‘Only Murders in the Building’ Is Already Planning Its Return to New York, and Season 7 Isn’t Even Confirmed Yet

Hulu’s beloved murder mystery comedy has spent its entire run tethered to one very specific address, the Arconia, making its New York setting practically a character in its own right. That identity got shaken up in a big way for the upcoming sixth season, which sends Charles, Oliver, and Mabel across the Atlantic for the first time in the show’s history.

Dubbed “Only Murders in London” by Hulu, Season 6 finds the trio investigating the murder of true-crime podcast host Cinda Canning after she summons them overseas, trading the Arconia’s familiar hallways for an entirely new setting stacked with English guest stars. The shift marks the show’s most significant location change since it briefly ventured to Los Angeles back in Season 4, and it wrapped production just last week after becoming the most logistically complex shoot the series has attempted.

Now, even before Season 6 has premiered, Deadline is reporting that the show’s writers room is making its own geographic move behind the scenes. According to the outlet, the writers room, based in Los Angeles for the first six seasons, will relocate to New York for Season 7, a notable shift for a production team that has never worked from that city before despite the show being set there.

Up until now, the ‘Only Murders in the Building’ writers would finish scripting a season in Los Angeles before showrunner John Hoffman traveled to New York to oversee filming. That workflow held up fine when the show stayed close to home, but Season 6’s complicated London shoot changed the calculus entirely for what comes next.

With Season 7 expected to bring the story back to New York, keeping the writers room in Los Angeles would no longer allow writing and filming to overlap efficiently, something the production team needs in order to keep the series on its usual yearly release cadence. Moving the room to New York lets Hoffman manage both the creative and production sides from a single city, a change that reportedly some writers from previous seasons are expected to make as well, joining an in-person room led by Hoffman himself.

That scheduling pressure is real. Season 6 already represents the longest gap between installments in the show’s history, arriving 15 months after Season 5 rather than the roughly 12-month wait fans had grown used to.

Technically, ‘Only Murders in the Building’ has not been renewed for a seventh season yet. Given its status as a signature Hulu series that continues performing well, recently earning five additional Emmy nominations, that renewal is considered close to inevitable, and streamers commissioning writers rooms ahead of formal pickups has become fairly standard practice as a way to shorten the wait between seasons.

It’s a strategy that lets Hulu keep momentum going on one of its flagship titles without leaving fans in limbo for too long between cases. With Season 6 premiering December 8 and already building anticipation thanks to guest stars like Tina Fey, Olivia Colman, Meryl Streep, and David Tennant, the early groundwork on Season 7 suggests Hulu has no plans of letting the Arconia trio’s momentum slow down anytime soon.

Whether Charles, Oliver, and Mabel are ready to trade London’s fog for New York’s skyline again remains to be seen once the mystery of Cinda Canning’s murder wraps up.

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