective investigating the babies. The juvenile and immature Cliff ended up pushing Ben down the elevator shaft - he fell down the Cliff.
• Momma's Boy: To a very creepy level. Donna kisses him on the lips and he was breastfed until a late age.
• Mother Makes You King: Cliff is a nepotism baby, not a great producer, and he's very sensitive about his mother's clear control of and dominance over his career.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: The physically intimate relationship Donna has with Cliff is brushed off as being OK because Cliff is gay. This is similar to Stephanie Seymour and her tendency to be photographed in intimate poses with her sons and the family brushing it off as nothing scandalous because her sons are gay.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Cliff appears pretty nice and genial most of the time, but the combination of threatening Donna and being mocked as her "boy" leads him to push Ben down the elevator shaft, killing him. That said the incident wasn't premeditated and he insists it was an accident, making him a more sympathetic killer than Jan and Poppy/Becky.

Dickie Glenroy

Played by: Jeremy Shamos

Ben Glenroy's older brother and manager.

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• Adoption Angst: Downplayed. Dickie doesn't seem to have too much of an issue over being adopted by the Glenroys, but he's been driven close to madness over how his life revolves around catering to the whims of Ben, the family's biological golden child.
• Big Brother Instinct: Ben was considered the Glenroy family's miracle baby so Dickie was protective of him from a young age. No matter how obnoxious and badly behaved Ben became, Dickie would always shield the worst of it to protect Ben's reputation.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Dickie was adopted because his parents thought they couldn't have natural children. When Ben was conceived, he was considered a miracle so his needs were prioritized aboved Dickie's. While Dickie tries to brush this off as something older brothers need to do, it's clear it wore on him.
• Hypocrite: He complains about people trying to make money off his late brother Ben while auctioning off Ben's movie memorabilia.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Dickie was adopted by the Glenroys. It's revealed that his biological mother is Loretta Durkin.
• Parents Know Their Children: Inverted. Dickie reveals that he suspected Loretta was his mother almost immediately.
• The Unfavorite: Dickie explicitly says that Ben was their parents' favorite child, and Dickie had to protect him all the time because of it.

Matthew Broderick

Played by: Matthew Broderick

An acclaimed actor known for projects like Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Producers. He's brought on to replace Charles in Death Rattle Dazzle.

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• Adam Westing: Matthew Broderick plays a fictional version of himself who is deep into method acting and obsessed with finding the truth about his character no matter how thin the material is.
• Always Someone Better: He and Charles have gone up for the same roles in the past with Matthew always coming out on top. When playing the Constable in Death Rattle, Matthew shows that he can nail patter songs with little rehearsal while Charles crumbles under the pressure.
• Celebrity Paradox: There is mention of The Producers and Oliver gets on a call with Mel Brooks to talk about Matthew's behavior on that show. The call tiptoes around the fact that Matthew's co-star in that production and the film version was Nathan Lane, who plays Teddy Dimas in this series.
• Method Acting: invoked He tries to dig deep into the character of the Constable and constantly goes back to the drawing board to incorporate new background details while Oliver just wants the day to end.
  Matthew: So, Oliver, where's he from? Where's he from originally, this constable?
  Oliver: Oh, he's from where you're from so we don't have to change anything else.
  Matthew: He's from Manhattan? Well slap my ass and call me Mamie. This changes his entire relation to his profession! A kid from Manhattan in the 1890s...the city roils with ethnic tension...Irishmen...the Prussians...the era of the bicycle craze...the horse-drawn trolley... Yeah...this calls for some rethinking!
• Pet the Dog: Although he generally looks down on Charles, he does seem to genuinely appreciate his performance in Death Rattle Dazzle and compliments how Charles nailed the run of a Nova Scotian police constable.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: He ends up staying at Oliver's apartment until the small hours of the morning, tirelessly trying to get to the heart of what it means to be a 19th-century Nova Scotian police constable. Oliver, meanwhile, is delirious with anger and exhaustion and trying to get Broderick to leave so he can get some sleep.

Kimber Min

Played by: Ashley Park

A cast member in Death Rattle.

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• Asian Airhead: Downplayed. Kimber openly admits to not caring what is in the makeup she shills, and she is easily flattered, especially by Ben.
• Attention Whore: She shows hints of this, as she admits in voiceover she doesn't want anyone shining brighter than her on stage due to the competitive nature of the theatre industry. This happens moments after we have seen her harmonize with Loretta unprompted during what was supposed to be Loretta's solo in an apparent attempt to steal her thunder.
• Bad Influencer: She has her own line of beauty products that she shills on TikTok but confesses that they're all just snake oil and have no beneficial effects.
• Shout-Out: Kimber's surname, as revealed by her dressing room sign, is Min, which is also the surname of Ashley Park's cousin Justin H. Min.

