Somebody in that castle is already dead. They just do not know it yet — and tonight, neither do we, until Alan Cumming finally finishes the sentence Episode 5 refused to finish.
The Traitors: New Blood returns tonight, Thursday, October 15, at 8 p.m. ET on NBC with Episode 6, "A Murder of Necessity," and streams tomorrow, October 16, on Peacock. It is the sixth episode of Season 5 — the franchise's first all-civilian American season, with 22 everyday players chosen from more than 80,000 applicants, per DIRECTV Insider's episode guide — and it opens with the cruellest loose end this show has ever left dangling: four open graves, one hidden murder, and a host who cut to black mid-reveal.
Where Episode 5 Left Us: Buried Alive
Episode 5, "Wake of the Living Dead," ended with nine players lying in coffins at an outdoor wake, headstones carved with their own names. Cumming released five of them alive, one by one — Tomica Adams, Kriste Lewis, Abby Lee, Morgan Cook and Victor Vollbrechthausen — and then stopped, with four players still underground: Clyde Moser, Mark Zgoda, Joe Vanella and Niyyah Hayes. One of them had been murdered in plain sight during the ceremony. The credits rolled before he said who.
Here is what the audience knows that the castle does not: Joe Vanella, the funeral director from Wantagh, New York, is a Traitor. So the victim is one of the other three — Clyde Moser, the teacher from Charleston; Mark Zgoda, the personal trainer from Phillipsburg, New Jersey; or Niyyah Hayes, the therapist from Indianapolis. Both DIRECTV Insider and the Palm Beach Post's running tracker list all three as at risk tonight, with 16 players still in the game heading into the episode.
A Murder Committed With Fruit
The method, wonderfully, was apples. In Episode 5 the three Traitors were each tasked with slipping a Faithful a cursed apple before the funeral — whoever caught one would be the victim. It nearly unravelled in public. Joe tossed an apple to Morgan Cook, who did not catch it; Tomica Adams offered one to Victor Vollbrechthausen, who did not take it — and then spotted Joe strolling the castle holding a second apple. Victor and Abby Lee quietly put the pieces together in the back half of the episode, which DIRECTV Insider notes is the closest any Faithful has come to catching a Traitor in the act all season.
That matters tonight, because the Traitors' real problem is not the murder — it is arithmetic and suspicion. The turret currently holds Joe, Tomica and Katie Fites, the Jacksonville marketing manager who was recruited into the fold after Xavier Scruggs was murdered by his own side earlier in the season, per the Post's tracker. Katie is also carrying the season's loudest accusation: Jay Vinnedge named her as a Traitor at the end of Episode 4, and although his case collapsed at the Round Table — the room instead banished Sherry Kuehl, a Faithful, by 11 votes to five — accusations on this show have a way of resurfacing. Katie herself broke down privately with Joe afterward, admitting the lying was wearing on her. A Traitor who is tired of lying, in a castle where two Faithful are quietly solving the apple puzzle, is a storyline with a short fuse.
What NBC Is Promising Tonight
NBC's description of "A Murder of Necessity," carried by TVmaze's listings, has the shaken Faithful racing to work out who carried out a murder in plain sight, building to a savage Round Table where emotions boil over and loyalties shatter. Take the network at its word on the temperature, if not the details: this is the first Round Table held with genuine evidence in the room. Every previous banishment this season — Madeline Kostopulos and Arisa Thomas among them — was guesswork dressed as certainty, and the Faithful have banished their own four times over. The prize pot, which sat untouched at $77,000 through a mission-free Episode 5, gets a new wrinkle this season too: an extra $15,000 is added every time the Faithful actually banish a Traitor, on top of a pot worth up to $250,000.
There is also the Cumming factor, which should never be discounted. This is a host who buried nine people alive as light evening entertainment and then simply declined to finish his sentence. Whatever tonight's reveal is, expect it to be staged within an inch of its life at Ardross Castle in the Scottish Highlands, the show's home since the American version launched.
The Rest of the Season
The calendar from here is weekly and public, per the Post's schedule and Wikipedia's episode list: NBC lists Episode 7, titled It's Like Fighting Two Pigs Under a Blanket in the network schedule, for October 22, and Episode 8, titled A Bad Apple Spoils the Whole Bunch in the same NBC schedule — a title that lands differently after last week — follows on October 29. Episodes 9 and 10 run November 5 and 12, and the season closes November 19 with Episodes 11 and 12 airing as a finale. Five episodes, including tonight's, are already streaming on Peacock for anyone catching up.
Our honest read: tonight is the hinge of the season. If Victor and Abby Lee's apple theory reaches the Round Table with names attached, the Traitors' perfect record — no Traitor banished yet — is in real danger. If it does not, one of Clyde, Mark or Niyyah is gone, the turret survives intact, and the Faithful will have to explain, again, how a murder happened in front of all of them. "A Murder of Necessity" airs tonight at 8 p.m. ET on NBC and streams October 16 on Peacock. For tonight's other big premiere, see our coverage of Grey's Anatomy Season 23 and Collide, keep up on the news front, and browse everything on our TV front.
Sources · 4 sources
Reporting based on DIRECTV Insider's Episode 6 guide, the Palm Beach Post's season tracker and schedule, TVmaze's NBC listings and Wikipedia's episode list. Facts cross-checked across at least two outlets before publication.
