Unprecedented Chaos, Round Table Explosion, Tears, Betrayals!

By this point, everyone knows how Boston Rob plays these competition shows. He is ruthless, domineering, and controlling. So it’s no surprise that he took the reins of the game at the merest hint of a threat from a fellow Traitor, triggering Bob TDQ’s early ouster.

It’s unprecedented in the show’s run so far for a Traitor to almost immediately turn on one of their own. Usually it’s a pretty tight cabal, working together for at least a little while. After all, the more Traitors there are, the more other Traitors there are for all those Faithfuls to suspect.

Even Rob knew he was going to have to go into some pretty heavy damage control among the Faithfuls after that move. But what about his fellow Traitors, Big Brother icon Danielle Reyes and recent Survivor breakout finalist Carolyn Wiger?

As Danielle noted after a key misstep during this week’s Mission, The Traitors may be the most complicated reality competition show on television right now, no atter which side you’re playing on.

If you’re a Faithful, you have to try to successfully hunt Traitors, but not pop your head up enough that they’ll “murder” you in your sleep, nor do you want to make enough noise that your fellow Faithfuls will start to suspect you … especially with Traitors ready to fuel any wrong guesses.

But the game might be even harder for Traitors because not only do they have to lie constantly about everything, they have to play the role of being a Faithful while also not being suspected by their fellow Faithfuls. Their only saving grace is the can’t be murdered.

But that doesn’t mean a Traitor can’t get out another Traitor, as Rob just proved last week. But if it can happen once, it could happen again. And how can Rob avoid casting suspicion on himself after being so certain Bob TDQ was a Traitor (and being right).

That was the question Challenge beast Wes Bergmann asked to Zac Efron’s brother Dylan, and it was a question that would circle Rob throughout the episode. Honestly, everyone should always suspect Rob at all times. He’s so good at these games.

But did he overplay his hand?

Rob’s betrayal of one of his own immediately pinged on the radars of both Danielle and Carolyn, with neither one of them quite trusting him after that play. He didn’t help his case when he told them he’d never come after either of them … so long as they didn’t come after him, too.

Luckily for fans of messy TV, neither of the ladies was inclined to take that threat lying down, so they both internally vowed to keep an eye on Rob, and probably get rid of them should the opportunity to rise. The problem is the power of a seed of mistrust.

If Rob could betray them, what about one another? Danielle is just as ruthless a player as Rob. The only reason she didn’t win was the Big Brother players in her season saw how ruthless she was from home before they voted. Their salty votes led to jury sequestering the next summer.

She proved just how dastardly she could be by immediately deciding she needed to get rid of Rob. But then she got a squirrelly read from Carolyn — who admittedly gives everyone weird vibes because she’s such a deeply weird person. Carolyn knows this, but it’s just who she is and how she is.

Nevertheless, judging people by how they present themselves would prove to be a theme throughout the episode, with Carolyn’s odd behavior immediately creating even more paranoia in Danielle. But while she’s wary of Rob, she’s less so of Carolyn, so she decided to target the more recent alum first.

It was on the way back from this week’s mission — where Danielle put a huge target on her own back with a key misstep — that she started planting seeds that she suspected Carolyn may be a Traitor.

“I think a Traitor is a female and no one’s saying her name. And it’s Carolyn. That’s my theory,” she said on the ride back to the castle while Carolyn was in a different car.

She then brought the notion to fellow Big Brother all-star Britney Haynes, who shot back, “She’s not capable.” Danielle was right in that perception being why Carolyn is such a great choice, but it also will make it harder to convince others she can pull off all the nuances of that when she can’t even come to breakfast without being out of breath and looking “disheveled.”

Meanwhile, Dylan confessed to Carolyn that Danielle had started putting her name out there, which put Carolyn on high alert. On her way to join her fellow Traitors she mused, “Let’s all head into the turret and figure out who we want to murder — each other!“

Is it possible for Traitors to win this game if they’re gunning for each other while there are still so many Faithfuls left in the game? It’s unprecedented territory, but the messiness is only going to get messier as the episode wrapped with Carolyn getting word that Danielle is coming for her.

In other words, it’s an all-out civil war within the turret. Rob has said he won’t target either lady, but he doesn’t really trust them. Danielle wants both Rob and Carolyn out so she can replace them with Traitors she can trust. And Carolyn trusts no one, while no one can quite get a read on her.

Honesty, if any Traitor can pull off a victory right now, our money would be on Carolyn. Underneath all that quirky fidgety behavior is a pretty sharp mind that’s extremely underestimated.

The mission this week was a quiz game that involved a second layer of competing for Shields to protect players from the night’s Murder. This is where Danielle made a key mistake.