K.T.

Played by: Allison Guinn

Stage manager of Death Rattle.

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• Hypercompetent Sidekick: K.T. is shown to be the most knowledgeable person about how the theatre works, and is also the only one of the production team to be dead set on getting the show up with minimal fuss, unlike Oliver and Howard.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: For all her abruptness and apparent rudeness, K.T. is very kind to Howard in "Ghost Light" when she directs his performance.
• Perpetual Frowner: Even on the rare occasions when she isn't being outwardly hostile, K.T. rarely smiles.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Downplayed, but K.T.'s sourness is revealed to be motivated by how she longs to be a director, not a stage manager.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: K.T. despises Oliver for reasons that are not clear to anyone and is constantly rude to him and blunt (though it may also be that she's much more no-nonsense to Oliver's flamboyance).

Tobert

Played by: Jesse Williams

A filmmaker who was hired to make a documentary about Ben Glenroy's Broadway debut in Death Rattle.

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• Mr. Fanservice: Courtesy of being played by Jesse Williams. At one point he even walks into a scene with only a towel on.
• Nature Documentary: Before he was hired to do Ben’s documentary, he filmed wildlife in Botswana.
• Phrase Catcher: He doesn't say it enough to qualify as a Character Catchphrase, but both he and Mabel dismissively describe his name as being "Robert with a T".
• Put on a Bus: Strongly implied at the end of Season 3, when he gets an opportunity to shoot an indie film in L.A. He invites Mabel to move with him but she declines.
• Unfortunate Names: Nobody likes Tobert's name. The entire trio notes that it's a stupid name and Mabel says that she can barely bring herself to say it out loud despite dating the man.

Jerry Blau

Played by: Peter Bartlett

The previous director for Death Rattle and an old acquaintance of Oliver's. After getting fired from the show, he took residence in the theater's attic.

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• Camp Gay: He shares Oliver's camp mannerism and mentions having a male partner at home.
• Non-Residential Residence: He lives in the theatre attic because of depression over being fired and to avoid his partner's bad cooking.
• Reduced To Rat Burgers: It's shown that he's been catching rats for food.
• Secret Squatter: He lives in the theatre attic, unknown to everyone. Oliver finds out about him in Ghost Light, but there's no indication if he told anyone.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: After getting fired as the director of Death Rattle he elected to camp out in the theater rather than go home partly due to depression and partly because his partner is a lousy cook.

Other Characters

Cinda Canning

"Embrace the mess. That's where the good stuff lives."

Played by: Tina Fey

A True Crime podcaster whose work inspires Charles, Oliver, and Mabel to dig into Tim Kono's death.

