While We Wait To See What Big Brother Actually Did With This New Twist, I'm Afraid Season 27 Might Be Unfixable After This

This article contains major spoilers from the Big Brother live feeds (which you can watch with a Paramount+ subscription)!

Those of us who've been watching Big Brother for long enough know that the "unexpected" part of "expect the unexpected" can sometimes be game-changing, and that's not always a good thing. Some twists work better than others, and some fail to entertain or flat-out flop. It's what we sign up for every season. And yet, what appears to have transpired in the Big Brother house since Thursday's episode goes further than flopping. We still have to wait until Tuesday’s episode to see exactly what happened, but I’m afraid it might’ve ruined the season for me.

Rachel Has Been Eliminated From Big Brother Season 27

Due to the MTV VMAs airing on CBS on Sunday night, we're not going to be able to see exactly what happened that led to Rachel's departure until Tuesday’s episode. What we do know is based on conversations on the live feeds. And while the situation seems to be pieced together in what I expect to be a pretty accurate way before we see it play out on Tuesday's episode, I’m going to focus on just a few big things we know or believe to be accurate:

• The feeds were down for a full day after Thursday's episode.
• When the feeds came back on Friday night, Rachel was gone.
• Conversations on the feeds suggest she was eliminated due to some kind of challenge (presumably related to the White Locust twist Julie teased during the live show).
• As far as we know, she wasn’t nominated, there wasn’t a Veto to save her, and there wasn’t a vote to send her out.

There are other things we've heard, and likely some things we haven't heard about, but the above things are what I want to focus on.

Will Rachel Reilly Return To Continue The Game?

Is there a chance Rachel comes back? We don't know yet. From the episode standpoint, we haven’t even seen her exit, so it’s possible there’s more to this twist. If that’s the case, then it’s bad timing for this to play out with an especially long gap between episodes. It’s left us to speculate and be frustrated and disappointed (to put it mildly) while we wait. For now, the game inside the house has moved on to the next Head of Household and planned eviction.

And I’m not getting my hopes up that Rachel is coming back, considering there are still eight people left in the house and the Big Brother Season 27 finale is scheduled for Sunday, September 28th, just weeks from now.

A Twist Like This At This Point In The Game? Really?

Given how big a presence Rachel, the sole BB veteran among newbies, was within the game (and how hopeful many of us were that she’d win), of course, her exit was going to make a huge splash in the house and among viewers. But an elimination during the jury portion of the show would’ve been absurd to me, regardless of who was sent out.

We’ve seen houseguests eliminated through challenges or unusual votes in the past (BB14’s Jodi, BB19’s Cameron, BB21’s David, etc); however, those scenarios happened early in their seasons. As much as I would've liked to see Jodi, David, or Cameron play in their seasons, I also hadn't spent nearly two months watching them put in the work to build up their game only to have it abruptly end without a vote.

The Lost Potential

Like many others, I was as stunned and disappointed when we learned that Rachel was gone, but the more I think about it, the more I realize what we potentially missed out on. Rachel being eliminated while the feeds were down, and not during a live episode, means we didn't get to see her be nominated, or the fallout from that. We didn't get to have our hopes up for a Veto win, or wonder if someone else might use it to save her. We didn't get to see her campaign. We didn't get to see the houseguests get to see what Rachel Reilly looks like when her back is against the wall, and that is the real tragedy.

I think it's safe to say we all knew someone was going to take a shot at Rachel sooner or later. And as stressed as I would have been to see her on the block, it also would've made for great feeds and great TV.

We didn't even get to see the immediate aftermath of her exit on the feeds, because they were down until late Friday night. We'll presumably get to see some of that on Tuesday's episode, but too little, too late as far as I'm concerned.

All Of The Above Is Not Actually Why I Think This Is Unfixable

Like so many other longtime BB fans, I’ve dealt with the excruciating disappointment that comes with investing months of my time watching live feeds and multiple episodes per week only to see a season flop near or at the end. It’s a risk we sign up for, so I get it. Am I disappointed if this twist means Rachel won't get to be the first-ever two-time winner of Big Brother? Yup. And I’m disappointed that we didn’t get to see her on the live feeds trying to stay during the traditional game process, but we weren’t really guaranteed that scenario anyway. She could’ve gone out during a double eviction after all.

What seems unfixable at this point is the impact this abrupt elimination has already had on the game. Rachel had allies as much as she had people who were targeting her (heck, Keanu was pretty much both). Their games are now affected by her exit, and as far as we know, not a single one of them voted for her to leave.

It’s hard to imagine this twist not having some impact on who makes it to the final two. And if Rachel doesn’t come back and face a traditional eviction scenario, she’ll be a juror who votes for the winner, despite not having technically been evicted, which is so… weird.

Will There be More Eliminations Like This?

Thursday’s episode teased a month of mayhem from the Mastermind, and there are still quite a few players remaining. Does that mean we should expect more competition-based eliminations this season? If that’s the case, how are the remaining houseguests supposed to strategize around that?

Big Brother has been structured around the houseguests voting each other out since the second season of the series. If a Houseguest can be sent to jury based solely on how they perform in one competition and not by a vote, that undermines a lot of the strategy that goes into establishing safety. Rachel worked hard to get to this point in the game, and in a blink, she's gone. Her allies no longer have her support or her vote to stay if they need it. In the end, Block Buster or not, who goes always comes down to who doesn’t have the votes to stay. At least, that’s how it used to work. Assuming there are more eliminations like this – even just one more – I don’t see how the houseguests can map out their endgames in any kind of satisfying way. If they don't have the chance to protect their allies or evict their enemies with a vote, what game are they even playing?

Whether or not Rachel comes back, or whether or not she’s the only Season 27 houseguest to be sent out without a vote remains to be seen. Either way, it's hard for me to see the outcome of this season not having an asterisk on it, the same as Rachel’s legacy will, if she really lost Big Brother Season 27 at the jury stage, despite never even being nominated. And we’ll always be left to wonder who would’ve made it to Final 2 and won the game, had each member of the jury been voted out.

We’ll have to see what information we get in the episodes this week. The optimistic side of me that sticks with every season to the (sometimes bitter) end will hang on to some hope that there’s some way to make this situation not be as bad as it seems right now.