{"id":443043,"date":"2026-01-30T13:11:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T13:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/443043\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T13:11:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T13:11:07","slug":"season-4-episode-7-the-black-banquet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/443043\/","title":{"rendered":"season 4, episode 7, “The Black Banquet”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI tink something very bad is about to happen,\u201d Ireland\u2019s Maura Higgins worries at the top of this week\u2019s The Traitors, an episode that host Alan Cumming pre-teased as \u201cthe best moment of Traitors TV history\u201d in a chat with AwardsRadar<\/a>. Hyperbolic, maybe, but he\u2019s certainly not far off. The chaotic carnage that occurs at that banquet table is far more heated than the platters of left-out poultry our players were forced to consume for dinner. (Seriously, what is going on with the food in that castle?!)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

We kick off with token traitor Lisa Rinna\u2014dressed as equal parts French sailor and evil Michelin Man\u2014arriving\u00a0 at the aforementioned soiree affixed with the cursed amulette with which she will kill off a Faithful in plain sight. (\u201cThis is like the Super Bowl of murders!\u201d) Everyone\u2019s already on edge, with marked tarot cards ominously fanned out on the dining table, so Lisa needs to stake out her target strategically. She ixnays the too obvious Colton Underwood, and instead opts for Survivor gamers Yam Yam Arocho and Natalie Anderson, as well as Top Chef host Kristen Kish.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t find out exactly who Rinna foils with her broach ruse until everyone sits down for dinner and Alan\u2014complete with a heavily-filled wine goblet and pearl-encrusted eyebrows, naturally\u2014arrives with his hooded henchmen. He informs our players that, yes, their worries were warranted and that someone has been cursed by a Traitor that very evening. However, two vials of antidote are available, so long as the Faithful correctly deduce who was poisoned in plain sight. Was Stephen Colletti\u2019s slicing of that roast simply a nice dinnertime gesture or a harbinger of doom? What about the tarot card printed with Kristen\u2019s portrait? Was it picked from the deck as a warning? And was Lisa Rinna\u2019s cheek bisous the kiss of death?<\/p>\n

Paranoid that they were unknowingly poisoned, Kristen, Natalie, and Tara Lipinski are all adamant that they should be the ones to drink the antidote, but none more so than Natalie. She is out of her seat and racing against the Olympic figure skater to snatch the remaining vial after Yam Yam gets the first one. In the end, though, all of that shouting and shoving was for nought, because Alan dramatically reveals that it\u2019s Yam Yam himself who had been marked for death by Lisa. In a last-ditch effort, he desperately implicates the RHOBH star to the room as he\u2019s hauled away by the guards.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rinna is, unsurprisingly, a bit rattled by Yam Yam\u2019s pronouncement. (\u201cI don\u2019t know if I\u2019ll recover from this but I\u2019m Lisa Rinna\u2014bring it on.\u201c)\u00a0 As for her fellow Traitors, Candiace Dillard Bassett is trying to diffuse the situation not only between Lisa and the Faithfuls but also between Lisa and Rob Rausch following last roundtable\u2019s big betrayal. \u201cWe\u2019re a well-oiled machine moving in tandem\u2026I don\u2019t want that to break up because Rob is an idiot,\u201d says the Potomac personality.<\/p>\n

The problem for the Traitors is that Rob actually isn\u2019t an idiot, and he\u2019s playing a pretty ruthless game. He knows that Yam Yam all but signed Lisa\u2019s death certificate on his way out, but also that if you want to be a legendary Traitor\u2014the kind that Rinna thinks she is\u2014you have to be willing to spill the blood of your own.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So while the rest of the Faithfuls have their eyes on Natalie and her curiously aggressive behavior at the banquet\u2014made even more suspicious by her Porscha-esque slip-up about \u201cmurdering\u201d gamers\u2014Rob doubles down on his backstabbing campaign against Lisa. That cold-blooded competitiveness helps fuel his win in this week\u2019s mission, which tasked the players with gathering gold pieces set out across a steep hillside. The win adds $17,800 to the collective prize pool but also gives Rob the chance to win a dagger granting him two votes at any of the next four roundtables. Using his self-proclaimed \u201chuman lie detector\u201d skills, the Love Island-er correctly deduces that it\u2019s Natalie who\u2019s hiding the dagger-marked tablet, thus giving him the coveted advantage. \u201cThe fact that he can pull this power out at any time to sway the votes is scary,\u201d Natalie worries. And it\u2019s not just the Faithfuls who should be concerned. When Rob returns to the castle, he makes an alliance with several non-Traitors to not reveal to the other housemates that he has the dagger advantage. Rausch is going rogue, you guys.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the roundtable that evening, Lisa brings up Natalie\u2019s verbal slip-up to redirect some of the heat on her, but she\u2019s not successful in snuffing out those flames. And with a fiery final vote from Rob, Rinna\u2019s time in the turret has come to an end. \u201cRob, damn you,\u201d a tearful Lisa says. \u201cThe end of Housewives was so difficult for me\u2026but I\u2019m so grateful for this entire experience.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rob managed to out-Traitor Rinna, but it looks like he\u2019s going to have a tougher time taking down Candiace, who vengefully voted for Rausch at the roundtable in a pointed throwaway vote. \u201cI have no idea how Candiace and I are going to work together moving forward\u2026seems to me like we\u2019re not,\u201d Rob laments. But Candiace is more than ready for a fight. \u201cThe Christian woman in me is just clutching her pearls. I\u2019m aghast,\u201d she says of Rob\u2019s serpentine ways. \u201cBut the bad bitch that is Candiace is ready to play a motherfucking game. I have to take the snake down and cut him off at the head.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Stray observations<\/p>\n

\u2022 As a TV fan, the joy of The Traitors is watching the most random people from across the reality universe befriend each other. Because exactly how do we have Survivor winner Yam Yam Arocho demanding Stephen Colletti of Laguna Beach fame to \u201chold my hand, bitch\u201d in emotional support? Incredible.\u00a0
\n\u2022 No disrespect to Alan Cumming\u2019s always sensational tartan moments but outfit of the week undoubtedly goes to Maura\u2019s \u201960s mod situation at castle breakfast.\u00a0
\n\u2022 We need many more cutaways to Alan\u2019s sweet pup Lala lying in her gilded dog bed eating \u201cFaithful Bitz,\u201d please and thank you.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Christina Izzo is a contributor to The A.V. Club.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI tink something very bad is about to happen,\u201d Ireland\u2019s Maura Higgins worries at the top of this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-443043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}