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• Absurd Phobia: It's revealed that she is terrified of slow motion and the insides of tomatoes.
• Alliterative Name: Cinda Canning.
• Bad Boss: Cinda is horrible to work for: emotionally abusive, throws things at her employees multiple times, and demeans them in public.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Acts friendly and polite the trio, but later goes on to publicly make fun of them on TV and is shown to mistreat and plagiarize her assistants. In season 2, she's also implicating them in the death of Bunny just so she can make a podcast out of it, never mind that her regular abuse of her staff was indirectly responsible for the death.
• Bizarre Taste in Food: Cinda is shown asking Poppy for a chicken sandwich...that is just chicken, "with a little bread on the side."
• Broken Pedestal: Charles, Mabel, and Oliver all meet because of their love for Cinda's podcast. When she actually enters their lives, however, she ends up exploiting them for her own gain and proves to be a Jerkass.
• Corrupted Character Copy: Of Sarah Koenig, host of Serial. Both have dark wavy hair, similar glasses, and slow soothing voices on their famous podcasts.
• Crazy Enough to Work: She says she got an interview subject to let her in by bringing a fully cooked turkey to their door, saying no one will turn away someone who went through the trouble of cooking a large bird for them.
• Everyone Has Standards: She might be an Immoral Journalist and a total Jerkass, but even she's appalled that her own assistant murdered someone in cold blood for the attention.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: In Season 3, she ditches her Brainy Brunette facade to invoke Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold, now having blonde hair instead.
• Expy: Having started the show as an expy for Sarah Koenig, by Season 3, she has become one for Gwyneth Paltrow.
• Famed In-Story: She's an extremely popular and influential podcast host, having inspired many, including our heroes, to follow in her footsteps.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: The manipulative, self-centred Cinda wears a pair of prominent glasses.
• Girlboss Feminist: She's shown recording an ad for her podcast sponsors showing they're sponsored by food products marketed as "By women, for women", right as she's releasing an episode of her podcast where she interviews a guy who sexually assaulted Mabel at a previous workplace and is crying victim because she defended herself and he got injured. Even beyond that, she treats her (women) employees abusively and is casually destroying Mabel's life for views, making it clear she's the kind of "Girl Boss" who will casually destroy other women to promote herself while using her own success to claim she's championing women.
• Glad I Thought of It: When her assistant Poppy proposes Only Murderers in the Building for a podcast title, she claims it and threatens to ruin her career if she says otherwise. Season 2 reveals that Poppy also pitched the title of her star-making podcast, All Is Not OK in Oklahoma, and Cinda did the same then.
• Hypocrite: She's shown recording an ad for her podcast sponsors showing they're sponsored by food products marketed as "By women, for women", right as she's releasing an episode of her podcast where she interviews a guy who sexually assaulted Mabel at a previous workplace and is crying victim because she defended herself and he got injured. Even beyond that, she treats her (women) employees abusively and is casually destroying Mabel's life for views, making it clear she's the kind of "Girl Boss" who will casually destroy other women to promote herself while using her own success to claim she's championing women.
• Immoral Journalist: Reveals herself as this in Season 2, especially in "Performance Review", when we see her Jerkass side through the eyes of her assistant Poppy. Cinda is totally fine with sensationalizing stories for the sake of listeners and regularly abuses and manipulates her employees. When she was first informed of Becky Butler's disappearance, she hoped she was dead because it sells more, and when the main trio are implicated in a murder, she gleefully twists any evidence to support the belief Mabel killed her, even digging up a former colleague who had sexually assaulted Mabel and was injured when she defended herself.
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals: Her assistants all look and dress like her, even aping her makeover in Season 3. Given her obvious ego, it's not hard to imagine this is a conscious decision on her part.
• Intrepid Reporter: She investigates murders and then documents the investigation for a podcast. In Season Two, she rips off the trio's format of putting out the podcast while the investigation is still ongoing.
• Jerkass: Despite her professional and polite demeanor, she reveals herself to be a nasty piece of work.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Her advice to Poppy, supposedly taken from Katharine Graham ("Don't be too good at a job you hate") certainly has a grain of truth to it.
• The Makeover: To signal her shift from being an Expy of Sarah Koenig to one of Gwyneth Paltrow, she has blonde hair and has ditched her glasses for loose white clothing in Season 3.
• Mean Boss: In Season 1, she's seen verbally abusing her assistants and plagiarizing their good ideas as her own. In Season 2, it's revealed that she physically assaults them when angered and destroys objects and equipment in rages.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Canning is a take on investigative journalist Sarah Koenig and her work on the Serial documentary podcast.
• Pet the Dog: Despite her later actions, she did agree to meet with the trio to help them with their podcast, as a favor for a mutual acquaintance. She also gives them genuinely good advice. Also, when it seems they've figured out the real killer and its not Mabel, she apologises and praises her highly for her skills, though this was largely staged as part of the plan to get Becky Butler/Poppy White to confess. Regardless, the final episode of her podcast about the Bunny Folger murder, Only Murderers in the Building, is presented as a collaboration with Only Murders in the Building as a sign of goodwill.
• Red Herring: Season 2 initially presents her as a Glory Seeker who staged the disappearance of Becky Butler for a sensational story and then murdered Bunny Folger to craft another sensational story by framing Mabel for it. Turns out, Becky Butler herself was responsible for both of those things.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In Season 3, it's revealed that her reputation took a big hit after the revelations that All Is Not OK in Oklahoma, her signature work, was built on falsified evidence and that Poppy White, her assistant, is really Becky Butler, All Is Not OK's alleged victim, as well as a murderer. She had to take a year off and is trying to rebuild her career.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Despite the fact that Poppy does everything for her (and even masterminded All Is Not OK in Oklahoma), Cinda still screams at her, demeans her, and calls her useless.

Detective Williams

"We're born alone, we spend most of our time alone, then we all go out alone."

Played by: Da'Vine Joy Randolph

The NYPD detective responsible for Tim Kono's case. She wants to close it as a simple suicide but eventually realizes that there's something more at play.

