CTI recap: The game officially stops being fun (Ep 10–12)

It's semi-finals week on Celebrity Treasure Island 2026 and we're down to the final four! Welcome back to ZM's recap!

SPOILER WARNING is in place through Episode 12. This was the week a storm hit the island, an alliance cracked, and the most dignified exit of the season came from a man holding a card he refused to play.

You can watch Celebrity Treasure Island 2026 on TVNZ 2, or stream episodes anytime on TVNZ+.

Episode 10: The storm Zion saw coming

The episode opens with Zion and Frank on the beach, genuinely enjoying each other's company. Zion remarks that there's a storm coming; meant as a metaphor, but as it turns out, also just a weather forecast.

The charity challenge is a rap battle, somehow won by Frank Bunce, 64-year-old All Black legend, over Georgia the professional musician. His bars consist almost entirely of the word "damn" repeated. Nobody has notes. Bree, true to form, arrived having already nicknamed herself 'Big Tits Bree', so when Frank declared "I wouldn't mind seeing Big Tits Bree" in the rap challenge, it was only shocking for a second.

Back at camp, Frank opens up about losing his parents young. "Don't leave things unsaid," he tells Louis - one of the most quietly affecting moments of the season, made more so by the fact that it's pouring with rain, and nobody asked for it.

Ria wins a face-off later in the episode and shares her butter chicken reward with Louis and Zion before calmly telling them both they're going up for elimination. Louis is gutted.

Then the actual storm Zion predicted arrives, flooding the camp and postponing the challenge entirely. When the challenge finally goes ahead, Zion drops his ball and goes home holding an advantage card he chose not to play, having promised Louis a fair fight. He leaves with one unforgettable nickname, and an exit as dignified as any this season has produced.

Episode 11: Weet-Bix, lemon juice, and the end of an era

Louis Davis has now survived elimination twice in two days and on Tuesday he's straight back in the arena, this time against Frank. The challenge is eating Weet-Bix, downing lemon juice, and skulling fizzy water, fastest wins.

It is the most chaotic format the show has ever used to send someone home and it somehow suits the moment perfectly. Louis wins. Frank departs.

Frank opened up about his dad earlier in the week, talked about leaving things unsaid, won a rap battle on pure confidence, and now gets eliminated via competitive breakfast. "Turns out this game wasn't about finding treasure," he says on the way out. "It was about finding myself." Frank Bunce came to win and instead found something better. Line of the season, and it isn't particularly close.

Episode 12: The alliance turns

Wednesday's episode includes a quiz course with questions drawn from previous CTI seasons, several of them about Liv Parker's brother Chris. Liv gets them wrong. The producers tried to give her a lifeline, and it still didn't work. We love her.

Georgia wins the face-off and gets the power to choose which two players go up for elimination. Ria immediately tries to steer the decision, pushing Georgia to put Liv up against Louis, her logic being that Louis would then use his mercy card to save Liv, removing it from the game entirely. It was a clever idea on paper, except it required everyone to be comfortable gambling with Liv's place in the competition. Georgia wasn't.

Rather than risk her closest ally on a bet that might not even pay off, she nominated Ria to go up against Louis instead. Ria was furious, calling the move dishonourable. The elimination was a Twister-style peg game and Louis won again, his third survival of the week. Ria, who played one of the sharpest strategic games of the season, goes out courtesy of the very alliance she helped build.

The island has a dark sense of humour.

Three episodes, four people left

Georgia, Nix, Liv, and Louis. The TikToker who survived elimination three times in a week is somehow still there, mercy card untouched, and nobody can quite tell if that's exhaustion, genius, or pure chaos. The women's alliance that drove the entire second half of this season is now down to three, minus the player who arguably held it together. What's left is raw, unpredictable, and genuinely wide open. The finale is going to be something else entirely.

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