The Traitors: New Blood Season 5, Episode 8, “One Bad Apple Spoils the Whole Bunch” (NBC, Thursday, October 29): a pardon saves Victor, Abby L. is murdered, and the Faithful finally catch a Traitor.
By The Recapper — CelebnMusic247
RECAP — SPOILER WARNING: This is a full-spoiler recap of The Traitors: New Blood Season 5, Episode 8, which aired Thursday, October 29 on NBC. Stop here if you have not watched.
Eight episodes in, the castle finally learned how to play. Episode 8 of The Traitors: New Blood opened by resolving last week’s cliffhanger: the mystery Power of the Pardon belonged to Shane Beatty, who had himself voted to banish Victor Vollbrechthausen in Episode 7, per TV Insider. Victor made his case one more time — offering to leave and prove he was a Faithful — and it worked. “As a New Yorker… I can tell when someone is lying in my face, and he convinced me,” Shane said, per The A.V. Club’s recap. Victor, a Faithful, was pardoned and stayed.
The pardon put a battery in Victor’s back, and the Traitors knew it. In the turret, Tomica Adams was already fraying with fellow Traitor Katie Fites after a name mix-up put heat on both of them, per The A.V. Club. The Traitors weighed murdering Victor — which Tomica could spin as a frame job — or Clyde Moser, who suspected Morgan Cook, before choosing Abby Lee, hoping her death would point suspicion at Wyatt Gillespie, per TV Insider and The A.V. Club. At the season’s tensest breakfast, Abby’s empty chair was revealed as the sixth murder, and Abby went out the way she played: certain it was Wyatt, per The A.V. Club.
Victor did not let the moment cool. He had spent weeks pushing his “Fruitgate” theory — his case, built around the night of Niyyah’s murder, that Tomica and Joe Vanella were Traitors — to a castle that mostly rolled its eyes, per The A.V. Club. This time, players actually reasoned out loud: Shane argued no working Traitor would draw attention to a murder in plain sight the way Victor had, and Ben backed Victor as a Faithful. Then came the slip that sealed it. Pressed by Victor to name any other suspect, Traitor Joe Vanella froze, then said: “If it’s not you, then it’s probably Tomica,” per The A.V. Club.
The vote was not close. Tomica was banished 10–2, with only Tomica and Jay voting for Victor — and her fellow Traitors, Joe and Katie, voting with the majority to send her out, per TV Insider. Tomica revealed she was a Traitor, the Faithful’s first catch of the season, and the banishment added $15,000 to the prize pot, per TV Insider. It also set a record: the Traitors had survived seven episodes without losing one, the longest run in the U.S. version’s history, per The A.V. Club. Tomica’s exit line, per The A.V. Club: “I flew my plane a little too close to the sun and I got burnt, because I’m a Traitor.” The episode closed on a promised celebratory banquet from host Alan Cumming and a looming Victor–Joe showdown, with two Traitors — Joe and Katie — still in the castle, per TV Insider.
The 247 Take — Victor is the rare reality player who won by refusing to be likable-quiet: he said the same true thing for weeks until the room had no moves left. The Traitors’ real mistake was the pardon math — keeping the loudest Faithful alive to save themselves bought them exactly one episode, and it cost them Tomica.
Sources: TV Insider, The A.V. Club, NorthJersey.com