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• All Lesbians Want Kids: Her wife is pregnant with their child. Although she's excited to become a mother, her need to compartmentalize her emotions due to the violent nature of her work makes it hard for her to express herself.
• Beautiful Singing Voice: She surprises Charles and Oliver with her absolutely fabulous singing.
• Berserk Button: She finds the True Crime genre irksome as so many fans now consider themselves amateur sleuths and bug her when they meet her during her cases. (Not to mention she has firsthand knowledge of what a murder is actually like.)
• Butch Lesbian: She's heavyset, jaded, and working in a male-dominated field. This puts her in stark visual contrast with her Lipstick Lesbian wife.
• Friend on the Force: Almost in spite of herself, she ends up becoming this for the main trio. When she realizes they were right about the Tim Kono case being mishandled, she decides to help them look into things off-the-record, and believes in their innocence when Bunny is killed. Williams is the only cop the gang feels comfortable turning to for help, and she's the only one that seems to like them.
• Hidden Depths:
  • This tough-as-nails cop is also a hardcore theatre geek who can knowledgeably compare and contrast castmembers from across multiple seasons and productions of the same show. She also has a gorgeous singing voice, as shown when she belts out lines from A Chorus Line.
  • Despite her nerves about having a child in the first season, she's shown to be good at taking care of her infant son after he's born.
• Inspector Lestrade: Played with. When we first meet her, she's understandably skeptical of the main characters and laments how True Crime fans have made it hard for her to do her job. However, the trope turns out to be played straight later on as Tim Kono's death is indeed revealed to be a murder and she decides to assist Mabel.
• Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple: She's the "masculine" to her wife's "feminine".
• Minority Police Officer: A black lesbian in the NYPD, which also helps that she's the only unquestionably good police officer we've seen so far.
• Mysterious Backer: Becomes this to the trio in episode 6, sending them evidence to help in their investigation after learning that her case was interfered with.
• Not So Above It All:
  • In "Flipping the Pieces", she acts annoyed when Oliver starts singing "One" from A Chorus Line to try to calm down her baby. Later on, she passionately belts out the song as she leaves (proving herself to be a very talented singer in the process).
  Williams: Like I don't fuckin' know A Chorus Line.
  • In "Sitzprobe", she stops the investigation to gush over Kimber and her apparently excellent performance as Roxy in Chicago.
• Put on a Bus: In Season 2, she goes on maternity leave and heads off to Denver, Colorado, leading to Charles, Oliver, and Mabel to realize the text messages they thought they were exchanging with Williams were actually with somebody else. The Bus Came Back after her maternity leave ends later in the season.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: When the trio start investigating a case that she closed, she looks back into it despite being sure that it was an open-and-shut suicide. Also, when the trio are framed and arrested at the end of season 1, she urges them not to say anything to avoid self-incrimination, in addition to the Miranda Rights they were likely already read.
• Sassy Black Woman: Seems pretty annoyed by the Amateur Sleuths and their podcast-based knowledgeinvoked of crime-scene investigation.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: She sends Mabel Tim Kono's phone at the end of episode 7, despite the fact that it is police evidence and doing so could get her into real trouble.
• Token Good Cop: The police are shown to be outright villainous — Kreps is working with Poppy/Becky in the conspiracy to kill Bunny in Season 2 — or not very competent, such as Detective Biswas. She's the sole exception, becoming fond of the trio against her better judgment, and ends up going above and beyond to help them (such as sending them Tim's phone) because she's aware there's something iffy going on with the police investigation.
• Twofer Token Minority: Williams is a black lesbian in a show with mostly white and straight people.

Sazz Pataki

Played by: Jane Lynch

Charles' former Stunt Double in Brazzos.

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• The Ace: Sazz is well-liked and seemingly great at everything, much to Charles' annoyance.
• Butch Lesbian: She has a fairly masculine fashion sense and makes a living as a stunt double for a man, and she's into women.
• Cross-Cast Role: In-universe. Sazz is a stuntwoman who doubled for the (male) Charles.
• Dating Catwoman: In Season 3, she reveals she's in a relationship with Jan — Season 1's villain and an unrepentant serial killer — but notes that it's somewhat complicated because they're not allowed physical contact.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Charles resented her for years because of a former girlfriend dumping him for her. When she's breaking up with Jan on behalf of Charles, Jan seems turned on by the way she says his speech, which is confirmed when Sazz says they're dating.
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals: She dresses like Charles even when she's not doubling for him.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Downplayed on the Jerkass as she genuinely isn’t trying to be mean to Charles but she reveals that the girlfriend she stole from Charles actually left her because she wanted someone more eccentric (the exact same reason she left Charles). As Sazz points out, the fact she dumped two people and gave the same excuse as to why means that Charles probably dodged a bullet.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's cocky, once stole Charles' girlfriend, and sometimes takes her teasing too far. But, she genuinely doesn't mean to hurt Charles' feelings and is ultimately a friend who wants to help him find happiness.
• Preferable Impersonator: Everybody seems to like Sazz a lot more than the awkward, emotionally distant Charles, and it's apparently been their relationship for years.
• Statuesque Stunner: She appears to be as tall as Charles^note Jane Lynch is 6'0", and her thin build makes her look even taller, and her looks certainly haven't faded as she's aged.
• Stunt Double: In-universe. Her job was to cover for Charles on the Brazzos stunts he was physically unable to do. She has fully perfected his mannerisms as well. In the second season, Charles enlists her to read his break-up message to Jan, unable to bring himself to do it.
• Wrestler of Beasts: Pataki claims to have fought off an alligator using nothing but a broken Bourbon bottle. She's thought of as very badass, in comparison to the Non-Action Guy Charles.

