No one’s doing it like Shonda Rhimes. Her company Shondaland has bestowed upon us swoony romances like Bridgerton, twisty scammer stories like Inventing Anna, and now a quirky murder mystery called The Residence. I know what you’re thinking: Do we really need another murder mystery series? I’ll stop you right there and say yes, yes we do. I don’t care how many socially awkward detectives and shifty-eyed socialites the TV overlords keep throwing at us; I’ll keep watching them. And I always power through every episode because I need to get to the end to answer the ultimate question: Who did it?
In The Residence, the whodunnit mystery has the added variable of its White House setting. That’s right, the murder takes place in the White House and the victim is the chief usher of the Residence (the part of the house where the First Family actually lives). Detective Cordelia Cupp (Uzo Aduba) spends the series questioning the all the people who work in the West Wing and the ride-or-die Residence staff who work in the White House forever.
The divide between the two parts of the White House was a big part of how showrunner Paul William Davies chose who would be the murderer. “I had to really think: Who’s the person that would engender the most kind of hostility among the widest range of possible people?” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “One of the things that struck me in reading the book [The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House] and then doing more research, was this friction in the house between the established, resident staff and the people that stay there for four years but then move on.”
So who did he ultimately pick to commit the crime? Read on to learn who the killer is in The Residence season 1.
Who’s The Killer In The Residence Season 1?
At the beginning of The Residence, the White House becomes a crime scene when head usher A.B. Wynter (Giancarlo Esposito) is found dead in the middle of an Australian state dinner. We then get eight episodes of Cordelia questioning the hundreds of people in the house, taking breaks for bird-watching, and delivering some memorable one-liners — I think “I’m wondering why you’re wearing a dead man’s shirt” is trying to be the new “Why is your penis on a dead girl’s phone,” for all the How To Get Away With Murder fans.
After a lot of red herrings, in the final episode, White House Social Secretary Lilly Schumacher (Molly Griggs) admitted that she sealed a door to “protect” two other White House staff members. But Cordelia and fellow detective Edwin Park (Randall Park) correctly pinpoint her as the killer; she actually sealed the door to hide the clock she used to issue A.B.’s fatal head wound. She did it because A.B. was onto her and the fact that she was stealing money from the White House.
Showrunner Paul Williams Davies said A.B. and Lilly “emerged as the two best kind of oppositional figures” in the White House, and that’s why he chose them as victim and murderer.
Cordelia cracked this case in season 1 of The Residence, and now we’ll just have to wait for a possible second season to see her solve the next one. Season 1 ends with her back in the Game Room, where the body was found, so who knows… maybe there’s another clue hidden within the White House.
