While true crime podcasters, Charles-Haden Savage, Oliver Putnam, and Mabel Mora were celebrating their little victory for solving the murder mystery of Tim Kono, another tragedy took place at the Arconia. Mabel went downstairs to get a few more drinks when she found a blood-smeared Bunny Folger, the board president of the Arconia, who fell into Mabel’s arms and died suddenly. At the moment of her death, Bunny had a knitting needle in her chest, which evidently belonged to Mabel, and it was enough to frame Mabel for Bunny’s murder. Soon, the police arrived at Mabel’s apartment and arrested her, along with the other two musketeers, Charles and Oliver.
“Only Murders in the Building” Season 2 further follows the three podcasters who try to prove their innocence. At the station, Mabel finds out that Bunny was stabbed eight times with a knife and that the murder weapon was apparently missing. The police don’t have enough evidence against the trio, and thus Detective Williams lets them go without a charge. However, she warns them not to investigate the crime by themselves, as they did in Tim Kono’s case, and not to make any podcast on the same. But while Williams stopped them from making a podcast on Bunny’s murder, Cinda Canning, a popular podcaster, uses the opportunity and releases a podcast named “Only Murderers in the Building” that investigates the prime suspects, Charles, Oliver, and Mabel, for the murder of Bunny Folger.
Spoilers Ahead
The Curious Case Of Rose Cooper
Initially, the trio decided not to investigate Bunny’s murder and thus went back to their boring lives. Charles was called in by a director for a reboot of his most famous television show, Brazzos, while Oliver met Amy Schumer (playing herself) in the elevator of Arconia. She had just moved into Sting’s apartment and showed her interest in buying the rights to the podcast to make a fictional television series on the same topic and then gamify it later. On the other hand, Mabel got some attention on social media after her name turned up as a suspect in a murder and was hashtagged by the Millenials as “Bloody Mabel.” Alice Banks, a woman who ran Third Arm Arts Gallery, sent a video message to Mabel and invited her to her gallery opening. Mabel, who wanted to be an artist, decided to visit Alice, but soon realized that to realize her dreams, she had to clear her name first. Hence, the trio met again in Mabel’s apartment after hearing the first episode of Cinda Canning’s new podcast, where they decided to break into Bunny’s apartment to investigate further.
Inside Bunny’s apartment, Oliver saw Mrs. Gambolini, a yellow-headed Amazon parrot that Bunny kept as a pet. However, before they could explore the apartment, residents of the building, Howard Morris and Uma Heller, arrived in the apartment to take down Bunny’s prized painting, painted by a dead woman named Rose Cooper. However, to Uma’s surprise, the painting that was worth a fortune was missing from Bunny’s apartment. The amateur detectives, hiding in the closet, quickly jumped to the conclusion that whoever stole the painting murdered Bunny Folger. But that’s not all. While trying to leave Bunny’s apartment, the trio also found a secret elevator hidden inside the closet. The elevator took them to the exit on the other side of the Arconia, and the trio wondered how many other secrets Bunny had been hiding from the residents.
As soon as the new evidence came to light, it captured the trio’s attention, who finally decided to make a second season of their podcast in order to tell their version of the story and clear their names eventually. At the end of “Only Murders in the Building,” Season 2, Episode 1, as Charles returned to his apartment, he saw the painting “Rose Cooper” hung on his wall, but that was not the only thing that surprised him. The painting featured his father, who, too, was an actor like him, but never was able to make it big.
The Story Of Leonora Carter, Mother Of Bunny Folger
Leonora was the daughter of Archibald Carter, the architect who designed the Arconia in order to establish the Upper West Side in 1908. The Arconia was Archibald’s fourth building in a similar style that was established in many countries. However, what’s peculiar is that each of Archibald’s buildings had little secrets that were known only to the architect. The secret elevator that Charles, Oliver, and Mabel found in Bunny’s closet was a hidden passageway designed by Archibald to peep into the closets of other female residents of the building in order to satisfy his wicked fantasies. In short, Archibald was a creep and a playboy. He, later, settled down in Arconia with his family.
