Pawns go home, and Cedric Hodges learned that the hard way. The former Marine volunteered to go on the block on Quinn‘s deepfake HOH on “Big Brother 26,” which didn’t seem like a totally terrible idea at the time since they’re part of an eight-person alliance, the Collective, and a sub-alliance, the Pentagon, and Cedric had two opportunities to win safety. But he lost them both while Kimo and T’Kor, realizing they were on the bottom of the Collective after Quinn told them about the Pentagon, orchestrated a vote-flip if Cedric remained on the block with Rubina after the AI Arena. After a narrow victory by Makensy, they were the final two nominees and Cedric was booted 6-3, stunning the rest of the Collective members. The 21-year-old feels betrayed by T’Kor and Kimo but harbors no hard feelings.
“I do [feel betrayed] just because I protected them and I told them I was going to protect them,” Cedric tells Gold Derby (watch above). “I feel stabbed in the back, but I also understand their personal relationship [with Rubina]. And after hearing that Kimo knew about the Pentagon, it kinda made sense for me as well.”Cedric has no ide a why Quinn would spill the beans about the Pentagon, but he isn’t completely shocked, considering how Quinn is aligned in some way with practically everybody in the house. And the Pentagon was going to do something about that when the time came.
“I think the Have-Not alliance with Quinn and Kimo — they both feel like they were the outsiders of the very first alliance in the house and so they had a final two. And in turn, Quinn told Kimo, Kimo told T’Kor and that’s how it’s going to work. Which is crazy! There are so many, so many, so many variables,” he says. “If I were in Quinn’s position, I would not have told anybody, I would’ve rocked with the Pentagon until final five and went from there. I also, if I were in Quinn’s position, would’ve told the Pentagon about the power, but that in turn made us realize that we can’t trust him. I’ll give you a little bit of tea. The Pentagon was gonna cut Quinn at the first double eviction. It was gonna go from a pentagon to a rectangle.”
While the rest of the Collective was shocked by Cedric’s eviction, he knew it was a possibility beforehand — and not just because of T’Kor and Kimo’s close relationship with Rubina.
“Yesterday, leading up to the live show, I kinda got wind that T’Kor and Kimo were trying to flip the house to go for Rubina instead of keeping me. So then I had to campaign to people I didn’t think I was going to have to campaign to,” he shares. “I had to really focus on trying to get a swing vote because ultimately, if Joseph would’ve voted for me and I could’ve kept Leah, that’s five and I stay in the house. I tried to sit on that, but Leah was too scared of being on the outs again after what happened Week 1 with Matt.”