Only Murders in the Building: Selena Gomez’s Best Moments as Mabel

Selena Gomez plays the sarcastic Mabel. The third member of the podcast, Only Murders In The Building, she has had some great moments in the show.

Season 3 of the funniest murder mystery on television right now, Only Murders in the Building, is coming on August 8th. The series follows Oliver (Martin Short), Charles (Steve Martin), and Mabel (Selena Gomez) as their lives get swapped into a series of crimes that, until the last episode of Season 2, happened in their apartment building, The Arconia.

Martin Short and Steven Martin are royalty in the comedic space. However, the third integrant of the group, Selena Gomez, was more known as a singer, even though she started her career when she was only ten years old on Barney & Friends and acted for many years. Nevertheless, the actress knocked her role out of the park and is an intrinsic part of the show’s comedic element.

Mabel is the link to the “younger” generation, as Charles and Oliver are quite out of the loop when it comes to slang, texting, etc. She is sarcastic and funny and keeps both of them on their toes. Here are the best moments of Selena Gomez as Mabel.

10“Putnam!”

Sometimes (most of the time), Oliver gets a little too carried away with his gimmicks and theatrical monologues — not surprising as he used to make a living as a theater director. However, when they are in the middle of a blackout going up a substantial amount of floors by the stairs, Oliver has to make a tough decision: leave a bag filled with beloved dips behind.

Mabel tries to dissuade him in a gentler way, saying, “Hips before dips, Oliver.” But when he continues to serenade the dips, she has had enough and takes him out of it by yelling his last name. This is a perfect example of their relationship.

9Mabel’s Introduction

Any character introduction is fundamental to quickly understanding who they are. Mabel walks down the streets of New York, unaware of the world around her, with her Beats headphones. She wears a furry orange coat, a yellow sweater, and a wool cap.

The color was not by mistake. Later in Season 2, she also wears a marigold jacket. It’s supposed to represent her Mexican American heritage. It is also the color of grief and resurrection, as well as creativity. Her first line is, “New York can be a fucking lot.” She then proceeds to list the number of women who report assaults in the city — a perfect encapsulation of who she is and what she stands by.

8“That’s the part you can’t get over?”

The trio discovers a painting planted in Charles’s apartment of his father naked in a sexual moment with an unknown woman by the infamous Rose Cooper. Charles begins to wonder what it all means, while Oliver is quite hanged on the sexual connotation of the painting. That’s when Mabel says, “A super valuable painting of your father that was stolen from a murdered woman’s apartment planted in yours and that’s the part you can’t get over? The sex part? F***ing men.”

7Mabel Becomes the Interrogator

Mabel’s wits and sarcasm are fundamental parts of who she is. In Season 2, the police interrogate the trio asking where the real murder weapon is: the bloody knife. After trying to intimidate her, Mabel turns the tables and becomes the investigator. She questions them, “So, you got three people that solved two crimes you couldn’t figure out, who are now clearly being framed, and you don’t even have the real murder weapon?” Needless to say, they didn’t have any follow-up questions.

6The Funeral Home

One of the most creative episodes of recent television, “The Boy from 6B,” is all silent as it comes from the perspective of a deaf character, Theo (James Caverly). Mabel and Oliver enter the character’s funeral home and try to pretend they are attending a service. Then, they go into the back and start going through the corpses’ belongings. They find out Theo is, in fact, a grave robber — then they get kidnapped by him.

5A Recurring Dream

All characters in the show are funny and have peculiarities that somehow tend to show themselves later in the episodes — much due to the great writing of the show. Mabel has had what can only be called a disturbingly funny and incredibly in-character dream: a man stands in her room at night, and she wakes up, kicks him in the nuts, and then stabs him with a knitting needle. A great foreshadowing and insane moment as this is the first thing the audience learns about the character.

4Mabel Finishes the Mural

Since the beginning of the show, Mabel said that she is staying at her aunt’s apartment at the Arconia to reform the apartment for her as she is an artist. She starts to paint a mural on one of the walls. The character finishes the painting in episode six of the second season, revealing that she painted some Arconia tenants in their apartment windows. It’s a great moment of closure for the character, as well as a beautiful painting done by artist Laura Pérez.

3Mabel Opens Up to Charles

Mabel is a more closed-off person than her fellow podcasters — which is not hard considering how much they share with other people. It takes a while for her to feel comfortable enough to express her worries and some challenges she has had in her life, as she feels like she acts in favor of the group she surrounds herself with and her constant fear of being alone. But in Season 1, she finds comfort in telling it to Charles, who listens to her. It’s a land stone for the characters’ friendship and for Mabel.

2Mabel’s Past

Mabel starts her quest in Season 1 with the two funny duo hiding many secrets. The biggest of them: she not only knew Tim Kono (Julian Cihi) but was a dear friend of his. She revisits her past, revealing it to the audience after going into Kono’s apartment. Her sadness and grief are shown clearly for the first time. It’s a core moment for the character and the viewer as the enigmatic woman’s actions and motives start to make sense.

1Bloody Mabel

In the very last scene of Season 1, which was shown a bit in the pilot episode, Oliver and Charles go after Mabel so they can all leave the Arconia after receiving a threatening text. They enter Mabel’s apartment, and that’s when the new murder case starts.

On the floor, next to the corpse of Bunny, is Mabel, covered in blood. She becomes the main suspect as well as a meme and starts a conversation about trauma and the internet. It is a great moment for the actress and an impossibly good plot twist many didn’t see coming.