Only Murders in the Building Season 5 Episode 3 recap: The Velvet Room’s powerful new suspects uncovered

Only Murders in the Building Season 5 features the action turning to the unexpected and unexplained death of a long-term doorman. With his death, Charles, Oliver, and Mabel once again find themselves involved in a complicated case.

However, this time feels different. They soon realize they are embroiled in the most dangerous case of their career, wrestling between super-rich secret billionaires and long-forgotten old-school mobsters.

The story picks up immediately following the Season 4 finale. After what seems to be the graduation party and wedding of Oliver and Loretta, tragedy strikes when Lester is discovered dead in the fountain located in the courtyard of the Arconia.

In the beginning, nothing raised an alarm regarding Lester's death. It was ruled an accident. Charles, Oliver, and Mabel notice early on that something is weird, so they decide to investigate on their own.

The team was right, and quickly found themselves involved with a huge conspiracy that connects Lester to dangerous characters. As mentioned earlier, they now have to face mob families and powerful figures, while also including innocents from the Arconia.

Keep reading for a detailed recap of Episode 3 of Only Murders in the Building Season 5 on Hulu.

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Only Murders in the Building Season 5 Episode 3 recap: A hidden room and Oliver's unlucky run-in with a corpse

In Episode 3 of Only Murders in the Building Season 5, Oliver finds himself in the laundry room with the late Nicky Caccimelio. Charles acts fast and tells Oliver not to touch anything, afraid that it would implicate their fingerprints.

Instead of freaking out about the dead body, Oliver does something very bold by moving the body. While it sounds crazy, it works out, and Oliver, Charles, and Mabel are looking at the body at Charles' apartment.

Their examination reveals two unsettling elements: a peculiar white, paint-like substance on Nicky's coat, and a frost-like burn. This suggests that the body had been preserved by freezing to prevent decomposition.

What's even more disturbing in Episode 3 of Only Murders in the Building Season 5 is the part where Charles begins to see visions of Nicky. She is speaking to him, just like he experienced unsettling hallucinations of Sazz Pataki.

Mabel tries to lighten the ominous atmosphere of the moment by saying that she feels like "Meredith Grey" from the acclaimed daily soap, Grey's Anatomy. However, at this particular moment, two things became clear: something darker was taking place.

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The velvet room and billionaire suspects emerge in Only Murders in the Building Season 5 Episode 3

As the three friends begin reading Lester's diary, they discover cryptic notes about birds, gardenias, cash, and a confused Saturday game. These clues lead them to the Velvet Room, a clandestine gambling den beneath the Arconia more than a century ago.

Not only this, the place was also infamous for having a bad reputation, and with whispers that even blueprints for the Empire State Building were once discussed there. Fascinated and set on their plan, the three of them entered the Velvet Room in the middle of the night.

They can be seen hiding behind a table as they waited for the arrival of what Oliver so dramatically named, "New York’s new mob," when three major players arrived. Each carries immense wealth and power: Bash Steeg, a tech billionaire worth $53 billion; Jay Pflug, heir to a pharmaceutical fortune worth $19 billion, and more.

While watching, Jay Pflug approaches the bar and removes a band-aid to reveal that his index finger is missing. This moment brought back a previous revelation, wherein Oliver joked about a bizarre shrimp finger, and now the missing finger appears to coincide with the one we discovered earlier.

Now, with this connection, Pflug raises suspicion at the center of being linked to both deaths, Lester and Nicky. The episode of Only Murders in the Building Season 5 wraps with the trio realizing the simple dangers of detecting powerful people, while Charles secretly orders a medication worth considering, as it could prove that the hallucinations are an even larger hurdle going forward.

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