Fear, Privilege and the Illusion of Safety in ‘Only Murders in the Building’

Safety is not found in isolation, in high-end real estate or private security systems. It is built through care, curiosity and mutual visibility.

Spoiler warning: This piece contains detailed spoilers for all five seasons of Only Murders in the Building.

Only Murders in the Building, created by Steve Martin and John Hoffman, (Hulu, 2021-present) takes place primarily inside the Arconia, an Upper West Side co-op with marble floors, a doorman and a powerful board. The building promises safety through exclusivity. Yet, a series of murders inside the Arconia exposes how safety built on exclusion masks inequality and fear. 

The Arconia and its residents represent what George Lipsitz calls the “white spatial imaginary“—a way of organizing space that centers segregation, exclusivity and private property.

Such imagined safety, rooted in control and exclusion, also mirrors patriarchal logics that conflate protection with possession. 

Arconia residents, mostly white and affluent, live according to this viewpoint. Their sense of security depends on locked doors and background checks. Arconia residents trust in property values, surveillance systems and social status to keep the world at bay.

But these logics protect privilege, not people. While the white spatial imaginary promises security, it delivers isolation.

When Arconia resident Tim Kono is murdered in Season 1, the illusion of safety collapses. Kono’s death establishes that the building’s surveillance and exclusivity cannot prevent harm. Yet, most residents accept the official story—death by suicide—because it preserves the fiction of the Arconia as a place immune to violence. 

… the building’s surveillance and exclusivity cannot prevent harm. … In learning to trust [Mabel], they begin to question the Arconia systems that made them feel secure. 

The death of Bunny Folger, the building’s board president, in Season 2 shows how the Arconia’s version of safety shields residents from difference, not from danger. Bunny fought to preserve the building’s exclusivity. Her death reveals the cost of mistaking control for safety. In protecting her domain, Bunny becomes another victim of this exclusionary reasoning. Her attempts to maintain order reveal how women are often tasked with enforcing systems that ultimately constrain them.

Yet, as Only Murders progresses, a different vision of safety slowly emerges. Trust and community begin to foreground the series’ treatment of security.

The shift toward communal care is most evident after the death of the doorman, Lester Coluca, in the most recent Season 5. 

As the Arconia’s gatekeeper, Lester embodies its promise of control. He knows the residents’ habits, their deliveries and their guests. This intimacy is built on routine rather than relationships. Lester maintains order, enforcing boundaries that keep him at a distance. His death exposes the limits of a system built on hierarchy. However, it also creates space for the Arconia residents to come together as a community that redefines security through interdependence.

Lester’s death marks a building-wide shift, but the turn to community care begins in Season 1 with an unlikely grouping of residents—Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short) and Mabel (Selena Gomez). 

Charles and Oliver, two aging men shielded by ego and wealth, rediscover community through Mabel. She is younger, Latina, and less financially secure. Her youth, ethnicity and economic instability mark her as an outsider in the Arconia’s social hierarchy. She does not “fit” the image of a resident who belongs. 

Mabel’s safety is not guaranteed by money or status, but something she builds through relationships. Her presence disrupts Charles and Oliver’s complacency. In learning to trust her, they begin to question the Arconia systems that made them feel secure. 

Through this friendship, the series reimagines what safety can mean. At first, their Only Murders in the Building podcast feeds on surveillance and gossip. Yet, through empathy and respect, true friendship develops. 

The trio’s relationship disrupts the Arconia’s culture of distance and distrust. The Arconia equates sameness with security. Mabel, Charles and Oliver model a type of care that cuts across class, race and age. Others take notice, with neighbors starting to talk to and look out for one another. Through humor and small acts of connection, the show imagines a form of security built from trust. 

Safety is not found in isolation, in high-end real estate or private security systems. It is built through care, curiosity and mutual visibility. Only Murders does not dismiss the fear that drives people toward gated spaces or surveillance, but it exposes the limits of that fear as a guiding principle. 

The show’s critique extends beyond the Arconia. Across the U.S., the pursuit of “safe” neighborhoods (coded as white) shapes who gets included and who is left out. Property values, policing and surveillance promise comfort but often reproduce inequality. That pursuit of comfort—which is conflated with safety—keeps power intact by making fear feel reasonable. 

Only Murders exposes that contradiction and imagines something else: safety grounded in empathy, not exclusion. By focusing on friendship, conversation and shared vulnerability, the series imagines an alternative model rooted in connection rather than fear.