To say that Rob Rausch has snake-charmed his way through this season of The Traitors is an understatement. The Love Island alum has amassed a cabal of groupies both inside the castle (we see you, Dorinda Medley) and out (per The Cut, TikTok at large) with his shirtless overall wearing and disarmingly quiet nature. It’s been impressive to see just how long that spell would hold over this season’s cast, with Rausch’s heartthrob status and low-key charm thus far successfully masking his sinister schemes and ruthless gameplay. 

So it’s equally entertaining to watch that viper meet his venomous match in fellow Traitor Candiace Dillard Bassett, who’s fanged and ready to take him down in the wake of his betrayal against Lisa Rinna last episode. “A careful assassin serves her revenge cold,” Candiace hotly kicks off this week’s ep. “So right now I’m putting my platter in a good ol’ deep freezer and when the time is right, I will pull it out and serve it.” 

With Rinna banished, there’s a space to fill in the turret. Rob and Candiace can either murder a Faithful as usual, as host Alan Cumming tells them, or recruit one to join them in their cloaked duplicity. They choose the former, though it would have been a far juicier TV moment for Candiace (who Rob willingly defaults to in the evening’s decision as a sort of penance for the Lisa move) to not disclose her decision to murder Colton Underwood and instead let Rausch find out that his closest ally is dunzo alongside the rest of the cast at breakfast the next day. Alas. “The goal of this murder was to cut the alliance between Rob and Colton,” Candiace says, though Rob is right to point out that the killing will only draw a direct line back to the Housewife. 

The bulk of the house is indeed throwing Candiace’s name around, especially with that glaringly retaliative vote against Rob during last week’s roundtable. It certainly doesn’t help her that Rausch himself—who still has that deadly dagger advantage, giving him not one but two votes in an upcoming roundtable—is fanning the speculation by claiming Colton dropped her name before he was banished. At the same time, Candiace is trying to redirect those castle suspicions to her former ally, bringing up how flustered the snake wrangler was discussing Colton’s departure at the breakfast table that morning. 

Candiace is far from happy, then, when Rob is chosen as one of three players to get a potential shield in this week’s mission, which requires the rest of the house to reenact paintings and have the trio of seekers (Rausch, Kristen Kish, and Mark Ballas) match them in a dusty old gallery via walkie-talkie. “Everybody wants to drink Rob’s bathwater because he’s such a Faithful,” Candiace grumbles, but it ends up being a quick-thinking Kish who realizes the shield is hidden inside one of the painting’s canvas backings. 

With the mission complete and another $12,000 added to the growing prize pot (which now stands at $150,800), we’re back in the ring for more Traitor-on-on Traitor fisticuffs. After Johnny Weir warns her that people are coming for her, Candiace goes straight to the source: Rob. It’s a fiery exchange, one of dodged apologies (“You also told Lisa you’re sorry,” Candiace pointedly reminds him) and cold-blooded threats. “You are a snake…if I get banished tonight, your name is coming up,” the Housewife promises.  

It’s not a surprise, then, that their heated rivalry fires up the roundtable. Despite some early quibbling over whether or not Stephen Colletti could potentially be a Traitor—another name-drop from the late Colton—much of the evening’s deliberations are focused on Candiace’s throwaway vote against Rob from the table prior. (“Colton was being used as Rob’s beard!” Candiace shoots back, which, coupled with Johnny Weir gamely choking out Eric Nam during the mission earlier, will no doubt make a specific subset of the internet go feral.) 

Candiace, unsurprisingly, votes for Rob, and vice versa, but the coffin nail against the Housewife is actually hammered in by Johnny, who begrudgingly decides to run with the evidence presented and go against his Potomac pal. Yes, we officially have a back-to-back Traitor banishment, with Candiace revealing her treacherous identity to cast cheers. She’s left hopeful that the rest of the castle will take her exit as a reason to look more closely at Rob’s gameplay: “If they don’t? The joke is on them. So good luck to you all.” 

Said snake slithers his way up to the turret that evening solo, but Alan tasks him with recruiting a Faithful into his duplicity. He’s already got Mark in his pocket, he reasons, and Johnny is a bit too high risk, so he opts for Eric, who isn’t pleased to receive that middle-of-the-night missive. “I can’t deal with this,” the crooner cries. “I just want to be left alone. This is what happens when you’re nice!” It’ll be interesting to see if Nam can slink and slide along Rausch or if he, too, will get gobbled up by Rob’s game.  

Stray observations

• The online rumor mill posited that Rob may have let it spill to his boy Colton that he’s a Traitor, or that Colton could have pulled the same move he did on Lisa and bartered his roundtable allegiance for protection up in the turret. Thoughts? This writer is very against a rigged game but also frankly wouldn’t put it past either fella. 
• Alan’s fashion inspo this week: One Direction-era Harry Styles meets Silkie chicken. Fierce all around. 

Christina Izzo is a contributor to The A.V. Club.