"LESTR" is the ninth episode of the fifth season of Only Murders in the Building, starring Steve Martin, Selena Gomez and Martin Short. It originally aired on October 21, 2025.
Short Summary[]
Told through the lens of one annoying robot who may hold the keys to more secrets than anyone realized - the Arconia throws one last party as the residents discover that a killer may still be in their building.
Full Summary[]
Lester asks Miller what the package is. Miller doesn't know, but says it's addressed to Lester. They open the box to find LESTR, who turns on and rolls out of the box, startling them. LESTR uses their uniforms to determine their colleagues and says he's happy to join the staff. He lists off the tasks he can do to help them optimize building efficiency. Miller has heard about robot doormen and says he heard it can print things from its butt. LESTR says his butt is not a printer. Lester tells LESTR that the board bought him, but that doesn't mean Lester has to use him. He'll be staying put.
LESTR waits in sleep mode as people pass around him in the basement, including Lester and Randall on the nights surrounding the murders. When Randall comes in with the elevator crank and puts it in his locker, he notices LESTR watching and tells him to be quiet about it.
Mabel, Charles, and Oliver confront Randall about taking the crank. He pretends he has no idea what they're talking about, but then takes off running. They try to chase him, but can't keep up because Oliver has blisters from his cowboy boots, Charles isn't wearing underwear, and Mabel can't run in the shoes she's wearing.
LESTR stands in the lobby, telling everyone it's nineteen days until move-out. Mabel tells Oliver and Charles that Randall's mom hasn't seen him in days. He could have left town. Charles thinks Randall's mom is lying and he's hiding at her home. Nearby, Uma laments being homeless in favor of Camila White having a casino. LESTR reminds her and Howard that they have nineteen days left to pack. Oliver asks if they can scrap the robot yet. He tries to move LESTR, but Howard stops him, saying all the other doormen are dead or gone, so LESTR is king of the palace. Charles says again that they need to find Randall. They split up and Mabel gets a text from Jay asking her about making plans.
LESTR warns that it's eight days until move-out. He arrives outside the dry cleaners and asks for help since he can't get up the stairs. Tony and Mikey come out and lift him up.
LESTR comes up to the counter and says he's picking up for 12F. Nonna brings the order to the counter. Charles asks when the last time Randall picked up the dry cleaning was. The brothers discuss it and argue over when it was. While they argue, Mabel, Charles, and Oliver agree that someone has to know where Randall is. But he isn't using his credit cards or his phone.
LESTR comes to Oliver's door with his food and warns him it's one day until move-out. They move into the apartment, where Mabel says it's their last day in the building and they don't have anything. Charles offers to show them the place he's thinking of moving to. Oliver looks at the pictures and tells Charles it's a nursing home. LESTR asks for help, because he's gotten stuck amongst the piles of Oliver's things and can't get out. Despite the mess, Oliver insists he's packed. What's left is what he's carrying on to his flight to New Zealand. Charles asks Mabel if she's figured out where she's going. She's not sure, but she has a friend with a place in the Maldives. Before she can answer the question of who that is, she gets a notification on her phone. Randall posted again. According to his post, he's in Cuba. They think that's the end of their investigation. Mabel decides to give up. Everything has failed, so she wants to go home and drink while she packs. After she's gone, Charles wonders if Mabel is right that they lost the Arconia and failed Lester.
Mabel is surprised to find Teddy in the lobby. He's waiting for his company van to come move his stuff. He finally got out of jail and everyone is moving out. He's drinking his way through it and she accepts his invitation to join him. Jail really changed him, even though he was in a minimum-security facility with tennis courts. Plus now he speaks fluent Italian. LESTR comes by and tells them there's no drinking allowed in common areas. Then he tells Vince, who is riding his peloton that there is no exercise equipment allowed in the lobby. Vince says his buyer from Facebook Marketplace is coming and Vince has just enough time to get in one last ride. When Vince sees Howard, he tells Howard that his robot is making up fake rules. Howard says he'll pull up the by-laws. He tries to access LESTR, but his access is denied. LESTR says he belongs to a new administrator now, Camila White's EVP of Security. Howard is upset and warns LESTR that he will not be ignored, then joins Teddy and Mabel in their drinking. Mabel says they've given up, which upsets Williams as she walks in just in time to hear that. She can't believe the Arconia is going away or that she cares. LESTR says visitors have to sign the log, but Williams just tells him off. He leaves to take care of a tenant request.
