‘Only Murders’ Creator on Tie-Dye Guy Reveal, Charles and Oliver’s Discovery of Mabel’s Secret

(Warning: This post contains spoilers for Episode 5 of “Only Murders in the Building,” titled “Twist.”)

“Only Murders in the Building” revealed one of the only — OK, that’s a lie — mysteries that matters to Charles (Steve Martin) on Tuesday’s episode: the identity of Tie-Dye Guy. But more importantly, it also saw Charles and Oliver (Martin Short) learn the truth about Mabel’s (Selena Gomez) connection to the late Tim Kono (Julian Cihi) — and Tie-Dye Guy, who turned out to be her old pal and recently released convict, Oscar (Aaron Dominguez) — and have to reconcile with their feelings about her duplicity.

It’s not until the final moments of Episode 5, titled “Twist,” that Charles and Oliver actually catch up with Mabel and Oscar, who have gone to follow a lead about someone Tim was supposed to meet before his death and find out why he was collecting all that jewelry Mabel found in his apartment.

So we don’t yet know exactly what comes next, following Mabel’s reveal of her friendship with Tim and how she knows Oscar, plus Oscar swearing that though he was in the building the night of Tim’s death — and even went up to Tim’s apartment to confront him for being the one to send him to prison after falsely accusing him of Zoe’s (Olivia Reis) death — he is not the one who killed him, and he actually ran off when he heard a gunshot in Tim’s apartment.

That’s why we asked John Hoffman, who co-created “Only Murders in the Building” with Martin, to give us an idea about where things go from here for our neighbors-turned-friends who now have a big trust obstacle to overcome if they want to continue their investigation into Tim Kono’s death.

“The show itself, the premise of the show being, ‘We’re going to investigate this murder together as true crime lovers, and subsequently, we’re going to learn about each other in ways that we’ve been loath to share. And we will share with each other certain things, unavoidably, and grow closer.’ All of that has to play a part here,” Hoffman told TheWrap. “And now, you’re right, it’s a reckoning that we’ve known this [was] coming. So for the audience, there’s a bit of like, we’re ahead of them. But on the other hand, there’s still mysteries to be figured out. And who is Oscar? What are his intentions and what is the truth behind him? And a real, hopefully, deepening of the connections between them in midseason that allows us to spring forward back into the case with greater trust.”

Oscar aka Tie-Dye Guy/Photo by: Craig Blankenhorn/Hulu

Hoffman said these topics are what he explored the most in Episode 5 — and even more so in next week’s Episode 6, “To Protect and Serve.”

“That’s really what those two episodes are about. Everything gets tested: the trust, the faith in each other, the alliance that they’ve formed that they want to continue,” Hoffman said. “And yet many, many things step in, and not the least of which is, can we put each other at risk? You know, the paternal selves of Charles and Oliver kick in and they are constantly balanced with their own experience of being, quote unquote, fathers. And yet, there is this lovely thing that’s developed where they are looking to protect Mabel and now they need to do that more.”

We’re already at midseason, but even when this first season wraps its 10-episode run, we know there will be more of Charles, Oliver and Mabel’s story, as Hulu just renewed “Only Murders in the Building” for Season 2 on Tuesday. But here’s hoping we find out who killed Tim Kono before then.

A new episode of “Only Murders in the Building” launches next Tuesday on Hulu.