Heading into the seventh episode of The TraitorsFaithful Ron Funches had just been banished in a narrow 6-5-4 vote over Faithful Colton Underwood and Traitor Add Chest. Lisa’s fellow Traitor Rob Rausch was among those who put her in the hot seat for the first time, but she managed to survive by the skin of her lips. Now, the famously dramatic Housewife (who wants Colton to know she’s more than a Housewife) is about to step into swanky banquet wearing a “cursed amulet” … and murder someone in plain sight.
Read on for our recap of Episode 7, titled “The Black Banquet,” to find out who Lisa murders and what Alan Cumming has in store for the players in the episode he promised to InStyle includes “the most incredible moment in Traitors history.”
The 14 celebrities still alive and in the game at the start of Episode 7, included all three original Traitors (Lisa, Rob, and Candiace Dillard Bassett), and the following Faithful:
- Colton Underwood, The Bachelor 23
- Dorinda Medley, The Real Housewives of New York City
- Eric NamK-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
- Stephen Colletti, Laguna Beach and actor
- Tara LipinskiOlympic figure skater
- Yamil “Yam Yam” Arocho, Survivor 44
“I am a lone wolf, but I love nothing more than to be the center of attention.”
— Lisa Rinna
Heading into Alan’s banquet in the most glamorous fashion they packed into their suitcases, the Faithful players were well-aware of the danger that a murder in plain sight might be on the menu. Having witnessed these open murders as offerings of drinks and food in past seasons, they all had their guard up to refuse gifts from each other, but no one was expecting the well-placed jewel adorning Lisa’s outfit to be the poison. As badly as Lisa wanted to murder Colton for putting her on blast at the Round Table, she knew that would be too obvious and so she eyed Yam Yam, Kristen, and Natalie as her best targets to curse. With all three of them within arm’s reach and complimenting her outfit, Lisa was able to orchestrate the amulet pin coming loose on her collar and needing one of them to stick it back in. Who among the three assisted, was left to be revealed to the audience later on.
The players understood that “the fun has ended” when Alan interrupted their feast with two of his hooded henchmen in tow to tell them the Scottish tale of “The Legend of the Black Dinner” and how the Traitors had already cursed one of them to death “right under your noses.” To give the Faithful a chance at stopping the murder, he offered two life-saving antidotes to reverse the effect of the curse that they must agree to administer to only two of them. In this reverse Round Table session, the players openly discussed who feels they may have been compromised by another player’s actions during the banquet.
Stephen attempted to “squash this right away” by admitting he cut and served meat to Natalie, while Tara similarly addressed that Dorinda offered and served her. Johnny called out Stephen for asking him to pick one of the tarot cards on the table, revealing Kristen’s face. Tara and Natalie were the first to stand from their seats and rush to claim the antidotes, but Yam Yam encouraged Johnny to swipe a bottle and hand it to Kristen instead. In the end, both Kristen and Natalie gulped down the antidotes, but it was Yam Yam that Alan had dragged out of the banquet as the cursed, murdered player. On his way out, Yam Yam insisted that it had to have been Lisa who kissed him (“not an air kiss”) on the cheek.
“I want everybody to know, PSA: Alan Cumming throws horrible parties.”
— Eric Nam
At breakfast the next morning, Lisa, Candiace, and Rob were the first to enter, offering them their first chance to openly talk about Rob’s betrayal of Lisa at the Round Table. Candiace insisted to Rob that “this relationship has to take priority over everything else,” meaning he should have had Lisa’s back before nursing his relationships to Ron and Colton in that moment. Because Lisa committed the banquet murder all on her own, she asked that Candiace and Rob help her “not feel piled upon” going forward. Given Yam Yam’s exit scene damning Lisa to imminent banishment, Rob felt stuck in a position where it’d be very difficult to stick up for Lisa in any public capacity.
After breakfast, as Natalie was on a damage control campaign to mitigate the fallout of how aggressively she pursued an antidote for herself she made the very unfortunate word slip of saying “we killed one,” “we murdered one” when referencing the gamers in front of Tara and Lisa. In another room, Rob chose to throw Lisa even further under the bus privately to Maura, Mark, and Stephen by underscoring that between Yam Yam and Lisa one of them has to be lying about the kiss and as a Faithful, Yam Yam had no reason to lie.
“If she stays in, I’m going to have to sit through getting chewed out by two scary Housewives and I don’t wanna do that.”
— Rob Rausch
For their next mission, the players raced to a monument at the top of a mountain, collecting as much gold as they could carry in 30 minutes. As a bonus, the six players who brought in the most gold would earn the advantage to compete for the Dagger, a tool that bestows the holder with two votes to use at one of four future Round Table sessions. On the way up the mountain, Colton and Rob devised a strategy to get the Dagger for one of the two of themselves with the sole purpose of using the extra vote against Lisa. By the end, the group added $17,800 to the prize fund and Colton, Eric, Mark, Natalie, Rob, and Stephen got to compete for the Dagger. In the second game, Rob successfully sussed Natalie out as a bad liar and stole the Dagger from her random possession, but that information remained secret only between them. Before the group of six re-entered the castle with the others, Rob committed to a pact that none of them would tell the others that he has the Dagger in order to protect him (“a Faithful”) from risk of being murdered.
At the Round Table, Lisa opened by mentioning Natalie’s “when we murdered” slip. She received tepid backup from Tara who was in the room and heard it, but didn’t hold as much weight to it as Lisa did. Johnny’s own reason for suspecting Natalie was that they were both in the same banquet position of being served meat by Stephen, but only she “fought so hard for the antidote” because he thinks she needed to prove her Faithful status for some reason. Lisa came under pressure from Colton, Natalie, and Maura for Yam Yam’s accusation of her, but was defended by Candiace and Dorinda, who turned it back on Maura for “jumping on the bandwagon.”
Rob was the last to speak and put the nail in Lisa’s coffin with a very pointed argument about her “I don’t know” and “That didn’t happen” responses while underscoring that Yam Yam is someone they know was a Faithful and within the context of the game chose to put the blame on Lisa for his death for a specific reason. Based on that final argument, a weak self-defense and despite the swell of support for an alternate vote against Natalie, Lisa was banished in a majority 9-2-1-1 vote that included Rob, but not Candiace who voted in a “throw-away” for Rob instead. Tara and Lisa voted for Natalie, and Dorinda voted for Maura.
At the end of the episode, Rob and Candiace had positioned themselves against each other for the rest of the game. Rob had new beef with Candiace for casting a hinting vote of suspicion in his direction out of the blue and Candiace declared that Rob was “willing to betray the people that helped him” and that his “vicious choices will have dire consequences for him.”
