Only murders in the building ended on a very disturbing note in the final moments of the third season, just as everyone opened the champagne bottles and celebrated not only a successful murder investigation, but also the lavish premiere of Death rattle blinds, Oliver Putnam’s (Martin Short) glorious return as director of a Broadway show. Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin) made his own comeback with the hilarious Which of the Pickwick triplets was it? Number – one of the best scenes in the entire Hulu series.

At the after-party, while Oliver, Charles, and Mabel (Selena Gomez) celebrate, Charles’ longtime stunt double Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch) walks in, dressed just like Charles. She tells him she’d like to talk to him later about “something sensitive.” When he says he’s going upstairs to get a bottle of Malbec, she goes instead. And as she walks through the dark apartment, someone shoots at her through the window. This is clearly a trained professional, shooting into the darkness from a long distance, hitting her right in the heart.

As she dies—or passes out?—she appears to be trying to write something in blood on the kitchen floor. What that was, we may never know, because in the season four premiere, when our podcast detective trio goes to Charles’ apartment, a shocking surprise awaits: Sazz’s body is nowhere to be found. Mabel mistakes a bit of blood splatter for wine. Charles later hears the whistling coming from the bullet hole in the window, but doesn’t know what’s causing the noise. Whoever killed—or possibly killed—Sazz, they cleaned up as much of the mess as they could, even going so far as to send a note to the building requesting that its window be replaced, supposedly from Charles.

The episode’s chilling ending almost confirms that Sazz is dead when (in silence, like the intro to the Sergio Leone film Once upon a time in the West, (after which this episode is named), the trio go downstairs to the cremation room and find Sazz’s metal Bulgarian joints in the ashes. Now the fan theories will fly: Was the killer actually after Charles or was Sazz the target all along? Did she get too close to a dark secret? Is this a message for Charles? Could Howard be behind this for some reason? Maybe he’s actually a Moriarty-like villain pulling his strings in secret all this time…

Or what if Sazz himself staged the whole thing as a bizarre swan song? Or could it be the film producers hoping to generate even more buzz for their big adaptation?

That’s the other storyline that runs through this episode and, it seems, the rest of season four. Fresh off the failure of their Broadway flop, Paramount Pictures sends aggressive emails to our heroes telling them they really want to make a film version of the podcast. What follows is some very funny “negotiations” in which Charles just writes the number “4” on a folded piece of paper and tries to figure out how many zeros the producer (Molly Shannon) is willing to leave.

Mabel has reservations about the whole thing, but later she perseveres and secures the deal. Meryl Streep’s Loretta makes an appearance at the big party, where we meet the big stars who will play our three intrepid podcasters: Zack “Fragilisticexpialidocious” Galifianakis will play Oliver (although he’s annoyed by Oliver from the start), Eva Longoria will play Mabel (they made the character older because test audiences found the age difference between Mabel and her friends “creepy”) and Eugene Levy will play Charles, having already done the Quebec dub for Brazzos in Canada.

I suppose that is another reason why the premiere is named after Once upon a time in the West. Our New York detectives fly to Hollywood (and traverse a hilarious Hollywood version of New York), but just as quickly fly back East when they realize that Sazz is not only missing, but may have been the victim of a crime.

This was a great opening episode for Season 4. I have no idea who the killer is, but it has to be someone with a grudge against Charles. There are a lot of people this applies to, although none of them are professional assassins as far as I know. Then again, you can always hire a hitman to do your dirty work – even from prison.

Hulu will be releasing these episodes every Tuesday for the next ten weeks, so there’s still plenty of time to get caught up and figure out what’s going on. I have to say, I’m really happy to see the show get back on track. I really enjoyed Season 3 (though the musical may have taken up a bit too much space, and I hope the movie doesn’t this season). It was definitely better than Season 2. So far, Season 1 is still my favorite season, and I hope this season’s even more star-studded cast doesn’t lose focus on what’s most important: Charles, Mabel, and Oliver, the reason this show is so entertaining, even when it gets very, very dark.

What do you think about Only murders in the building Season 4 so far? Let me know on ÞjórsárdalurInstagram or Facebook.