Joe Gage is responsible for the poisoned coffee. The scene separates the moment of the attack, the information the viewer receives, and the confession Warren eventually gets.
Joe Gage acts while attention is elsewhere
Joe Gage poisons the haberdashery coffee. Daisy Domergue sees what happens and stays silent. The film releases that information in several stages: first it keeps attention on Warren's confrontation with General Smithers; then it briefly rewinds and shows that, during that distraction, someone had tampered with the coffee. The identity of the person responsible is still withheld until the later interrogation.
The device changes the viewer's relationship to an everyday action. When John Ruth and O.B. pour themselves a cup, we know the contents are dangerous and they do not. The suspense no longer depends on imagining whether there is a threat, but on watching how long it will take for the harm to happen. The gestures of making a cup, bringing it close, and drinking it take on outsize importance because the narrative has given us information the characters lack.
Daisy occupies a different position. Her knowledge makes her a silent accomplice and allows her glances to be reinterpreted. Chained to Ruth and subjected to his blows, she retains an advantage he cannot see. Physical closeness does not guarantee control over what she knows. The scene exploits exactly that difference: the bounty hunter dominates her movement, while she knows of a threat that is within immediate reach.
The film does not need to identify the substance or explain its properties for the attack to be understandable. Its dramatic function is to eliminate those guarding Daisy and throw the room into disarray. Turning the episode into a technical explanation of the poison would shift attention away from what the story shows: a clandestine act, a witness who stays silent, and victims who believe they are carrying out a safe action.
Ruth and O.B.'s deaths change the room
The effects of the coffee destroy John Ruth's authority very quickly. Up to that point, he had tried to control the guns and keep watch over everyone present. The attack shows that his precautions were aimed at one kind of danger and left others uncovered. Violence can arrive through a shared object that belongs to the usual hospitality of the haberdashery.
O.B. dies without taking part in the web of deception that dominates the rest. His job had been to drive, tend the horses, and handle practical tasks. His death broadens the scope of Daisy's rescue plan: the conspirators are willing to kill whoever is convenient or exposed to the attack. The distinction between direct opponent and incidental worker disappears within their operation.
Ruth realizes the betrayal by the time his body is already failing. His relationship with Daisy then becomes even more violent. She takes advantage of her captor's collapse and ends up shooting him. The episode combines the damage caused by the coffee with a later act by the prisoner; summarizing it by saying Ruth simply drinks and falls erases the struggle that permanently transforms their relationship.
Mannix avoids drinking when Warren stops him. That fact will matter for the trust that develops between them. Warren identifies a threat that could also have killed him and acts in time. The later cooperation is not born only of spur-of-the-moment chemistry: it has a concrete precedent in an intervention that saves the supposed sheriff's life.
The confession and what still remains hidden
Warren sets up an interrogation that treats Daisy as the center of the conspiracy. His reasoning starts from a purpose: someone wants to keep her from reaching the gallows. The identities presented by the guests stop seeming like separate stories and begin to form a possible network. The person responsible for the coffee could be linked to any of the other men, though we still do not know the extent of that collaboration.
When Warren threatens Daisy, Joe Gage confesses to having put the poison in the coffee. The admission settles the concrete question of the person who carried out the act, but it does not unravel the whole operation. The attack from beneath the floor immediately shows that there is still a participant outside their field of vision. The revelation of one truth opens the way to another threat, rather than restoring complete control.
The Domergue gang flashback later makes it possible to understand how the scene was set up. The people who seemed to have come together by chance had occupied the haberdashery and divided up their roles before Ruth arrived. The coffee is part of that created opportunity, even as the film preserves the tension of a plan being carried out amid surprises and under the watch of its adversaries.
The sequence works because it distinguishes three questions: what happened, who did it, and what they hoped to achieve. The narrative rewind answers the first, Gage's confession the second, and the group's revelation the third. The ending of The Hateful Eight grows out of those partial answers: the survivors understand more and more, but they receive the information only after several deaths have made it impossible to restore the original situation.
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