Selena Gomez Shines As The Glue Holding ‘Only Murders In The Building’ Together‌ ‌

(L-R) Steve Martin, Selena Gomez, & Martin Short. DISNEY/ERIC MCCANDLESS.

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At the end of season three of Hulu’s Emmy Award-winning TV megahit Only Murders in the Building, Mabel’s future prospects look bleak and uncertain. Selena Gomez’s character, Mabel Mora, had lost her apartment lease in the Arconia Hotel, she was not in a serious relationship, she was homeless, childless, and had no career goals beyond spending her rapidly diminishing youth (Mable has turned 30) with two eccentric senior citizen fellow travelers in the hotel, Charles Haden-Savage (Steve Martin) and Oliver Putnam (Martin Short)solving murder cases and running a murder/mystery podcast.

In this self-reflexive mood, Mable concludes that her prospects are not what she envisioned. She confides her feelings of malaise to her crime-solving partners. She is seriously thinking of chucking it all and starting fresh all over again.

Charles and Oliver are dismayed at the thought of losing Mabel.

“You can’t leave us,” they protest. “You are the Mabel between the Charles and Oliver sandwich. Without you,” they conclude, “we are just two old, stale slices of white bread. You are the glue that holds us together.”

Indeed. That was a revelatory piece of truthful dialog by the brilliant writers of Only Murders in the Building. Selena Gomez is the glue that holds the series together. She has become the pivotal character, the axis around which the storyline revolves. Mabel Mora’s character arc has evolved over the first three seasons, and so have Selena Gomez’s acting chops on the show.

Gomez was already a show biz veteran by the time she was cast in the role of Mabel Mora in season one of Only Murders in the Building. Her career began as a child actress on the popular kids’ show Barney & Friends. Later, she left the Purple Dinosaur for greener pastures on the Disney Channel. There Gomez became a teen idol for her role as Alex Russo on the Disney Channel sitcom,