Poppy White

"Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to be great at something."

Played by: Adina Verson

One of Cinda Canning's assistants. She's the one who actually comes up with a lot of Canning's ideas. Her real identity is Becky Butler, the topic of Cinda's first podcast.

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• Accent Relapse: Once her true identity is revealed to the wider world, she slips back into her native Oklahoma accent.
• Actually, I Am Him: She's Becky Butler, the woman whose disappearance led to Cinda Canning's first hit podcast.
• Age-Gap Romance: She's a young woman (likely a twenty or thirty-something) in a relationship with the middle-aged Detective Kreps.
• Alliterative Name: Her real name is Becky Butler.
• Always Someone Better: This is a huge trigger for her. In the S2 finale, she loses her cool when Cinda tells Mabel that she's an extraordinary young woman who should have her own podcast (which Cinda had always denied Poppy).
• Attention Whore: This is a key part of her motive for killing Bunny and faking her disappearance, as she wanted to be the most famous person in the country and running her own podcast while leaving Cinda in the dust.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: She dreamt of moving to New York and working with Cinda Canning, her idol. She achieves both of these goals. However, the city is expensive so she ends up living in a small backroom without air-conditioning, and Cinda Canning is an abusive egotist who makes her employees' lives hell.
• Beleaguered Assistant: Poppy is constantly yelled at and mistreated by Cinda, though she never stops helping her.
• Big Bad: Of season 2. She masterminded Bunny's murder and tried to frame the trio in an effort to become famous and have her own podcast.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She presents herself as Cinda's meek assistant, but she's actually a cunning sociopath who plotted the murder of Bunny Folger and implicated the main trio in order to secure her own fame as a true crime podcaster.
• Bizarre Taste in Food: She enjoys Sandwich 14 at the Pickle Diner, which is comprised of liverwurst and marmalade. Bunny allegedly called it 'freak food', and while Mabel at first thinks Bunny's last words were "fourteen savage", they are revealed to have been "fourteen sandwich", as Bunny was attempting to identify Poppy as her killer.
• Butt-Monkey: Her boss steals all her good ideas, threatens to ruin her career if she steps out of line, and treats her like dirt even when things are going well. She even implies that she was forced to fake her own disappearance for the sake of a podcast and is seen as credible because of how horribly Cinda treats her. It's eventually revealed that she staged her disappearance but ended up trading one lousy life for another.
  • At one point Cinda literally whistles for her like a dog.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Jan Bellows from the previous series. While Jan was clever enough to cover up her crimes, she was ultimately a maniac driven by impulse and whim who had to be physically beaten. Poppy is a more low-key and cunning individual with a more complicated plan that had to be manipulated into an Engineered Public Confession. Poppy is also working with her love interest (another older man), rather than to try and snare him, and she never tries to backstab him.
• A Day in the Limelight: Gets more screentime in "Performance Review," which explores her difficulties standing up to Cinda. Gets another in "I Know Who Did It", the season 2 finale, which also serves to reveal her true identity as the killer, and as Becky Butler.
• The Dog Bites Back:
  • After being on the receiving end of yet another torrent of abuse, Poppy calls Mabel to reveal dirt on Cinda and that the Only Murders in the Building trio will find a lot more with just a big of digging. This is seen in a new light when the finale indicates she was trying to implicate Cinda in the murder itself and manipulate the trio into pinning the blame on her.
  • This is shown to be a recurring trait of Becky/Poppy's, as she retaliates against being mocked by her father and harassed by her boss by faking her death and implicating them both.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Initially appears to be the unassuming secretary who works for Cinda, until it's revealed to be the culprit of Bunny's death.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the opening of the season 2 finale, after revealing herself to be Becky Butler, a flashback shows that she was the one who coined the name "All Is Not OK In Oklahoma", for a crime she faked. This plays right after the Previously on… reminded viewers it was her who coined the name "Only Murderers in the Building" for the podcast about Bunny's murder and the main trio's apparent guilt.
  • She's also the one to correct Cinda's correction of Chickasha, Oklahoma, which is later revealed to have been her hometown as Becky Butler.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: In keeping with her resemblance to Cinda, Becky dons a pair of glasses when she fakes her death and becomes Poppy.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: She does everything for Cinda, from picking up her dry cleaning to inventing podcast ideas for her.
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals: She styles herself closely after Cinda Canning. It's unclear if this is a conscious choice or something Cinda makes her do. The season 2 finale implies the former: She was a longtime fan of Cinda's podcasts and even chose the name "Poppy" for her alias because Cinda likes poppyseed bagels. This suggests that she styled herself after Cinda in order to appeal to her. She also mentions Cinda does not like employees who do not resemble her.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: For the final nail in the coffin of her guilt, she attempts to dismiss Lucy's testimony about her sneezing as the words of a silly little girl hiding in the walls. Oliver points out that only Bunny's murderer could have known that there was someone hiding in the walls that night.
• I Just Want to Be You: The subtext of her transformation into a Cinda copy, inspired by Cinda's own podcast.
• Loony Fan: Albeit a more subtle version that eventually turned to resentment. Becky is such a fan of Cinda that she takes on Cinda's favorite food as a name, and willingly treks around after Cinda — eventually snapping only after a year or more of resentment and mistreatment.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Becky Butler changes her hairstyle and hair color, wears glasses, and drops her Oklahoma accent to become Poppy White. Somehow, Cinda Canning and the people in her hometown do not recognize her.
• Plot Allergy: She's allergic to parrots, which caused her to sneeze uncontrollably while murdering Bunny due to being around Mrs Gambolini. Charles' daughter, Lucy, overheard it while she was hiding in the walls, which is how the main trio are able to confirm Poppy's guilt.
  • There's also saliva on the knife, from that same sneezing fit.
• Stepford Smiler:
  • She justifies Cinda's horrific behavior towards her as being standard career development and that everyone has to endure heaps of abuse to pay their dues and move up in the podcasting industry.
  • She showed some Stepford Smiler tendencies in the flashback to her life as Becky too, quietly putting up with abuse from both her father and her boss until she couldn't take it anymore.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Poppy, Cinda's assistant, is treated poorly by her boss, who plagiarizes her ideas, abuses her, and refuses to give her a promotion. However, Poppy is actually Becky Butler and she faked her murder and manipulated Cinda into making a sensationalized story out of it. And not only that, but she murdered Bunny and was planning to pin it on Mabel in a bid to advance her own career as a podcaster.