Charles packs and labels boxes. LESTR comes in with the tape Charles requested. Charles uses it to close a box and declares that he's done packing. Oliver comes in and says he knows how they're going to celebrate their last night in the Arconia. Charles asks if he's finally going to start packing and he says no. The theme of the night is The Last Supper. If they do their jobs right, they'll rival the original. Charle says he can't make it because he's going to a baseball game with an old friend, Jim Geronimo. He's been going through his old rolodex to find any friends he has left from outside the building. He and Jim met when they linked arms at Hands Across America. Oliver is upset that Charles is choosing that after Oliver's idea. He makes fun of Charles for not knowing baseball, but Charles says he needs a new hobby since they can no longer investigate murders in their building. He also needs new friends. Oliver says fine and goes to find Mabel. LESTR starts flashing red, saying there's an intruder in the gaming parlor.
LESTR goes to the top of the stairs down to the Velvet Room and says the gaming parlor is off limits to residents. Williams yells back up to him to go away. She and Mabel are sitting at a table drinking. Williams asks Mabel is she's really done investigating. Mabel says yes, and promises she's fine with it. She has a lot of irons in the fire. Williams asks about that and Mabel admits they're not job offers, but she got asked to go yachting with Jay. Williams is disappointed, but Mabel says she's curious to see if there's a good guy inside of Jay. A week on a yacht might help her figure it out. It's not the worst thing ever, but Williams says that's not who they are. She and Mabel don't care at all about looking at vistas all day. If there's a problem, they have to get in there. Williams' phone dings and she leaves to go on official police business. Mabel stops her and says maybe that's her problem. Jay told her about his guru, who said that most suffering in Western civilization comes from the need to succeed. The she notices a shoe print nearby. Williams looks and says it's a flip flop print. It appears to have come from a wall. Mabel checks it and finds she can open one side of a plaque to reveal a doorway. She decides she's not going with Jay and Williams says she can stay five more minutes. They both step inside. There's blood spatter and white dots that match the paint from Nicky's clothes. This is how they smuggled Nicky's body out. Williams goes up a set of stairs and opens a door to find that it leads into the dry cleaners. Mabel sees a painting and compares it to Randall's post. The painting exactly matches the background of his pictures. He's not in Cuba. He never even left the building.
Teddy and Howard sit in the lobby together and eat. Howard points out LESTR, reminiscing about how he used to take care of him. Charles comes through on his way out to the game, talking to Oliver, when he notices Teddy's there. Teddy asks them what's new and Oliver says he remarried. Teddy says he loves Oliver's wives and asks if she's hot. Then he takes it back. Howard invites them to join their little party, but Charles has plans. Teddy thinks they should have a party. The guys in prison thew him a Last Supper themed party on his last night. Nearby, Vince starts to panic because he can't unclip. Mabel runs in and tells them that Randall never left the building. She doesn't know where exactly, but they have to find him. Oliver is excited and asks where the murder board is. Charles admits that he might have thrown it out because they didn't need it anymore. Vince comes over and asks LESTR to text all the residents to come to the lobby for an emergency meeting. Their last meeting. Uma asks if she can show up drunk. Then a guy from PostMates comes in with a deliver for 6C, but Howard says 6C has been gone for weeks. LESTR confirms that that's true. Mabel wonders who ordered food to an empty apartment and LESTR says it's Randall, who has been squatting there. He didn't tell them because they never asked. Mabel, Charles, and Oliver race to 6C while Howard takes the food delivery.
Outside 6C, LESTR announces a delivery. Randall opens the door and is shocked to see Mabel, Charles, and Oliver. He says he can explain, but then he runs again. Mabel, Charles, and Oliver head for the elevator.
In the lobby, the trio calls for people to stop Randall. Randall is finally stopped when he runs into Theo, who is moving his father's things. Theo starts apologizing, but Mabel signs for him not to worry because Randall is the murderer. Theo isn't surprised. Charles asks how Randall could kill Lester. Randall says he didn't do anything. Oliver says they saw him in the courtyard carrying the bloody elevator crank. Randall says Lester told him not to say anything. He wishes someone else had been there. LESTR suddenly says he was there. Well, the original model of him was, before he was thrown off the roof, but his model has all his files. He can show them. He dims the lights and projects on the wall. Everyone watches a video of Lester coming to Randall. He has blood on him and tells Randall to take the shrimp to Oliver. Randall asks if he's okay and who hurt him, but Lester says the blood isn't his. He didn't mean to hurt anyone. He just couldn't let that monster take down his building. Randall asks if he killed someone. Lester just says Randall is going to be a great doorman, but he can't say anything about what he knows for his own safety. He just needs to get the shrimp to Oliver, who will know what to do. Lester holds out the crank and says he saved the Arconia with a piece of the old Arconia. Once the recording is over, everyone talks about Lester killing Nicky. They're shocked, but Randall says he did it for the building, so there wouldn't be any more crime and they wouldn't lose their homes. He did it for them. Mabel wonders who killed Lester if Lester killed Nicky. Randall doesn't know that. He took the shrimp to Oliver's place and when he got back, Lester was dead in the fountain. He panicked when he saw the crank. He put it in Nicky's office because he didn't want anyone to think Lester was a murderer. Oliver realizes he was counting on the trio to finish the job. That's why he left them the finger in the shrimp. They failed and didn't solve the case and lose the building he died trying to protect. Howard says they owe it to him to find his killer before they go. They realizes they have a few more hours and decide they can't give up now.
