Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Only Murders in the Building Season 4 Episode 8.

With only two episodes left in Season 4, Only Murders in the Building is finally starting to give us clear answers to its mysteries — at least one of them, anyway. While the biggest is the death of Sazz (Jane Lynch), we’ve also been following a secondary mystery of the strange residents living in the West Tower, aptly referred to as “the Westies.” Episode 8, “Lifeboat,” finally gives us their backstories and also fills us in on all the Dudenoff (Griffin Dunne) lore that we’ve been craving.

The Westies Finally Share Their Story in ‘Only Murders in the Building’
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We met the Westies early in Season 4, when Mabel (Selena Gomez), Charles (Steve Martin), and Oliver (Martin Short), were looking at them as potential suspects in Sazz’s murder and Charles’s almost murder. Backed by their Hollywood counterparts, who refuse to stay behind since they’ve now become invested in the investigation, they invite the Westies over to Oliver’s apartment for a game of Oh Hell. It’s the perfect ruse to get the Westies all in one place and the trio hopes that they’ll let some information slip throughout the night. They don’t have to wait long though, because the Westies quickly drop the friendly facade and hold the Arconia crew at knifepoint. They know that they’ve been caught cashing Dudenoff’s checks, and so they’re here to explain themselves, especially when they’re accused of murdering Dudenoff, which they adamantly deny.

One by one, the Westies stand up and detail how they each met Dudenoff. The Sauce Family is the first to share their story, with Alfonso (Desmin Borges) taking the lead. He says that Dudenoff and his wife used to come into their restaurant all the time, but when his wife died, Dudenoff started ordering in instead. When they were understaffed, Alfonso and his family would just deliver his orders personally on their way home. Dudenoff invited them in, and they would play cards — Oh Hell, specifically — on Friday nights, and it became a regular thing. They explicitly say that they didn’t kill him; they loved him. Mabel then suggests that it was Rudy (Kumail Nanjiani), but Rudy is also adamant that he was not the culprit. He says that he met Dudenoff when he was trying to become an actor and decided to sign up for his class. One day, they watched A Few Good Men, and Rudy decided to impress Dudenoff by reciting a monologue he had learned from the movie from the last class he had taken. It worked and Dudenoff ended up inviting him back to his apartment, where he told Rudy he was very good.

With the Sauce Family and Rudy off the suspect list, Vince (Richard Kind) is the only one left, and so he gets into his story of how he met Dudenoff. Vince is a widow as well, and when his wife died, she made him promise to not turn into one of those weird lonely old men. One day, he stumbled across Dudenoff’s class, and since he and his wife both had a love of movies, he took it as a sign from her that he should join. He didn’t get along with many of the people there, since they were all young kids who didn’t understand the movies the same way he did — something that’s made abundantly clear after they watch It’s a Wonderful Life, and one of the students says that he likes being alone and doesn’t understand why it’s such a bad thing in the movie, to which Vince explains that being alone and being lonely are two very different things. Dudenoff not only sympathized with this, but also admired Vince’s take on the film, so the two ended up bonding over movies.

How Did Dudenoff Acquire All the Apartments in ‘Only Murders in the Building’?
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After the Westies share their stories, they then explain how they came to live in the West Tower under Dudenoff’s name. As it turns out, Dudenoff’s wife was a music teacher, and back then units were cheaper, so whenever one opened up down the hall, they would buy it, using it for music lessons or for people to sleep over in if they needed somewhere to stay. When she died, he found himself living in an empty hallway, but he couldn’t bear to give up the apartments. Instead, Dudenoff gave the units to the Westies so he wouldn’t be lonely anymore, as well as to help them out. Vince reveals that Dudenoff then moved to Portugal, and they haven’t seen or heard from him since; they’ve just been keeping up with the apartments and cashing the checks. But it soon becomes clear that that’s not all that’s going on.

2:40 Related The 15 Best ‘Only Murders in the Building’ Episodes, Ranked We wouldn’t want to live in the Arconia!

Who is Helga on ‘Only Murders in the Building’?
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After the Westies share their side of the story, Mabel pulls a “Ding Dong” (a phrase Eva Longoria taught them earlier, which she explains is a “sexy surprise”). That sexy surprise is Helga (Alexandra Templer), the voice we heard on the HAM radio who gave the trio a menacing warning. She waltzes into the apartment and says she’s going to tell the truth, much to the shock of the Westies.