The Arconiacs

Played by: Jaboukie Young-White (Sam), Daniel Oreskes (Marv), Ali Stroker (Paulette), Orson Hong (Grant)

A group of Only Murders in the Building superfans who take to camping outside the Arconia to demand Charles, Oliver, and Mabel start pumping out new episodes.

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• Ascended Fanboy: Oliver invites Sam, Marve, and Paulette (Grant had to go to a piano lesson) to join himself, Charles, and Mabel in the hopes they can provide new perspective.
• A Day in the Limelight: "Hello, Darkness" acts as one for Marv.
• Demoted to Extra: With the exception of Marv, who gets the above mentioned focus episode and also appears in the finale, they only appear in a few cameos with very few lines.
• Fair-Weather Friend: Marv accuses the others of being this in the second season to the Only Murders podcasters, specifically calling them "Fair-Weather Fans", due to them voicing boredom of the second season's perceived dip in quality.
• Greek Chorus: They act as this during their appearances, providing meta-commentary about the plot and character arcs, such as by noting how progressive it is for Mabel to be dating a woman.
  Paulette: Finally some story progress!
  Grant: After that episode about the shit talking bird...
  Paulette: And the babymaker board president...
  Sam: I'm just glad they don't have a theory pointing to themselves.
  Marv: I like that Mabel is dating a woman. Very progressive!
• I Just Want to Be Special: Especially true for Marv. He really wants people to listen to his theories in an attempt to fill the hole left by his estrangement with his daughter. Oliver takes pity on him and agrees to put him on the podcast.
• The Pig-Pen: Spending days camped outside without bathing and changing clothes has given them a certain aroma.
• Red Herring: Marv is briefly suspected of being Bunny's killer after the trio find him in the secret passages. But it turns out he was trying to protect Lucy from the Sixth Avenue Slasher and impress the trio.
• Self-Deprecation: As well as the above, they also voice criticism of the show as it happens, letting the writers lightly mock themselves. In season 2 especially they complain about the second season by mocking how much it's "amping" and wasting time, which crosses back into Take That, Audience! as its pretty much just criticising it for doing the same thing the first season did that they seemed to forget, something fandoms are known for doing.
• Take That, Audience!: The Arconiacs are used to poke fun at fans and how creepy their intense attention can come across to content creators.
  Marv: [Grant] got tired of waiting for a new episode. Kids these days. Everything is just binge, binge, binge. They'll never know the pleasure of waiting for just a crumb of what you want.

Alice Banks

Played by: Cara Delevingne

A British artist who makes contact with Mabel in Season 2. She heads an artists' collective.

