Buster Is Looking Awfully Guilty Of SOMETHING In ‘Arrested Development’ Season 5

Spoilers for Arrested Development Season 5 Part 1 ahead. Anyone who's watched Arrested Development knows that Buster (Tony Hale) can easily become hysterical — especially when he gets his hands on some juice. But in the show's fifth season, which arrived on Netflix on Tuesday, May 29, the youngest Bluth appears to be in a little over his head. Lucille Austero (Liza Minnelli) is missing in Arrested Development Season 5, and her former paramour/son figure is acting incredibly suspicious. But wait, did Buster kill Lucille 2?

The fact that Lucille 2, who is a majority stakeholder in the Austero Bluth Company has not been seen so far in Season 5 is definitely shady. However, viewers see Michael speaking with her on the phone (maybe?), and anytime a characters asks where Lucille 2 is, the entire Bluth family acts suspicious. Luckily, audiences find out in Episode 8 when Buster's mother visits him in jail that Lucille 2 is fine but "can't come back right now." Buster asks, "You know where she is?" And Lucille responds, "I know who she's with! And that's all I can say."

Does that mean that the Bluths are hiding Lucille 2 away somewhere so they can take control of the company again? If so, Buster obviously didn't know anything about it beforehand. "Did you tell them that you found Lucille 2 passed out on the stair car?" Michael asks an imprisoned Buster. "I think I said 'dead,'" Buster responds. "No, maybe they said 'dead,' and I said, 'I wish.'" "Why'd you do that?" Michael asks. Buster answers, "I thought it was funny."

Indeed, Buster definitely appeared guilty at the end of Season 4. As viewers will recall, he was caught on camera on the night of Cinco de Cuatro standing over Lucille 2's seemingly lifeless body, which was lying on the stair car. "I'm in the movie," he whispered as he stared at the security camera. However, Buster tried to rectify this problem by borrowing George Michael's Fakeblock software (which was really just his wood block app) and erasing the footage from the system. But Buster was soon taken away by the rhythm of the wood block, which he assumed meant the Fakeblock software was working. *Narrator voice* It wasn't.

That same night, Buster also knocked out Herbert Love (Terry Crews) with his monster hand. Earlier in the season, audiences also saw him knock himself out, crush remote controls, and ruin USB drives. So while fans know that sweet Buster would never purposefully hurt anybody, it's not out-of-the-question that he could have mistakenly killed Lucille 2. And with her severe vertigo, she could have lost her balance and fallen down the stairs.

However, Buster is still an innocent, clueless man-child, and it's hard to imagine him being a killer. When he found out the drones he was flying in Season 4 were real, he panicked, and said, "You mean I've been hurting guilty people?!" And when the Army blackmailed him into either crushing a kitten or revealing that he'd been lying to them, it was obvious that Buster had gained better control over his hand.

But he doesn't exactly do himself any favors in Season 5 when the police question him about Lucille Austero. For one, he waives his right to attorney because he thinks Michael (Jason Bateman) wants him to. And as they're showing him the aforementioned security footage, he says, "OK, that's definitely me. I'm just surprised to see it because I'm pretty sure I erased that video." *Narrator voice* He didn't.

Not to mention that Buster and Lucille 2 were last seen having an argument at Cinco de Cuatro, after he found out she had tricked him into missing his mother's trial. However, Lucille 2 also had several other run-ins that night at Cinco, including George Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor), with whom she got in an argument about the wall Herbert Love was planning to build. When George Sr. told Lucille she couldn't mention the wall in her speech, she said, "You can't stop me. Now, I've got a stair car to wave from." Huh, so that's how she ended up on the stairs. Also, did he stop her? After all, she never made her speech.

Lucille 2 also ran into Tobias (David Cross) that night and promptly fired him from her Austerity rehab clinic. She saw Michael, too, who tried to seduce her into forgiving his sizable debt. However, Gob (Will Arnett) gave him a forget-me-now, which meant Michael doesn't remember their encounter.

So while nothing definitive has been revealed about Lucille 2's location so far, Buster seems to be cluelessly going along with it. And at least now viewers can rest assured that their beloved monster isn't a murderer. Like Lucille 2 told Buster at Cinco de Cuatro, "I've never known you to want to hurt anybody." And she was right.

Editor's note: Season 5 is controversial due to the presence of Jeffrey Tambor, who was fired from Transparent after being accused of sexual harassment by two co-stars (he denies these claims); he also admitted to and apologized for verbally harassing Jessica Walter on the Arrested Development set in a recent New York Times piece. Co-stars Jason Bateman, David Cross, Will Arnett and Tony Hale were criticized for seeming to defend Tambor and minimize Walter's experience, in the same interview. Bateman, Cross, and Hale have since apologized.