{"id":270340,"date":"2026-02-06T07:40:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T07:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/270340\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T07:40:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T07:40:07","slug":"the-traitors-recap-season-4-episode-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/270340\/","title":{"rendered":"The Traitors recap: season 4, episode 8"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>, TikTok at large) with his shirtless overall wearing and disarmingly quiet nature. It\u2019s been impressive to see just how long that spell would hold over this season\u2019s cast, with Rausch\u2019s heartthrob status and low-key charm thus far successfully masking his sinister schemes and ruthless gameplay.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s equally entertaining to watch that viper meet his venomous match in fellow Traitor Candiace Dillard Bassett, who\u2019s fanged and ready to take him down in the wake of his betrayal against Lisa Rinna last episode<\/a>. \u201cA careful assassin serves her revenge cold,\u201d Candiace hotly kicks off this week\u2019s ep. \u201cSo right now I\u2019m putting my platter in a good ol\u2019 deep freezer and when the time is right, I will pull it out and serve it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

With Rinna banished, there\u2019s 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\u2019s 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. \u201cThe goal of this murder was to cut the alliance between Rob and Colton,\u201d Candiace says, though Rob is right to point out that the killing will only draw a direct line back to the Housewife.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The bulk of the house is indeed throwing Candiace\u2019s name around, especially with that glaringly retaliative vote against Rob during last week\u2019s roundtable. It certainly doesn\u2019t help her that Rausch himself\u2014who still has that deadly dagger advantage, giving him not one but two votes in an upcoming roundtable\u2014is 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\u2019s departure at the breakfast table that morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Candiace is far from happy, then, when Rob is chosen as one of three players to get a potential shield in this week\u2019s 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. \u201cEverybody wants to drink Rob\u2019s bathwater because he\u2019s such a Faithful,\u201d Candiace grumbles, but it ends up being a quick-thinking Kish who realizes the shield is hidden inside one of the painting\u2019s canvas backings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With the mission complete and another $12,000 added to the growing prize pot (which now stands at $150,800), we\u2019re 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\u2019s a fiery exchange, one of dodged apologies (\u201cYou also told Lisa you\u2019re sorry,\u201d Candiace pointedly reminds him) and cold-blooded threats. \u201cYou are a snake\u2026if I get banished tonight, your name is coming up,\u201d the Housewife promises.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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\u2014another name-drop from the late Colton\u2014much of the evening\u2019s deliberations are focused on Candiace\u2019s throwaway vote against Rob from the table prior. (\u201cColton was being used as Rob\u2019s beard!\u201d 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.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019s left hopeful that the rest of the castle will take her exit as a reason to look more closely at Rob\u2019s gameplay: \u201cIf they don\u2019t? The joke is on them. So good luck to you all.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Said snake slithers his way up to the turret that evening solo, but Alan tasks him with recruiting a Faithful into his duplicity. He\u2019s already got Mark in his pocket, he reasons, and Johnny is a bit too high risk, so he opts for Eric, who isn\u2019t pleased to receive that middle-of-the-night missive. \u201cI can\u2019t deal with this,\u201d the crooner cries. \u201cI just want to be left alone. This is what happens when you\u2019re nice!\u201d It\u2019ll be interesting to see if Nam can slink and slide along Rausch or if he, too, will get gobbled up by Rob\u2019s game.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stray observations<\/p>\n

\u2022 The online rumor mill posited that Rob may have let it spill to his boy Colton that he\u2019s 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\u2019t put it past either fella.\u00a0
\n\u2022 Alan\u2019s fashion inspo this week: One Direction-era Harry Styles meets Silkie chicken. Fierce all around.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Christina Izzo is a contributor to The A.V. Club.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To say that Rob Rausch has snake-charmed his way through this season of The Traitors is an understatement.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-270340","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}