“Til Death Us Do Part”

Is anyone else here already excited for The Traitors reunion special? The thing won’t even air for five more weeks, but I’m incredibly invested in whatever is going to go down between Danielle, Boston Rob and Carolyn (and Bob the Drag Queen), because the deceit and utter loathing they all have for each other is tremendous. I hesitate to say that it has come to a head on this week’s episode, because I still think there’s a lot of Traitor Haterade (Traitorade?) left in the tank between Danielle and Carolyn, but with the elimination of Boston Rob, it seems like the dynamic has shifted (though maybe in ways that are yet unclear).

When Season 3 Episode 7 began, my first thought was “How can an audience be expected to root for a group of Traitors who are so disjointed and who have completely given up on themselves?” They really were making it so hard for us! In the turret when Carolyn Wiger asked Danielle Reyes which Faithful she wanted to murder and Danielle responded, “I could care less,” that was the moment she truly lost me. As much as I think Boston Rob wasn’t really great for this show, stealing focus from the very beginning, Danielle has been a thorn in my side for weeks. She not only takes this game personally (refusing to kill Derrick because he’s her friend IRL? Sorry, that’s not how the show works) but she’s proving herself to be spiteful and grumpy, and Carolyn put it best last week when she simply said that she wishes she could murder Danielle.

“Come on, Danielle, I thought we were all supposed to be a team,” Boston Rob exasperatedly tells her in the turret as she vetoes every Faithful’s name he and Carolyn suggest. Eventually though, Rob convinces Danielle that Derrick is the biggest threat to them (or, well, at least to him), and Derrick is murdered by the order of the Traitors. “If I were Rob, I would have murdered me as well,” Derrick says when he reads the scroll sentencing him to his death. At least he’s got a good perspective.

At breakfast though, Danielle is bereft – for once, her tears don’t seem like overacting, and yet they have never felt more misplaced. Danielle, don’t you want to win this thing?? (She’s so emotional that Ciara Miller feels the need to point out later, “Derrick didn’t really die.”)

“Damn, dude, someone’s really trying to f—ing frame me,” Rob says at breakfast, expertly trying to deflect responsibility for this thing, but Tom Sandoval is starting to sniff out Rob’s sus…and for the first time, his suspicions are correct. What I think is truly amazing though is the fact that Tom is taken so unseriously in this house that he’s practically a ghost. I mean, I think Dylan and Rob literally walked through him in this scene without noticing him?

In what’s probably my favorite eulogy thus far, Alan Cumming enters the breakfast room and declares, “Ahhh, Derrick with two Rs. R-R-I-P.” I laughed.

This week’s challenge, a highbrow-lowbrow meeting of Fear Factor and Boda de Sangre requires the remaining 12 contestants to pair off, wearing their finest wedding garb (Rob actually put on a tux which I assume he only ever wears on truly formal occasions like when the Pats are in the Super Bowl, while Dylan Efron’s black and red suit hails from the David S. Pumpkins Menswear Collection), and the pairs go head to head, forced to hold hands while their hands are locked inside clear boxes that are slowly filled with centipedes, scorpions and other critters. If either player flinches and breaks the seal of their handshake, they’re eliminated and will not be eligible for a shield. Within seconds, Chrishell Stause and Dolores Catania are eliminated when Chrishell jumps, breaking the seal.

To Rob’s credit, he really tries to keep his partner Ciara Miller calm as she freaks out, trying to bond with her about both being Capricorns and their mutual love of veal parm. But when bucket upon bucket of mealworms, crickets and cockroaches are dumped on their heads, it’s a game-changer not just for them for for all the contestants.

And then come the snakes, wrapped around the shoulders of the remaining contestants, most of whom keep their eyes closed to remain oblivious to the terrors enrobing their bodies. From the sidelines you can tell Chrishell and Dolores have never been so happy to lose something, and Alan Cumming has perhaps never laughed harder at anything in his life. At the end of the challenge, Rob and Ciara, Danielle and Britney, and Ivar and Sam all receive shields, leaving Chrishell and Dolores, Carolyn and Gabby, and Tom and Dylan vulnerable to elimination.

At the round table, Britney is the prime target, all thanks to the crumbs of sus that Rob’s been dropping. (Once again, after Rob mentions Britney, Danielle takes issue with a person Rob’s trying to get rid of because for some reason she doesn’t want to win this). Britney realizes she’s a target though and plans to direct her energy at Rob, and the entire Round Table is essentially Rob laying out his case for Britney’s guilt while Britney and Tom gun for Rob.

In the end, a supermajority – including Danielle and Carolyn – vote for Rob, and when he enters the Circle of Truth, he doesn’t need to draw things out, he simply reveals, in his calm Boston Rob voice, “I am and always have been, since the very beginning, a Traitor.” The entire place erupts in cheers, save for one person, Ciara, who has always believed in Rob this whole time.

In his confessional, Rob admits that he would have remained loyal to Carolyn had he remained in the game, but as for Danielle, “I think she’s a bad Traitor, a bad game player, just bad all around.”

After Rob is banished, Alan reveals that the Faithfuls without a shield this week will head to the castle’s chapel where one of them will meet their fate… and meet the Traitors in person. Because this week’s murder will be face to face. Gabby, Tom, Dylan, Chrishell and Dolores enter the chapel one by one and make their pleas to stay in the game, one of them will confront Danielle and Carolyn in the flesh, but we’ll have to wait till next week to see which Faithful will have the pleasure.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.