Only murders in the building season 5 episode 6 ending explained: Did Bash Steed steal the freezer finger?

Only Murders in the Building season 5 episode 6 opens with the headline moment already brewing. Only murders in the building, season 5 episode 6, finds Charles and Mabel returning to a ransacked kitchen and a Stanley Cup with no grisly prize inside. The freezer finger is gone, and the hour points the suspicion beam toward Bash Steed without confirming the theft. The episode titled Flatbush also widens the cast circle. Steve Martin, Selena Gomez, and Martin Short carry the mystery, while Meryl Streep returns as Loretta, and guest stars Dianne Wiest and Téa Leoni deepen the widows thread.

The case still links to billionaire players, with Christoph Waltz’s Bash Steed sliding into the frame as the tech owner whose systems touch the Arconia’s cameras. The episode first aired September 30, 2025, on Hulu in the US, with weekly releases through late October. Only murders in the building season 5 episode 6 sets up next week by removing the clearest piece of physical evidence and hinting that someone with money and access is shaping the story from the shadows.

Only murders in the building season 5 episode 6 ending explained: The finger vanishes, “Priscilla” is a catfish, and Bash Steed moves to the center

Only murders in the building season 5 episode 6 splits its attention. Oliver and the newly returned Loretta chase a plaid-bag handoff between widows that turns out to be theatre props for Newsies. Charles and Mabel stay closer to the Arconia, where signs of a break-in set up the reveal that the freezer stash is missing. The episode shows Oliver considering a move after housing trouble, Loretta re-entering his life after an apartment fire, and the widows' thread softening once the bag is opened at a Brooklyn theater. The Arconia thread carries the ending. A glitch on the LESTR security system lines up with a time window when Althea says Charles’s lights were on. Then the Stanley Cup comes up empty. That chain of moments puts a tech gatekeeper in focus rather than the widows.

The episode plants Bash precisely where power meets access. Charles has been confiding in an online match named “Priscilla,” and Detective Williams flags a catfish pattern. The trio connects a peach icon on Charles’s dating app to the same mark on the building’s camera software. That icon belongs to a company in Bash’s portfolio, which makes his orbit a plausible route for both surveillance and sabotage.

The hour never shows Bash or an emissary physically opening the freezer. It implies a network quietly moving pieces. The episode suggests the theft could be arranged by Bash or someone tied to him, but it does not confirm his hand on the lid. Williams tells Charles he’s being catfished. The finger that was hidden in the Stanley Cup in his freezer is gone. The video file has been deleted. The Arconia’s security cameras are run by his company.

Why the theft matters and what it changes about suspects

Only murders in the building season 5 episode 6 strips the trio of their strongest physical thread. Earlier in the season, the finger appeared to tie the case to billionaire heir Jay Pflug, who was shown missing a digit during the Velvet Room storyline. With the freezer empty, that link no longer sits in the kitchen where detectives can pick it up on demand. It returns the case to inference and access. The LESTR glitch tells the audience that footage was tampered with. Althea’s elevator chat about a light in Charles’s place expands the theft window to a late-night period that a casual neighbor would not wander into. Those beats fit an operator with building-level access and a reason to control what is seen and when it is seen.

The hour also resets the widows. Loretta’s undercover swing at Lorraine’s open house looks promising, but the bag yields theater props. At the theater, the widows describe money moving toward a community production, not a payout from a criminal plot. That pivots the narrative weight back to where the cameras live and where Charles’s catfish came from. In that framing, Bash is not only a suspect in a theft. He is a conduit. If a catfish read Charles’s messages in real time, someone with that pipeline would know where evidence sat, when the apartment was empty, and how to erase a digital trail.

Stay tuned for more updates.