Helga is a locksmith, with the business being left to her by her father when he passed away. This is how she met Dudenoff. He was always losing his keys, so he frequently called Helga to come unlock his door. In a flashback, we see her installing the keypad on his door, and she asks him what he wants the code to be. When he says he wants it to be “Oh Hell,” she asks him if that’s a reference to the card game. He’s surprised she recognizes it, and Helga tells Dudenoff that she and her father used to play all the time, but she hasn’t played since he died. Dudenoff ended up inviting Helga to join the card game, and she became a regular just like the rest of the Westies, also moving into one of the apartments.

One day, Helga came home and found a note on her door from Dudenoff explaining that he had to leave suddenly, with little explanation behind it. As she was reading the note, there was a power surge, something she found strange because she knew that the power only tended to surge when the incinerator was used. She tried not to dwell on it, but she started getting more suspicious of things when Mabel, Charles, and Oliver started their podcast and the weird things she had previously noticed around the building suddenly began to make more sense, ultimately leading to her moving out.

What Really Happened to Dudenoff in ‘Only Murders in the Building’?
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After hearing Helga’s side of things, Vince finally breaks down and brings everyone to his apartment, where he pulls up a floorboard and reveals a roll of film. This is when we finally learn what really happened to Dudenoff. Everyone, aside from Helga, received notes that night from Dudenoff inviting them to his funeral. Naturally, this confused them, and so they met him in the incinerator room as he requested, hoping for answers. There, Dudenoff explained to them that he had received medical news that he only had a few months to live. This devastated his friends, but he had more to tell them, and it’s a doozy.

Dudenoff explained that when he dies, all the apartments are going to be taken back, but he doesn’t want that to happen and have his friends be out of a home. According to the story, he told them that he’d taken a bunch of pills, and that he’d like for them to put his body in the incinerator when he passed. They are then to cash his Social Security checks and tell everyone he moved to Portugal. His only request was that they not tell Helga any of this. Instead, he planned to record a video explaining it to her himself, so if she ever found out the truth, she wouldn’t blame the others. Vince plays the video for Helga; in it, Dudenoff explains that he didn’t want to tell her because he wanted to shield her from the death of another father figure.

With their names cleared, the Westies ask Helga to move back in. Unbeknownst to them though, Eva has been recording the entire thing, which worries the Westies, as they immediately know they’ll go to jail for what they’ve done. Mabel looks to Charles and Oliver and says that they were all weirdos at one point too, until they found each other, so they agree to keep the Westies’ secret — even if it means they don’t get to use the story for their podcast.

Do We Know Who Killed Sazz in ‘Only Murders in the Building’?
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After smoothing everything over with the Westies, Mabel, Oliver, and Charles reconvene to discuss the podcast. Since they’re not going to use the dirt they have on the Westies, they’re back to square one — that is, until Helga comes in and says that she has information she couldn’t share in front of the others. Sazz had been on the HAM radio asking about plot holes she found in the podcast, so that explains all the West Tower stuff they found when they were looking through her notes earlier in the season. Helga has one final bombshell for them, though: Sazz had also talked about a stuntman on a movie called “Project Ronkonkoma.”

While Sazz had initially claimed him as her protégé, apparently, he had messed up pretty badly and had started harassing her; supposedly, Sazz had even said, “He’s dangerous and is gonna be the death of me.” Mabel pulls up IMDb to look into “Project Ronkonkoma,” since none of them have heard of it, and find out who worked as the film’s stuntman so they can interrogate him. That’ll be easier said than done, though: said stuntman is Glen Stubbins (Paul Rudd), who is currently unconscious in the hospital.

Only Murders in the Building Season 4 is available to stream on Hulu in the U.S. New episodes premiere every Tuesday.

Charles, Mabel, and Oliver finally learn the truth about the Westies and what happened to Dudenoff.ProsWe finally know what happened to Dudenoff.The Hollywood crew always brings a fun dynamic.Helga’s information about Sazz ups the stakes. ConsThe Dudenoff storyline has eclipsed the Sazz investigation and there’s not many episodes left for a satisfying conclusion.

Three strangers in a New York City apartment building bond over their shared interest in true crime and form an unlikely team to investigate a suspicious death in their complex. Their amateur sleuthing quickly evolves into a thrilling quest as they navigate secrets, lies, and unexpected twists.Release Date August 31, 2021 Creator Seasons 4 Story By steve martin Streaming Service(s) Hulu , Disney+ Directors Cherien Dabis Where To Watch Hulu Expand

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