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• Amicable Exes: Mabel breaks up with her after discovering Alice has been making recreations of her traumas behind her back and, while she admits she likes Alice, she explains she can't date whom she can't trust. However, Alice later plays a pivotal role in getting a confession out of the killer and afterwards helps Mabel paint over her apartment.
• Artists Are Attractive: Alice is an artist, heading an art collective, and she becomes Mabel's girlfriend for Season 2.
• Bait-and-Switch: In the final episode, it appears she's the killer after all, but this is actually part of a plan to get the real killer to expose themselves.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: She has them due to being played by Cara Delevingne.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She appears to genuinely care about Mabel but by the end of Episode 6, it becomes clear that she was just using her to create an art project based on Mabel's life. Though she does have the good sense to feel bad about this and tries to make it up to Mabel with an Apology Gift.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: After her role in Season 2, she doesn't get a single mention in Season 3. Justified, though, since it's a full year after their breakup.
• Consummate Liar: In the episode "The Tell", it's revealed she lied about her family and upbringing, which, while shady, still earns some sympathy because she was an unprivileged new artist trying to navigate on a hostile enviroment, but the ending of the episode shows she also lies for something petty as a party game, when the camera shows she hid the Son of Sam (assassin) card when she presented the Innocent Blonde (victim) card in Oliver's game. In the next episode, it's revealed she's making some sort of play using the tragedies of Mabel's life, including the deaths of Zoe, Tim Kono and Bunny, fully knowing how hurtful it is to her. She ends up using this skill to help the main trio in the Season 2 finale, playing the role of the murderer as part of their trap for the real murderer.
• Evil Is Hammy: After Mabel accuses her of killing Bunny, the normally calm Alice suddenly gets very loud, dramatic, and unrestrained. This turns out to be a clue that she's in on the scheme to expose the real killer, and the hamminess is actually just acting.
• Fake Aristocrat: Alice's backstory is that she's from a chic British family, well schooled in the arts. It's not true. She's actually the daughter of blue-collar workers and pretended to be from a higher class in order to gain a degree of respect in the art world.
• Good Counterpart: A relative version. As Mabel's new love interest post-the success of the podcast, Charles and Oliver are understandably suspicious that she's going to turn out the same way as Jan, and end up being the murderer. While she's nowhere near as perfect as she appeared (which causes their breakup), she is not Bunny's murderer.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Her real secret is that she's not from a high-class background and has been lying about it to make a name for herself. Also possibly behind her obsession with Mabel.
• Ivy League for Everyone: Invoked. A Britain-specific version. Alice offhandedly mentions that she used to play Oliver's game at Oxford, but it was all a lie anyway.
• Must Make Amends: To Mabel. Despite using her trauma as a basis for art, she never wanted to hurt her. She tries to make it up to her by buying her a custom puzzle as an Apology Gift. Later, she also helps Mabel expose Bunny's murderer.
• Nervous Tics: Oliver observes that she has a habit of touching her hair when she is lying or hiding something.
• Pet the Dog: She seems genuinely contrite about hurting Mabel, and gives her a beautiful custom puzzle as an Apology Gift. She also assists in catching Becky, even pretending to be a deranged murderer herself to sell the ruse.
• Precision F-Strike: Alice calls Poppy a twat for referring to her as Australian.
• Red Herring: Charles and Oliver suspect her of being Bunny's killer because she conveniently enters Mabel's life soon after the murder. It turns out she is not the killer, but she did lie about her background to make headway in the art world. In the finale of season 2, she is again accused of the murder, using the Son of Sam card she withheld, but this is actually a Bait-and-Switch to trick the real killer into exposing herself.
• Ship Sinking: Alice and Mabel's relationship sinks pretty dramatically in "Performance Review" with the revelation that Alice is with Mabel to bolster her career and make art about it.
• Sixth Ranger Traitor: It seems like she might join the group for a moment during the Son of Sam party. However, while she isn't the killer, she's also not with Mabel for the right reasons, but actually exploiting her for her career.
• Stalker with a Crush: She tries to deny it, but it's clear Alice spent a lot of time researching Mabel and is very attracted to her.
• Villainous Breakdown: Invoked. She fakes one, pretending to fly into a rage and stab Charles to help the trio catch Bunny's murderer.

"Leonora Folger"/Rose Cooper

Played by: Shirley MacLaine

Bunny Folger's elderly mother and daughter of the Arconia's designer. Or so she claims.

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• Actually, I Am Him: She spends much of her screentime when she shows up introducing the mystery of Rose Cooper, an artist who mysteriously disappeared years ago and was connected to both Bunny Folger and Charles Sr. Turns out she is Rose Cooper.
• Chekhov M.I.A.: Early on in season 2, Rose Cooper is mentioned to have mysteriously disappeared in the past. Naturally she surfaces later when it's revealed that she was the lady who assumed Leonora Folger's identity.
• Cool Old Gal: Compared to the unpleasant curmudgeon her daughter Bunny was, Leonora comes of as significantly more reasonable, having no problem answering Charles' questions regarding her relationship with his father.
• Outliving One's Offspring: She outlives her daughter Bunny. Or at least the real Leonora, who is 92 and non-verbal, does.
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: Doesn't hesitate to cut people down even if they've only just met.