Leonora got married to Mr. Folger and thus became Leonora Folger, who raised her family in Arconia and gave birth to a daughter named Bunny. And while Bunny lived a quiet life in the apartment, her mother had a secret life that no one was aware of. During the same time period, i.e., the 1950s, Charles-Haden Savage’s father was a struggling actor trying to get his hands on an acting gig that would change his life altogether. He often used to walk on the pathway opposite the Arconia while preparing for his auditions. He promised his son, a young Charles, that one day he would live inside the Arconia with his family, and probably because his father failed to realize the dream, it was Charles who purchased an apartment in the Arconia to fulfill his father’s last wish.
After Bunny’s death, Uma Heller arranged a memorial service in Bunny’s apartment to pay her last respects and soon her mother, Leonora Folger, arrived at the apartment. It was at this event that Leonora saw Charles and could very well recognize him, yet she held back the secrets. On the other hand, Charles wanted to know more about Rose Cooper and her painting, which was when Leonora revealed that Rose Cooper lived across the street and was desperate to get away from a man but didn’t have enough money, and hence she bought her painting in the 1950s, soon after which she went missing and was later presumed dead. No one had any idea about what happened to Rose Cooper, but the mystery around her death played in favor of the Folger family and made her painting incredibly valuable. Before leaving, Leonora gave away one last secret that took Charles by surprise. She told him that his father was having an affair with her as well as Rose Cooper. Charles could connect the dots and figure out that his father didn’t ever come for the auditions but to see Rose Cooper and Leonora Folger. It made him realize that the things about his father that he held so dearly were all lies. He was not a passionate artist, but a womanizer. In a flashback, it was also revealed that Charles’s father was arrested from Rose Cooper’s apartment (probably) while Charles was waiting for his father to return. Maybe, after Rose Cooper mysteriously disappeared, the police arrested Charles’s father as a prime suspect. According to Charles, his father spent some time in jail and died while he was young. We still don’t know what actually happened to Rose or Charles’ father. Why was he arrested? And what happened to Rose? The upcoming episodes of “Only Murders in the Building” Season 2 will probably shed more light on the mystery.
‘Only Murders in the Building’ Season 2, Episode 2: Ending Explained – A Fake Rose Cooper Painting
In the present time, Charles, Oliver, and Mabel were trying to get rid of the painting, as they had clearly established in their podcast that whoever stole the painting was the real murderer. They decided to return the painting to its rightful owner, i.e., to bring it back to Bunny’s apartment, and hence to accomplish the job; they planned to use the secret elevator. But as usual, things didn’t go as planned, and the trio left the painting near the alley in a rush, from where it later went missing. Oliver saw the painting hung on Amy Schumer’s apartment wall, and soon Leonora found it too. She went to Amy’s apartment to take back her painting, but as soon as she saw it, she realized that it was a fake. She told them that the canvas was torn in the back, and Rose Cooper didn’t have enough money to fix it, so she glued it. Leonora left the Arconia soon after that, as she was confident that Charles and his team were going to find the painting for her.
In her will, Bunny gave away Mrs. Gambolini to Oliver, probably to torture him even after her death. However, as soon as the trio gathered in Oliver’s apartment to discuss their next step, Mrs. Gambolini suddenly revealed that she knew who did it. Episode 2 ended without revealing what Mrs. Gambolini was talking about or whether she really knew who killed Bunny Folger. The two episodes of “Only Murders in the Building” Season 2 left behind a lot of loose ends, which the detectives will probably try to investigate in the upcoming episodes. It looks like Mabel’s new love interest, Alice, too, is hiding something and may have some sinister motive in the whole chaos but it is too early to judge, isn’t it? Also, we still don’t know the history of Rose Cooper and her relationship with Charles’ father. There is another important question that is still unanswered, and that is what Bunny was doing in Mabel’s apartment that night. And last but not least, while taking out all the notes from Bunny’s apartment, Oliver found an anonymous note where a person asked Bunny to return “that painting.” Is it possible that Rose Cooper is still alive and was threatening Bunny to return her painting? Maybe. Let’s see how the next episodes connect the missing links.