Big Brother winner Derrick Levasseaur was first to answer correctly and he chose his own picture for protection. Now, this was a little more complicated, too, as there were only two shields.

Every subsequent player could replace one of the two faces that wound up on a shield, which definitely happened more than once. Only the last two pictures would actually reflect safe players.

With the third correct answer, Danielle made a huge move by being the first player to not choose her own picture. Her logic was that it was unlikely her picture would stay, while she was also wanting to protect the last remaining Real Housewife, Dolores Catania (RHONJ).

Her reasoning was sound as neither she nor Carolyn had wanted to Murder Robyn Dixon (RHOP) at the top of the show, but Rob pushed his wishes through, saying it would so more chaos. Let’s just say, him mansplaining his way through a turret meeting isn’t helping him any!

Unfortunately, not opting to protect yourself can also cause other players to think that must mean you know you’re safe … as in maybe you’re a Traitor.

Danielle might have been able to talk her way out of it once, but then she did it again in the seventh out of eight total rounds. She again did not give herself a Shield, instead choosing Derrick, who’s picture she’d replaced earlier.

She said it was to make up for that and show him that she loved him, but that doesn’t really make sense in a game where you can get murdered each night and players have already been suspicious of her. Danielle still kept Dolores safe, not replacing her picture, but even Dolores found it all a but suss.

“Don’t you feel like you’re going to get murdered, too?” she asked Danielle right in front of everyone. With this, Danielle realized she had “messed up,” losing track of all the layers of this game.

Suddenly, both Danielle and Rob had their work cut out for them, deflecting suspicion from themselves while Danielle couldn’t even convince a fellow BB player to believe Carolyn could be a Traitor.

What helped is the earlier seed planted that suggested the idea that of the three players put into a casket in the third episode was possibly a Traitor who put themselves in there to throw off suspicion.

They’d already gotten former Survivor winner Jeremy Collins out, leaving Ciara Miller (Summer House) and WWE alum Nikki Garcia as totally innocent pawns in the Traitors’ games. And the gambit worked, with players still suspicious of both women.

But they were also growing suspicious about both Danielle and Rob, with Wes telling the house that the only way Rob could know Bob was a Traitor for certain was if he was also one. Luckily, Rob also has a strong contingent in the House who believe he’s using his skill in these games for the Faithfuls.

He definitely had Dylan fooled, who helped him get Bob out last week. “I’ve looked up to Boston Rob my whole life. And to have us successfully get a Traitor? Pinch me, I’m dreaming,” Dylan said, not knowing that dream might turn into a nightmare.

It was British royal Lord Ivar Mountbatten who actually went and told Rob the rumor Wes was spreading about him. “Wes is a very, very dangerous player. He is smart enough to see exactly what I’m doing,” Rob said before confronting him. Wes, smartly, lieed through his teeth.

“Rob is more than likely a Traitor. I’m just afraid to put that evidence out there,” Wes said in a confessional.

Luckily for Danielle, the Faithfuls appeared to have bigger fish to fry, and Rob’s Traitor target was still bigger than hers, while the dirty work against Nikki and Ciara was just too strong to ignore.

Surprisingly it was Biggest Loser trainer Bob Harper who jumped on it at the Round Table, calling it like he sees it. He said that after watching Boston Rob for years on TV, he knows his style. “You would immediately come in and go for another Traitor to establish your dominance,” Bob said.

Rob agreed it would be “badass” to do that, but said he’s not doing it. He totally is, though.

The big turning point in the hour came when Chrishell Stause (Selling Sunset) came up to Rob and opened up about her growing suspicions of Nikki, who was a part of her Bambi alliance with Bachelorette Gabby Windey.

At the Round Table, with tears in her eyes, Chrishell said that while she hoped they could still be friends after the game, she couldn’t get past Nikki’s energy shift after Bob TDQ’s elimination. As such, she basically spearheaded a landslide vote against the WWE Superstar.

After Nikki revealed she was a Faithful, only Dylan had not voted for her — though Britney Spears’ ex Sam Asghari said that if Nikki is innocent, he’ll be targeting Rob tomorrow — and the castle erupted into tears and chaos as everyone scrambled to figure out how this had gone so wrong. Once again, suspicions turned to Rob.

Ciara, as the last remaining player to have been put in a casket, is definitely sweating, too, but this banishment turned the house into almost as much chaos as was in the turret at the end of the hour.

Will Danielle and Carolyn again bow to Rob’s will? Will Carolyn call out Danielle for targeting her? Will the entire trio blow up and then start trying to sabotage one another’s games? We’re only on Week 5 and this game is a tinder box on the poise of exploding.

We can’t wait!

New episodes of The Traitors drop every Thursday at 8 p.m. ET on Peacock.