8 Clues To AB Wynter’s Killer Identity You Might Have Missed In The Residence Season 1

Warning! This article contains spoilers for The Residence.

The final reveal about AB Wynter’s killer’s identity in The Residence may seem surprising, but many subtle clues in the Netflix series gave it away. Inspired by Kate Andersen Brower’s The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House, the Netflix murder mystery drama has a typical story setup where it begins with the unexplained death of a main character. In The Residence, this character turns out to be Giancarlo Esposito’s AB Wynter, the chief usher at the White House.

After his dead body is mysteriously discovered in the White House’s Game Room, Cordelia Cupp, touted as the world’s greatest detective, is brought on board for an investigation. Effectively combining her analytical skills with her knack for bird watching, Cupp uncovers one clue after another before she finally concludes the killer’s identity in The Residence‘s ending moments. Although many main characters from The Residence end up on her suspect list, some definitive clues give away that only the President’s social secretary, Lilly Schumacher, was responsible for the crime.

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Carpenter Eddie Gomez Heard Lilly & Wynter Arguing

It Was Previously Assumed Harry Was The One Arguing

Many characters report that they heard AB Wynter loudly arguing with someone on the evening of the dinner, which was strange because Wynter rarely lost his temper. Even when he confronted his employees about their mistakes, he did it behind closed doors. Detective Cupp initially had good reason to believe that Wynter was arguing with Harry Hollinger. Harry’s side of the story suggested that Wynter had somehow overheard a conspiracy he and his allies were discussing, which eventually led to a conflict between them.

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Being an usher, Wynter never intended to talk about Harry’s involvement in the conspiracy to anyone. However, the fact that Harry kept questioning his loyalty and commitment to his job is what presumably infuriated him. This narrative, however, was dismissed when the show’s ending moments revealed that Wynter was arguing with Lilly and confronting her for misusing funds and stealing money while working at the White House.

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Lilly Did A Convincing Impression In The Residence’s Episode 1

She Perfectly Imitated Elliot Morgan

In The Residence‘s ending, many clues point towards Elliot Morgan, revealing that he asked everyone to evacuate the second floor and even asked the Secret Service to leave. Jasmine Haney, too, claims that she only sealed the pop door in the “murder room” because Elliot Morgan called her and asked her to. Morgan, however, is surprised by this, claiming that Jasmine is lying. Instead of confessing to the crime, he denies having anything to do with it.

This is when Lilly reveals that she impersonated him but defends herself by implying that she was only trying to protect Bruce and Elysie. After Cupp keeps pressuring her, Lilly eventually exposes herself, which confirms she is the killer. However, the clues were always stacked against her, given how she made a convincing impression of Elliot in episode 1 when Cupp was interviewing her.

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Lilly Kept Asking Everyone About Wynter

She Seemed A Little Too Concerned About His Whereabouts

Bruce and Elysie unknowingly tampered with evidence from the crime scene because they believed they were protecting one another. Bruce even moved Wynter’s body, and it later ended up in the Game Room after a series of events led to many people from the house encountering it. After the body was moved, Lilly went looking for it and was surprised when she did not find it in the room where she had murdered Wynter. As a result, she started fearing that Wynter was still alive, leading her to ask if anyone had seen him.

Most workers in the White House did not make much of this as they assumed she wanted something from Wynter. However, little did they realize that she was looking for his body because she believed she had murdered him.

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Unlike Other White House Workers, Lilly Was Always An Outsider

She Mistreated Most Employees

After going through AB Wynter’s journal and understanding how he managed the people in the White House, Cupp deduces that the staff was an entire family unit for him. Although he had a fair share of conflicts with all of them, he always saw them as family. Owing to this, even though many workers threatened to kill him in the heat of the moment, none of them meant it. Lilly, in contrast, was an outsider who struggled to fit into the tight-knit dynamic of the staff.

She forced her way into the White House using her family connections and disrespected everyone’s work to have her own way. While the others worked as a family, she let her ambitions cloud her judgment. Therefore, Lilly’s inability to empathize with Wynter or any other workers in the White House was the biggest clue pointing in her direction.

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Lilly Was Trying To Upend White House Traditions From The Beginning

All Other Employees Worked Towards A Common Goal

Almost all workers at the White House ended up arguing with Wynter about their creative differences. However, at the end of the day, they all worked towards a common goal: to keep upholding traditions and serving the greater good. Lilly, on the other hand, was deadset on dismantling everything Wynter and his team stood for. She cared little about working towards the common goal and was purely driven by her desire for control. It is this desire that eventually led her to steal from the White House and kill Wynter when he threatened to expose her and harm her reputation.

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Lilly Could Not Have Known About The Suicide Note

She Was Not Around When Cupp Found It

Lilly seemingly takes her biggest misstep when she asks about Wynter’s suicide note. Cupp first found the note moments after Wynter’s body was discovered in the Game Room. During that moment, only characters like Harry Hollinger were around, but Lilly was nowhere in sight. Owing to this, she could not have known about the note. Therefore, as soon as she mentions the note, it becomes evident that she was the one who planted it in the first place.

When Cupp eventually learns that Lilly was arguing with Wynter on the night of his murder, she connects the dots and deduces that Lilly might have torn the note from Wynter’s journal. Since the note read like a suicide letter, she thought it was the perfect opportunity for her to kill Wynter and frame it as a suicide.

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Wynter Received The Call Moments After His Fight With Lilly

The Caller Threatened To Kill Him

In The Residence‘s early moments, Cupp learns that Wynter had received a call from an unknown person on the night of his murder. As soon as he got off the call, he acknowledged that he was going to die. The fact that he received the call soon after his fight with Lilly was enough to suggest that she was the one who called him and made him worry about his fate. Although Wynter did not know what she was going to do, he seemingly had an intuition that she was planning to harm him. Unfortunately, he ignored his gut feeling, which gave Lilly the perfect opportunity to kill him.

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Lilly Cleverly Tried To Frame Bruce & Elysie

She Was Trying A Little Too Hard To Sell Them As The Killers

Towards the final moments of The Residence, Lilly tries to flip the narrative by claiming that she was only trying to save Bruce and Elysie by tampering with the evidence of their crime. This would have made sense if Lilly had previously shared a decent relationship with the staff members at the White House. However, Cupp realizes she could be lying about covering up for Bruce and Elysie because her history suggests she never cared about the people working at the White House.

While AB Wynter treated the workers as his family members, Lilly only disagreed with them and even blamed them for her own mistakes. Her previous behavior established that she had no reason to empathize with White House staff members like Bruce and Elysie. Therefore, by putting the blame on them in The Residence‘s finale, she was only trying to defend herself and attempting to leverage the fact that almost all evidence pointed in their direction.