Faithful Brand Acquires Key Competitor, Expanding Market Reach

The Traitors Season 4 continued on Jan. 22 with the latest episode on Peacock. After five episodes, all three original Traitors (Candiace Dillard Bassett, Lisa Rinna, and Rob Rausch) selected by Alan Cumming were still alive, but while Candiace and Rob were flying under the radar, Lisa’s name had reached the target list from a few of the Faithful. When Lisa heard that Monét X Change was floating her name as a Traitor, they murdered Monét. Now Lisa is hearing that Colton Underwood is looking to come for her next, but it remained unclear if anyone took Alan’s bait at the mission to sacrifice everyone being shielded in order to secure their own personal safety.

Read on for our recap of Episode 6, titled “Planning a Coup,” to find out if the Traitors were able to get a fifth kill through. At the mission, the players are tempted with more shields, but receive a threat that taking one could put them at risk of banishment.

The 15 celebrities still alive and in the game at the start of Episode 6, included all three original Traitors, and the following Faithful:

• Colton Underwood, The Bachelor 23
• Dorinda Medley, The Real Housewives of New York City
• Eric Nam, K-pop singer-songwriter
• Johnny Weir, Surreal Life: Villa of Secrets and Olympic figure skater
• Kristen Kish, Top Chef host
• Mark Ballas, Dancing With the Stars pro dancer
• Maura Higgins, Love Island USA Aftersun
• Natalie Anderson, The Amazing Race 21 and Survivor: San Juan del Sur
• Ron Funches, comedian
• Stephen Colletti, Laguna Beach and actor
• Tara Lipinski, Olympic figure skater
• Yamil “Yam Yam” Arocho, Survivor 44

“It is so stressful, I need wine at breakfast I think.”
— Tara Lipinski

In an attempt to “change the narrative a little bit,” Lisa made a plan to “sprinkle a little Housewife” into her demeanor throughout the day, hoping that it would counter what she heard from Rob and Candiace about Colton’s suspicions of her. The running narrative is that Lisa is playing too quietly and if she was a Faithful she might be showing more of the personality they all know her to have. As it turns out, Lisa missed her opportunity to take out Colton via murder because the Faithful successfully resisted temptation at the previous mission and everyone remained shielded through the night.

Before the players got ready for their next “cryptic” mission, Johnny pulled in a group that consisted of Tara, Mark, Maura, and Kristen to suggest an alliance of “eight Faithful that we trust” in order to “swing any Round Table.” In this conversation, they discussed Ron and Colton as their likeliest targets because if Michael Rapaport didn’t get banished, then it probably would have been Ron and they see Colton as a “ringleader” of the votes swaying. Though they weren’t in this discussion, Johnny named Stephen, Candiace, Eric, and Rob as the rest of the “strong group of Faithfuls” to build upon his strategy.

Meanwhile, Colton was looking to bring Natalie into his undercover operation to float Lisa’s name to enough people, in part just so that they can watch and listen to who tries to deflect away from her. He also knew that if enough people know Colton is putting her name out there then his eventual murder will put “all eyes” on Lisa as the culprit anyway.

“I’m glad you don’t have sunglasses on today, so I can look you in your eyes.”
— Colton Underwood

For the mission, Alan brought the players to his creepy cabin in the woods to receive cryptic messages directing them to specific tombstones in the graveyard. Over the course of the challenge, pairs of players would leave the cabin to dig up $3,000 from a tomb or choose to sacrifice money to dig up two shields available at only one of the dig sites. When the players entered the cabin together, they made an agreement per Natalie’s suggestion that anyone that takes the shields will get banished. The threat was enough to deter everyone from claiming a shield, resulting in $15,000 added to the prize fund.

Because of his personal interactions with Ron, Rob was hoping that the players would sway from their agreed upon decision to banish him next. When he voiced his concerns that Ron might be trustworthy in front of Candiace and Lisa, they were shocked that he was “going rogue” in that way when it would be an easy banishment for them to secure as Traitors. Eventually he learned that Johnny was collecting his alliance of eight votes to stage a coup on Colton instead, but that put his other trusted ally in jeopardy and him in the same tough position among the larger group.

Meanwhile, Colton enacted a new plan that he described as “instead of trying to banish a Traitor, I’m gonna try to hold one hostage.” To do so, Colton pulled Lisa for a private conversation where he said that he’s voting to banish Ron next and going forward he’d protect her name at the Round Table if she protects him from the turret. Lisa reacted strongly, insisting that she’s a Faithful and he’s “barking up the wrong tree.”

“I’m not gonna dance on the table. I’m not gonna break a wine glass. I don’t have to.”
— Lisa Rinna

At the Round Table, Mark bit the bullet for an initially quiet room to address the “evidence” of Ron’s voting behavior that makes them all think he’s a likely Traitor. Ron challenged that there’s a game of like/dislike being played among the group where they hold more weight against him for targeting Porsha Williams because they liked her than they hold against Colton for targeting Michael because they didn’t like him. Kristen and Johnny jumped in to blame Colton for “reverse-engineering” votes and “muddying the waters” at the Table. Eventually, Ron accepted what seemed to be his fate and acknowledged that his best chance at being a Faithful was to let them banish him and find out, but not before he very kindly went around and said a nice thing about every other player. Tara stopped him during this and announced that she doesn’t think Ron is a Traitor and then received support from Natalie and Rob who agreed that he’s not.

Once it was clear that the mood was moving away from Ron’s name and because his name was the only other one brought up, Colton seized his opportunity to publicly target Lisa. He mentioned their private conversation earlier and used her vote against Porsha on the very first vote as evidence. Natalie jumped in to add how it was for a Housewife to go against another Housewife that early in the game, but soon after the argument between Lisa and Colton reached its peak, Alan cut the “time for talk” and brought the room to a vote. In one of the most divided votes ever at the Round Table, Ron was banished off a majority of six from Stephen, Maura, Candiace, Yam Yam, Dorinda, and Mark. The other nine votes were split for Colton from Tara, Lisa, Johnny and Kristen and for Lisa from Ron, Colton, Eric, Natalie and Rob.

As if a high-tension Round Table and Traitor on Traitor betrayal wasn’t enough, Alan closed out the night by inviting all of the players to a banquet where it turns out the Traitors would have to commit another murder in plain sight. In a previously unseen clip from the turret the previous night, we learned that Lisa elected herself to be the Traitor to wear a cursed amulet to the banquet where the first player to touch the it would be murdered. Whether Lisa follows through with her personal vendetta against Colton by poisoning him in plain sight is set to be unveiled in the next episode.