Oliver has everyone staged at the table. They have dips and a case to solve. He thanks Miller for returned their murder board to them. Mabel is pinning the clues back in place. The others reminisce over happy building memories. Howard wonders where Charles is and wanders out. Howard finds Charles packing alone. Charles asks why Howard lets LESTR get to him because he has a lot going on. Plus he has a boyfriend. Howard says Jonathan broke up with him weeks ago and starts crying. Howard used to be the center of his mother's world. Then his mother died. When Jonathan broke up with him, he was upset to have nobody again. So he invested a little too much in a robot. But it felt good to have a partner. He never found his people in the building like Charles did. Charles says they've done a bad job checking in with each other in the building and that's on them. It's easy to assume people are okay when they aren't. Charles hugs Howard as he cries. Howard isn't a fan of religious iconography, but he admits that Oliver throws a great Last Supper. He invites Charles to join them, saying there's room for another apostle. Charles guesses he should go ask Oliver for forgiveness.
Mabel answers a knock at the door to find Jay, who has been searching for her. He asks if she's ready to go to the Maldives. She tells him she's not doing that and he wonders if he misread. He checks and sees that she replied, "I could be a boat bitch" to his suggestion of a trip to the Maldives. Mabel says she's investigating and he's a suspect. So he can either show her he's a good guy and tell her what he knows or they go their separate ways. Jay says they could also just go to the Maldives and make murder someone else's problem. Mabel says she's there with a bunch of people who are losing their homes. If he had won the casino bid, other people would be losing their homes. If he wants to make the world a better place, he needs to stop making it worse. She closes the door.
Charles finds Oliver in the kitchen. Oliver asks if he's not late for his game. Charles says he's not going. He doesn't need new friends. Plus he found out that Jim Geronimo was eaten by a bear two years ago. Charles admits he didn't want to come to a closing ceremony because he didn't want to close anything. Oliver doesn't either, but Charles says he and Mabel both have somewhere to go after this. Someone will take them in. Oliver's even married. Oliver says out of all his productions, the podcast was his favorite. Some of that has to do with Charles. It's mostly Mabel, but he got in there, too. Charles digs around in a box and pulls out a doorknob, which he asks Oliver to sign. They'll make a little piece of the Arconia signed by the investigators who solved four murders.
Mabel points to the picture of Charles' floor and asks if they ever figured out where that was from. Teddy is bewildered at them taking a picture of the floor, but Howard recognizes the scuff mark. Randall knows who left the marks and points toward LESTR. He's been cleaning up the marks for weeks. Howard says it wasn't him. He knows because his mother spent her final years in a motorized chair. Howard made sure she had the very best and it made the exact same mark. Mabel says he solved it. She turns toward Charles and Oliver, who realize who she means.
Nonna drives her scooter up to Charles' freezer and takes out the cup containing the finger, which she hands off to her grandsons.
Teddy, Mabel, Charles, and Oliver stand facing Nonna and the grandsons. Teddy accuses them of stealing the finger. The brothers deny it, but Nonna silences them, then curses.
Cast[]
Starring[]
- Steve Martin as Charles-Haden Savage
- Martin Short as Oliver Putnam
- Selena Gomez as Mabel Mora
- Michael Cyril Creighton as Howard Morris
Guest starring[]
- James Caverly as Theo Dimas
- Teddy Coluca as Lester Coluca
- Dane DiLiegro as Johnny Caccimelio
- Jermaine Fowler as Randall Winston
- Jackie Hoffman as Uma Heller
- David Patrick Kelly as Miller Portnoy
- Richard Kind as Vince Fish
- Nathan Lane as Teddy Dimas
- Logan Lerman as Jay Pflug
- Da'Vine Joy Randolph as Detective Williams
Co-starring[]
- Omete Anassi as Postmates Guy
- Shea Buckner as Tony Caccimelio
- Elizabeth D'Onofrio as Nonna
- Aaron Dean Eisenberg as Braden Caccimelio
- Cory Jeacoma as Mikey Caccimelio
- Evan Mulrooney as Vinny Caccimelio
Notes and Trivia[]
General[]
- The title sequence to this episode shows LESTR's face on several of the Arconia's windows, alongside Howard and his mother walking in front of the building.
Cultural references[]
Soundtrack[]
Media[]
Episode Stills[]
Behind the Scenes[]
Videos[]
See Also[]
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A complete overview of this episode's crew can be found here. |
References[]