Welp, we were certainly overdue for an episode of The Traitors: New Blood that actually gave us something to talk about and, for better or worse, “A Murder Of Necessity” gave us just that in the form of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mission, a baffling roundtable, and #Fruitgate. But first, an answer to the cliffhung question, “Who ‘bit’ the poisoned apple?”
The answer, it turns out, arrives before Alan can even make it official. Joe can’t sit on his guilt long enough to let the reveal play out properly: He confesses directly to Niyyah that he murdered her, unprompted and visibly anxious about it. “I had to sacrifice a Faithful,” he tells her. “I did not want it to be you… Niyyah, I love you, I’m sorry.” Strategically, the confession costs him nothing—Niyyah’s already dead, the info goes nowhere—which is also what makes it a little curious. To be clear, murdering Niyyah isn’t technically a sin; it’s the gig. Joe’s a Traitor, betrayal is the job, and he’s spent most of this season doing it almost gleefully. That’s what makes the graveside apology sit oddly. Niyyah, in her exit confessional, reads it as Joe needing to clear his conscience, and maybe that’s all it is. But it’s worth asking what a pang of remorse is worth from someone who, the other 99% of the time, seems to be having the time of his life—and who still files the whole thing under “I did what I had to do.” The confession doesn’t really do a thing for Niyyah. Mostly, it lets Joe be the rare murderer who also gets to look like the nice one.
Once again, there is no real breakfast scene this episode, aside from a scaled-down continental affair in the kitchen. Wyatt laments the now-dead case he built against Niyyah, which he has no clue will now seed another godforsaken Abby Lee Theory. Victor, however, is legitimately onto something, holding fast to his death-by-apple theory from the previous night, which he has now dubbed Fruitgate. His suspicions accurately pin the evidence on Tomica and Joe, and he goes to work trying to rally the castle against his suspects. It’s a theory the room should be clamoring to hear, given that Victor is, somehow, one of the very few players in this castle operating with actual information. He watched Joe refuse to let go of that apple (and now Joe has to commit to the bit by scarfing down apples continuously). He notes Tomica’s bizarre fruit-distribution spree. He has, in other words, done the one thing a Faithful is supposed to do: pay attention. His reward, however, is a roomful of people laughing away his concerns. Abby L., fresh off being spectacularly wrong about Sherry the night before, informs Victor she’s now “so sure” it’s Wyatt. Victor, to his enormous credit, is seemingly the only one willing to hold Abby’s feet even remotely close to the fire by reminding her that her assurances up to this point have been wrong. Unfortunately, she doesn’t see the moment as a wake-up call.
Breakfast isn’t the only slimmed-down offering this episode. This week’s mission is also a frictionless pause between rounds of paranoid chatter. The players must split into two groups—one absconds to a lab containing jars of the preserved heads and final screams of former players, the other must run the jars to a gravesite and match the screams (relayed verbally by the lab group) emitted from specific gravestones. That’s about it, really. No real decision-making here, no peeks at individual gameplay, just some goofy shouting and audio-only cameos from Maura Higgins, Phaedra Parks, Bob The Drag Queen, and Boston Rob. A brief moment of hijinks resulting in $20,000 added to the winning pot—a speedbump of a scene, at best.
What little strategy the episode has left plays out in the margins—and it’s all pointed, predictably, in the wrong direction. Victor, still doing actual detective work, overhears Joe, Tomica, and Michael discussing how to handle him. Michael, it seems, wants to “revisit” Victor as an option for banishment. Meanwhile the Dolls—that alliance of Michael, Ben, Abbey B., and Clyde that’s existed since week one but has been pretty quiet otherwise—get their first real stress test and promptly fail it. Ben confides to Clyde that he thinks Michael was recruited to the Traitors while Katie, sensing blood, cleverly floats Michael’s name to a not-at-all-opposed Abbey B. A pact that survived five episodes of dormancy can’t survive one afternoon of actual pressure.
And then there’s Abby L., who, in a moment that belongs in a Faithful’s how-not-to reel, takes Victor’s Fruitgate theory—the correct one, mind you, the one implicating Traitors Joe and Tomica, told to her in confidence—and relays it directly to Joe. She has, with the confidence of someone who fully believes she’s helping, handed a Traitor the blueprint of the case against him. It’s the purest distillation yet of this season’s cast, all playing with tremendous energy and almost no retention of what they learn.
