The tension is unbearable – and that’s just Nick and Ben trying to count to 13 during the challenge section. Elsewhere, the penultimate episode of The Traitors Ireland on Monday (RTÉ One, 9.35pm) is a pressure cooker, chock-full of tears, yells and host Siobhán McSweeney looking lost for words.
It’s gripping fare – though uncomfortable at times. As with Sunday night, the round table at Slane Castle is a story of knives out and blades plunged mercilessly, as both faithful and traitors turn on Faye. The going is rough – and her exit emotional. “It’s funny how it’s ended – I thought I could trust some of you,” she sobs.
What went wrong for Faye, who looked set to coast to the final based on her appearing to have complete trust in brothers-in-arms traitors Nick and Ben? Her undoing was the row the previous night with Joanna, with Vanessa and Oyin concluding that if Joanna was a faithful, then Faye, her most vocal antagonist, is surely a traitor.
Voices are raised as they hash it out – with Vanessa and Faye talking over one another, and other contestants interjecting. The only one who stays quiet is Ben. He holds his head in his hands and rocks slowly forward and back. Back-stabbing isn’t as easy as he suspected. “I hate this,” he says. “This is the hard part.”
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Nick has a wobble too – saying that he found it difficult to sell out Faye. Still, he is ruthless in an earlier exchange with co-conspirator Ben. “Think about your kids, about your family. This is not the hard part. Get it over the line.”
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Their partnership buckles during one of the most demanding tasks yet, as the contestants are taken off to a sort of haunted shed and required to count out 13 minutes while men in shiny faceplates menace them, and they are subjected to recordings of previous contestants blared out over a speaker system.
Oyin and Vanessa get their count precisely right, and Faye and Kelley do well, too. Alas, poor Ben and Nick are miles out – suggesting that their alliance might not be all that.
Amid all the drama, it would be easy to forget the absence of Wilkin, bumped off during the night. He had somehow glided his way to the final week of the competition without doing or saying much. “He was so nice,” says Faye. “Just clueless sometimes.”
But now Faye is gone too, and the final five are preparing for Tuesday night’s grand decider. Can Nick and Ben get it over the line? Or will Ben’s alarming discovery that he has a conscience ruin the fun? Grab hold of your creepy gold masks because there are surely a few twists to come as everything goes insane in Slane.
