Ben Skyler is a major guest character in Psych: The Musical and revealed to be responsible for all the crimes in the special, framing Z to take the fall for everything.
Biography[]
In the 90s, Z wrote a production based off Jack the Ripper, but Skyler and Miles Thornton, two main members of the crew, kept making revisions to the script. A critic soon found out and hoped to shut the play down with this information of its inadequate management. Provoked by this, Skyler and Thornton killed the critic in a heated altercation. With Z losing it on the other side of the door, assuming the critic was still alive, Skyler and Thornton lured Z in only to knock him unconscious, which would lead to his recurring migraines. Intent on framing him for the murder, they set a fire to destroy the evidence and left Z behind with the dead critic. Z survived the fire, but he was institutionalized for the crimes he never committed.
Over a decade later, the play was put back into action for another try. But Z, realizing the truth by then and being lucid enough off all the drugs he was on, realized he had no chance of getting his innocence, so he decided to get revenge instead. When he escaped and kidnapped a stranger to pose as him as a distraction for later, Skyler was questioned in regards to Z to figure out his next move. But Thornton suddenly crashes down onto the set and dies, which is determined to be a suicide, provoked by the fear of Z exposing him and the guilt of his actions. Shawn brags about his intentions of catching the real killer, worrying Skyler. Z releases the stranger at the house of Elisa McCardle, Z's inspiration and an actress in the play, successfully getting inside and escaping, but McCardle's left unharmed and finds the older script, proving the motive of Skyler's crimes. McCardle later confronts Skyler on set, and fearing being turned in, Skyler strangles McCardle to death, leaving to be found off the side of a road on the landscape there to frame Z.
Mr. Yang, an acquaintance of Z at the hospital who escaped later herself, is actually suspected of McCardle's murder out of jealousy. But reacting to Shawn's bragging before, Skyler wraps rope around Shawn's neck and tries to hang him. Yang fights Skyler off long enough to save Shawn, but she dies from being slashed to death by Skyler in the process. She does leave a cut on Skyler's stomach from the fight, which proves crucial in identifying him. The night of the play, after a wrong lead of knocking out the actor portraying the inspector, as he used the same moves Skyler did when running around with the rope, and finding he lacks the cut on his chest, Shawn has an epiphany and realizes the killer had to have known about the scripting. He has Juliet go through the edits, where they find the first one by Z, and Shawn puts all the crimes together. Running off to catch Skyler, as Z planned to personally kill Skyler as his revenge, and leaving Gus with the inspector role instead, he and the team find Z's already cornered him. With a switchblade to his throat, Skyler gives a full confession, but they all talk Z down enough to let Skyler go. Skyler's arrested and incarcerated, Z being taken back to the institution.