Which brings us, at last, to the roundtable—the place where, in theory, all this gathered information gets weighed, and in practice where it goes to die. The floor opens to Victor, and for one shining moment the episode seems poised to reward the guy who did his homework. He breaks down Fruitgate and lays out a genuinely sharp read, noting that Niyyah was hard to get close to, the kind of player a Traitor could only move against if they’d gotten tight with her first. The accusation may incorrectly land on Tomica but hey, it’s the closest we’ve come to seeing actual evidence being brought to the table and an adjacently guilty party being put on a credible trial.
It doesn’t land. Because this is a castle that cannot metabolize a good argument, the conversation instead ping-pongs between the confidently baseless (Abby L., still beating the Wyatt drum, because why would multiple rounds of being wrong stop her now) and the circular (Katie, aiming to deflect, pressing Michael on his “overconfidence,” Michael insisting that it’s just part of who he is as a person). One by one, we see the Dolls emotionally turn on Michael, including Ben, who assesses that Michael is simply “the perfect person to have been recruited.” It’s less a piece of evidence than a compliment with an arrest warrant attached to it. The lone player holding anything resembling actual proof is Victor, and the group has collectively decided that he’s too ridiculous to be taken seriously.
So, they banish Michael, the last surviving lawyer. On his way out, Michael delivers his parting insight, “I’m the only one in this castle who knows exactly how to get away with murder,” before revealing that he’s the latest Faithful to be shooed out the door. Abbey B. wails in his wake and, once again, the players can’t believe that their proclivity for chasing vibes and shrugging at each other has led to another unjust banishment.
By now, we typically have at least one victory that breaks up the train of fruitless (no pun intended) debates. But when you, as a viewer, are stuck in a seemingly endless cycle of logicless wheel-turning and a disregard for how a decent investigation works, it becomes more taxing than fun. It would be a totally different story if the Traitors were doing a masterful job—at least then the wall-to-wall misdirection would feel earned. This, however, is just a case of criminals having the good fortune of being amid a group that happily rejects reason. For the most part, it doesn’t feel like we’re watching a game, but instead just witnessing things kinda happen for 42 minutes.
There is one all-too-brief moment of comfort, just before the episode ends, when we are reunited with the turret just in time for Tomica to announce that Victor must die. Another ridiculous cliffhanger, I know, but it does, at first blush, set us up for some sweet familiarity in the next episode. Maybe we’ll get a real murder, an actual breakfast, and perhaps an overdue win for the beleaguered Faithfuls? We’ll find out next week.
Stray observations
- • First and foremost, a BIG shoutout to the AVC comment section for catching something I didn’t. The Ominous Pop Playlist did actually get an entry last week with Billie Eilish’s “No Time To Die,” which scored the end of the wake. This week, it was Cutting Crew’s “(I Just) Died In Your Arms,” played after Joe confessed his murderous ways to Niyyah. A little on-the-nose, but fine.
- • Castle Twin sighting: Last seen polishing the jarred head of Lisa Rinna. Will we ever see James and Oliver Phelps actually interact with the cast, or are they solely relegated to cutesy nods to the day’s mission? Oh, you are missed, Fergus.
- • Losing Michael and Niyyah now is pretty unfortunate. I was looking forward to seeing their celebratory reactions once the Faithful did, by sheer statistical inevitability, catch a Traitor. But seeing Michael’s post-banishment moment where he finally learns that Victor was, in fact, correct should be a nice bit of consolation.
- • I can’t get over breakfast being downgraded to, essentially, bagels and muffins in the breakroom. We are one budget cut away from Alan sliding granola bars underneath everyone’s bedroom door.
- • Shane got to say two whole sentences at the top of the roundtable. I’m mainly noting this as proof of life.
- • Wyatt, for reasons known to only himself, treats fellow Faithfuls to a monologue about how badly he’d wanted to be a Traitor, which will surely not bite him in the ass later. Godspeed, Wyatt.
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