Detective Kreps

Played by: Michael Rapaport

A foul-mouthed detective who is Williams' partner in Season 2.

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• Age-Gap Romance: He's a middle-aged man in a relationship with the much-younger Becky.
• Bait-and-Switch: The final moments of season 2's penultimate episode imply that he's a romantic partner of Cinda Canning; but it turns out its actually Poppy White/Becky Butler, with whom he helped frame her ex-boss for her "murder" and helped murder Bunny as part of a gambit to make them both famous.
• Contrived Coincidence: Mabel becomes suspicious of his timing when he shows up at the Arconia and begins questioning Lucy right after Lucy had just been chased by a masked assailant through the Arconia's hidden passageways. Her suspicion seems confirmed when she spots glitter on him right after he demonstrates an injured arm, just like the "Glitter Guy" Mabel stabbed in self defence.
• Corrupt Cop: His Day in the Limelight episode opens with him stealing evidence and reminiscing about taking side gigs, which is after we just found out he attacked Mabel and is involved in framing the party.
• The Dragon: He is Poppy/Becky's right-hand man.
• Entitled Bastard: He makes over $85K annually, but whines about having to take side gigs "just to get by", and seems to justify his Corrupt Cop actions as if they're a "survival" choice. Granted he lives in New York, but this is still well above average earnings for New York and is more than liveable. Doesn't help that he further justifies this by bringing up alimony (meaning he's divorced), and mortgage on a private boxing gym he owns (meaning he's a business owner), so if he's struggling to pay bills after that, it's entirely on his own bad investments and decision making, yet he frames it as if it's entirely because he's not paid enough.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He actually does seem to love Becky, calling her the smartest woman in the world.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: As Detective Williams acknowledges, Kreps is a whole lot meaner than she is. He's also in on Becky's plan with her.
• The Heavy: He does a lot of Becky's dirty work in her effort to frame the trio.
• Incriminating Injury: Accompanied by the glitter behind his ear, Mabel figures out that he's Glitter Guy because he has an injured arm after he tries to attack her on the subway.
• Inspector Javert: Detests true-crime podcasting even more than Williams did, but in his case he seems to actively suspect Mabel of killing Bunny and the others of covering up. This suspicion turns out to be a deliberate Red Herring on his part as he knows full well who killed Bunny given that he's an accomplice to the murder.
• Obviously Evil: Kreps is a relentless jerkass to the trio when he first appears, though it's still a twist that he is Poppy/Becky's right hand man.
• Put on a Prison Bus: Is last seen getting handcuffed by his (former) co-workers at the end of season 2, implying that Screw the Rules, I Have Connections! is not going to apply to him anymore.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: His defining trait in his first appearance, in which he cusses like a sailor while interrogating the main trio. Mabel gets under his skin when she mocks how much it's clearly an attempt to seem tough and strong.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • Aggressive, bordering on Rabid Cop as he may be (and that's without the fact he's a suspect), he does call out Cinda Canning's podcasting (and the main trio too) over a live case due to their sensationalising of it flooding them with "tips" from listeners that are useless and unhelpful. Media sensationalising of active crimes does genuinely make solving them much harder for this exact reason, especially sensationalists like Cinda who run with "juicy" but ultimately wrong and very harmful narratives for the sake of grabbing attention.
  • Happens again when he details to Mabel what a bad idea it is to insult and interrogate the lead detective on a murder case she is currently the main suspect in. It's Downplayed in that her ploy worked perfectly and yielded the results she wanted, but his point was accurate.

Gregg Rivera

Played by: Adrian Martinez

A massive Ben Glenroy fanboy.

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• Stalker with a Crush: He's so obsessed with Ben, he keeps locks of his hair and other personal belongings.

Maxine

Played by: Noma Dumezweni

A famed theater critic.

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• Caustic Critic: She takes delight in panning plays she dislikes.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Her early negative review of Death Rattle is what spurns Donna to try and poison Ben to keep her son from having his first bad show.

Detective Biswas

Played by: Gerrard Lobo

The detective initially put in charge of the Ben Glenroy murder case.

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• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Subverted. First appears in Season 3 and seems like a stand-in for Detective Williams as a sympathetic ear in official law enforcement, however, it's an odd case as while he does still serve the role, the character he's seemingly substituting for - Detective Williams - also still appears later in the season.

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