Do You Know The Enemy?
Season 4
Episode 10
Editor’s Rating
2 stars
**
Tara’s gorgeously random Traitor barometer throws the Faithful into disarray.
Photo: Euan Cherry/Peacock
Maura’s bob gets bigger every episode, as does her trust in Rob. That means his victory is already being prepared to be handed over to him on the same silver platter they use for the smoked salmon. Between the trust the Faithfuls have in him and their suspicions of Johnny and Tara, the whole game is pretty much locked up unless something goes terribly wrong. As I assumed at the end of last week’s episode, Rob and Eric did in fact opt to take out Kristen after she voiced her concerns about Eric’s behavior, which means she is the one who has to pack her knives and go for once. But what does surprise me is that our Traitors want the next banishment to be Natalie. And while I agree that her exit will be critical, they first have to divert everybody’s attention off of Johnny and Tara.
It’ll be an especially hard move now that Tara’s gorgeously random Traitor barometer has (correctly, for once) landed on Rob. Even a broken clock! She brings this new hunch to Natalie, who agrees that since he’s the last person anybody would suspect, he should actually be the one they suspect the most. The problem is Rob has two votes thanks to the power of the dagger, which makes him especially difficult to target.
They bring their case to Maura, asking her to consider why Candiace would have thrown Rob’s name out there the way she did, but Maura’s loyalty doesn’t budge. She’s 100 percent confident that he’s not a Traitor, and if he were, she’d drop dead. And that could still very much happen! And if not buying what they’re selling wasn’t enough, Maura turns right around to rat them out, telling Rob, Eric, and Mark about what they said on the way to the mission. Meanwhile, Johnny is of course on Tara and Natalie’s side, so the split sits at four versus three.
Their carnival-themed mission involves spinning the contestants around on a carousel before sending them out to find gold in stuffed animals — though Eric and Tara have to sit out the spinning portion due to medical reasons, which feels like a substantial leg up. But let’s face it, if any two players could use a leg up in this game, it’s them. When Rob returns to the carousel last, losing his chance at a shield, he takes out his frustration on Mark — which might have been a critical error, since it makes Mark realize their alliance is perhaps not as ironclad as he thought. On the flip side, Natalie tries to win over Maura by helping her secure her gold. Ultimately, Eric wins the shield, which means nobody will be safe from murder that night.
Though Tara and Johnny began the day uncharacteristically headstrong and (more importantly) correct, they begin to doubt themselves after the mission. Johnny tells Tara that everybody else’s sights are set on Natalie, and based on how things have gone so far, he kind of trusts their instincts more than he trusts his own. These two are the sole remaining bright spot on this quickly wilting season. I’m obsessed with not only watching them bumble through this game, but watching their own self-awareness as they do so. They trust no one, including themselves, and watching them have to make big decisions with zero decisiveness and nothing but doubt is representation that makes me feel seen.
Those doubts ultimately creep in just in time for the roundtable, where a now-uncertain Tara hopes to take a back seat despite leading the charge against Rob earlier in the day. That doesn’t go over particularly well with Natalie, who Rob goes after before she turns things around on him. She brings up the most damning evidence against him — Candiace’s vote — but is shocked when Tara plays devil’s advocate and suggests that it might have truly been just a throwaway vote. She wastes no time calling Tara out for this switch-up, saying that she feels like she was taken advantage of and is now being left out to dry. We know that Tara would never be malicious like that — she just refuses to trust her gut so she’s hedging, and, unfortunately, Natalie is facing the consequences of that. It’s during this tiff that the roundtable comes to an end, without much indication of where this vote is actually going to go.
Ultimately, apart from Natalie voting for Tara out of spite, the table unanimously votes to banish a furious Natalie. It’s a massive win for Rob, but leaves Tara distraught. To put it simply, she is not having a good time in this castle. She’s crying after the banishment and begging for the sweet release of death to free her from this game. But everyone else is looking ahead to who the Traitors are if it wasn’t Natalie. Mark points out that Eric has been playing the game much too quietly, and in another room, Johnny is saying the same exact thing to Tara and Maura. “I think there are two Traitors remaining, and I think Rob and Eric are the remaining Triators,” Johnny says in his confessional, finally hitting the nail right on the head after a full season of confusion.
Speaking of our two Traitors, up in the turret, they have their pick of the litter for who to kill, but there’s a twist. Whoever they chose will get a public execution in front of everybody, meaning they’ll have to act surprised when it happens. While splitting up the “skating twins” seems like the most likely move, they also float the idea of killing their allies Maura or Mark to draw attention away from themselves. And while we don’t yet find out who they chose, as the entire castle walks outside to find an empty coffin, Maura is oddly confident that it’s about to belong to her.
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