Celebrity Treasure Island: Sweat, stress and tears as the winner of ...

This recap contains spoilers about the Celebrity Treasure Island finale.

RECAP: Comedian James Mustapic is the winner of Celebrity Treasure Island, securing the $100,000 grand prize for charity Gender Minorities Aotearoa.

The 27-year-old took gold in the final race between Courtney Dawson (Ngāti Kurī, Waikato-Tainui) and Turia Schmidt-Peke (Ngāti Tamaterā, Ngāti Hauā, Samoa) in Wednesday night’s season seven finale.

The episode opens with the finalists getting ready for the show’s final treasure hunt, and the first thing on their minds is what colours they’ll wear to the match.

“I’m wearing my pinks, you know. I would like to have quite an iconic look for the final so that people can dress up as me for Halloween,” Mustapic said.

It’s a bit of superstition: Mustapic wore pink in a face-off challenge he won in the previous episode, while Dawson opts for yellow because its her winning colour, while Schmidt-Peke goes for blue for the same reason.

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Comedian James Mustapic is the winner of Celebrity Treasure Island, securing the $100,000 grand prize for charity Gender Minorities Aotearoa.

The contestants are coming into the treasure hunt with playing cards – Mustapic and Dawson both have three, Schmidt-Peke has four – which will allow the players to stop another in their tracks during the final challenge.

After meeting with co-hosts Bree Tomasel and Jayden Daniels, the group share their motivations for winning this competition: the charities they chose to represent before joining the show.

South Auckland-native Dawson said she chose to back Middlemore Hospital’s Middlemore Foundation for their commitment to providing outreach programmes.

“I was born there, my son was born there, and my nan was a nurse there for 35-years – they help they provide to the community is huge, it's something that I really want to support,” she said.

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South Auckland-native Courtney Dawson said she chose to back Middlemore Hospital’s Middlemore Foundation for their commitment to providing outreach programmes.

Mustapic chose GMA for their “wonderful work for the trans community”. The charity is trans-owned and operated, and support trans, non-binary, intersex, and takatāpui people.

Schmidt-Peke played for Fonua Ola Network, which provides a number of support services – including counselling, family violence intervention, and social work support – to Pasifika families in Auckland.

“If I win, I hope the money helps Pasifika youth believe in themselves, so they can someday come on here and take the dub for themselves, you know, and for their people,” she said.

Then, the contestants learn of a catch in this year’s hunt – unlike previous seasons, the treasure chest the celebrities are trying to find won’t be buried, but it will be secured with a lock.

The first leg of the treasure hunt sees the contestants swimming through Wānaka’s freezing waters as they attempt to push and pull a buoy through obstacles, to later attach the buoy to a rope, which they’ll follow uphill.

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”If I win, I hope the money helps Pasifika youth believe in themselves so they can someday come on here and take the dub for themselves, you know, and for their people,” Turia Schmidt-Peke said.

Dawson took an early lead, being the first to complete the obstacle course in the water and untangle the knots in the rope to attach her buoy, before Mustapic gained ahead, with Schmidt-Peke on his tail.

The road uphill is no walk in the park (well, it kind-of is) – there’s thick bush to navigate and more knots to untie. Mustapic and Dawson are neck-in-neck as the first two to reach the top of the hill.

Their next challenge involves a bag with puzzles which they must take with them until they find a marker further in the distance. Schimdt-Peke has lost time untangling the knots, and Mustapic has burst ahead of Dawson.

“I can see James in front of me, but my lungs are like, ‘no, b....’,” Dawson joked.

Mustapic is the first to the next challenge, which sees him launching sandbags from a catapult into hoops. Before long, all the contestants are on their catapults (which are painted with their lucky colours – did someone in production plan this in advance?).

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Dawson had an early lead in the final challenge, but couldn’t keep up momentom – or avoid the playing cards.

In a shock move for Dawson, Mustapic uses his first playing card to stop her from competing for five minutes, but even that’s not enough to stop her – she still comes out first in the challenge, and uses two cards to halt Mustapic and Schmidt-Peke before she took off to the next challenge.

The move allowed for Dawson to take a significant lead uphill, before Mustapic encouraged Schmidt-Peke to use her card to stop Dawson.

Mustapic is the next to move on from the challenge but, “getting desperate”, Schimdt-Peke uses a card on him, too. He uses those pivotal five minutes to change from his pants to his shorts, and show a bit of encouragement to his competitor.

When Schmidt-Peke finally completes the challenge, she uses another card to halt Dawson, and boosts to make up for lost time, before Mustapic plays another card against Dawson, too.

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Schmidt-Peke struggled with the catapult challenge, using multiple cards to slow her opponents.

He’s the first to reach the top of the hill, where the next challenge is a puzzle requiring the pieces picked up earlier in the game.

Emptying the puzzle pieces out of his bag, the other finalists catch up to him, and everyone is neck-in-neck.

The puzzle takes a while to figure out, but Mustapic comes out on top with a big lead over the ladies and receives the directions to the treasure chest.

He takes off, and Dawson and Schmidt-Peke decide to build their puzzles off of Mustapic’s to find some direction. They decide to both put their final cards against him, halting him for ten minutes.

“On Treasure Island if you don’t destroy your own puzzle then it’s fair game for anyone to look at,” Dawson says.

Mastapic knows what they’re up to: “I’m feeling annoyed.”

“We both feel pretty scumbaggy,” Dawson admits about trying to copy the finished puzzle.

When time’s up, Mustapic runs back to mess up his puzzle and get the women off his trail.

He’s the first to reach the treasure chest, but there’s a lot of trial and error as he’s forced to run back and forth to his broken puzzle to figure out the hidden numbers connected to opening the safety lock.

When he fails, Dawson has a go, but also can’t crack the lock. Mustapic is allowed another try, and boom: the lock breaks, the gold is revealed inside, and tears flow from Mustapic’s eyes.

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Boom: the lock breaks, the gold is revealed inside, and tears flow from Mustapic’s eyes.

Having picked up $5000 from a previous challenge and $2500 at the Celebrity Treasure Island auction, Mustapic now takes a whopping $107,500 for GMA.

There are more tears, hugs, a look of true disbelief in Mustapic’s eyes, and Daniels gives the winner one last shout-out to GMA.

“They do amazing work in uplifting and supporting trans people who need it. They are a small charity, and being a part of the queer community, I feel so honoured to be giving them this money,” he said.