This post contains spoilers from The Residence episode 8 from this point forward.
Going into the season finale of The Residence, Cordelia Cupp is back on the case and trying to put all the pieces together to identify A.B. Wynter's killer. Episode 8 opens with a flashback to A.B. and Angie playing backgammon before the state dinner. He opens up about his parents, who passed away in a car accident when he was 11, because it's his father's birthday. A montage runs through all of the chaos A.B. dealt with before and during the dinner.
Finally, at long last, Cordelia takes the stand at her own congressional hearing on the way to the airport to find her Giant Antpitta. A suspect for A.B.'s murder has been detained. Unfortunately for all of us who want to know who killed A.B., she's not forthcoming with the answer. She explains how she "figured it all out," beginning with her investigation of the Yellow Oval Room. She realizes a vase is missing from the room along with the Franklin clock.
Cordelia follows the lead of the yellow roses that were burned, potentially by a poison called paraquat. Emily the gardener explains that substances like that weren't allow anymore, but there's still a vile of paraquat in the shed. Cordelia finds a cup stolen from Emily's desk because the glass the killer was going to use for the poison broke. She's connecting the dots of how A.B. ingested poison, the rest of which was poured on the roses. A vase was thrown against the wall, and she now believes the missing clock was the murder weapon, not the candlestick.
Trying to find the clock, Cordelia and Edwin check with Tripp, a notorious hoarder of objects from around the White House. It's Tripp who reveals that A.B. was planning to retire then walked back on that decision. That revelation takes them to Hollinger, who shares that Jasmine went on a rant about not becoming chief usher. According to others, A.B. kept pushing his retirement date back much at Jasmine's frustration. Cordelia now designates Jasmine as a suspect.
The Residence episode 8 recap
Edwins wonders if all of the suspects contributed to A.B.'s death, and while he's wondering if it's been in front of them all along, Cordelia finds A.B.'s journal on the shelf in the library. She reads all kinds of tea about the staff, a page with mysterious numbers and acronyms, and the second half of the ripped "suicide note." There are lots of questions surrounding the discovery of the page from his journal, including who could have had access to the journal to plant the "note" on him.
While Cordelia, Edwin, and Dokes are reading the journal, they're pulled into a meeting with President Morgan. The men all argue about nonsense, but Cordelia's taking note of the paintings in the room. One of them sparks the realization that one of the paintings in the Yellow Oval Room was actually in the Red Room on the night of the murder. The paintings have all been swapped around the house. She now knows how A.B. was killed and makes a deal with the president to call the suspects back to reveal the killer within two hours.
When she gets the group all together, she hilariously explains the process of revealing the killer, but she doesn't know who did it just yet. She brings them all to the game room, where A.B.'s body was discovered, to run it back from the beginning and how all of these people are somehow connected. She next takes them into room 301 and reveals the blood on the baseboard and the red light from Tripp's watch. Tripp previously shared with one of the George McCutcheons that he passed out in room 301 from partying and woke up to A.B. dead next to him.
He dragged him to the game room, painted over the blood, and put Bruce's keys in A.B.'s jacket. Tripp also saw the suicide note in A.B.'s pocket, stole Didier's knife, and cut A.B.'s wrists. The group next goes downstairs to the Lincoln bedroom, where Doumbe reveals he saw Bruce dragging A.B. out of the Yellow Oval Room. Bruce cleaned up the crime scene under the impression that Elsyie had killed A.B. and dragged him up to room 301. In the Yellow Oval Room, Cordelia asks the main question: Who actually killed A.B. in this room?
Everyone thinks Doumbe did it, and he briefly makes them believe that he's an assassin hired by Hollinger... but he's not. Cordelia's convinced another person entered the room to kill A.B. because the poison, missing clock, and burned flowers can't be explained by Bruce or Elsyie. She knows the killer gave him poison and killed him with the clock. There used to be a pop door in the Yellow Oval Room that has since been covered by a wall. Hollinger reveals Jasmine ordered that the door was sealed, and she admits to it but says it was Elliott's order.
Who killed A.B. Wynter in The Residence?
It's the second time Elliott denies making an incriminating phone call, and Cordelia wonders if someone could have been using Elliott's voice to make the call. Lilly admits that she faked Elliott's voice and ordered the door to be sealed. She also admits to ripping a page out of his journal and says she found A.B. dead at the hands of Bruce and Elsyie. Lilly claims Elsyie threw the vase, Bruce hit A.B. with the clock, and the poison was for Elsyie's ex-husband. They staged it as a suicide, and Lilly has been covering for Elysie with the suicide note.
Cordelia doesn't believe Lilly's story. She uses a knife to cut open the pop door. Inside the small hallway, there's a tiny cabinet that pops open where Cordelia finds the Franklin clock. So, the truth: Lilly Schumacher killed A.B. Wynter. Cordelia explains her motive being that she hated the traditions of the White House and A.B. for upholding them. She also feared him because he was going to expose her with all of the information he kept on her behavior in his journal.
The coded numbers and letters in A.B.'s journal revealed the money that Lilly misappropriated and stole and the various criminal statutes and ethical codes she had violated. She went through all of the motions of staging his suicide — the poison, the call to the Yellow Oval Room, giving him back the "suicide note" — but he knew he was poisoned. She threw the vase, whacked him with the clock, and hid it behind the passageway's secret door. That night, she was panicked but relieved when his body was found in the game room.
Cordelia eulogizes A.B. and makes everyone in the room feel guilty about his passing. Lilly gets arrested for the murdered for A.B.'s murder. Filkins asks Cordelia if Hollinger played any role in this situation, and he didn't (even though he is an a--hole, as Cordelia says to Bix's delight). As for when Cordelia was onto Lilly, she felt it odd she said she saw A.B. and Elsyie arguing when A.B. kept his disagreements behind closed doors. (She watched through a crack in the door from the family living room.) Lilly also said she saw Bruce put the note in A.B.'s pocket, but she wasn't in the room when Cordelia found the note to know where it was unless she saw A.B. put it there himself.
Before heading off to the airport onto her next birding adventure, Cordelia stops by the residence and talks with Nan Cox. She somehow knew all along that it was Lilly who killed A.B. and asks for vodka. Cordelia takes one last look in the game room before the episode ends with a dedication to Andre Braugher. The Residence ends without a cliffhanger or a tease for a second season, but there's a feeling that this won't be the last we've seen of Cordelia Cupp.
Watch The Residence only on Netflix.