‘The Traitors’ New Season Is the Best Yet—With Some Fantastic Twists

Midway through the premiere of the third season of Peacock’s competition show The Traitors, Vanderpump Rules alum and Scandoval survivor Tom Sandoval, wearing a kilt, catches sight of his portrait on a wall in one of Ardross Castle’s many grand halls. He cringes, Dorian Gray-like, and groans: “I look like an inmate.”

Sandoval doesn’t give off the impression of being as great a strategist as, say, his fellow contestants Tony Vlachos or “Boston” Rob Mariano of Survivor. In that arena, someone like Sandoval is way out of his depth. But he is, like so many other Bravo-lebrities huddled together in their Scottish Highlands home, a great Traitors player. That’s exactly what makes this show so good.

With the series, which launched its premiere Thursday night, now in its third American-produced season (though it feels like we’ve only just gotten accustomed to weekly doses of Alan Cumming’s rolled R’s), The Traitors barely lets its newest crop of contestants get their bearings before kicking things off with a few twists. I won’t spoil exactly what happens, but suffice it to say that Cumming has a few more tricks up his voluminous velvet sleeves this time around, making it all the more difficult for the chosen Faithful to sniff out the killers in their midst. Unless one of them slips up.

This go-round also sticks to last season’s no-normies policy, harvesting a group of reality-competition greats, Bravo stars, and the requisite former Bachelor/ette—delightfully, it’s the ever-candid Gabby Windey this year—as well as a few celebrity randos, such as Zac Efron’s brother Dylan Efron (“I play every sport”), U.K. aristocrat Lord Ivar Mountbatten (“I’m a cousin of the queen”), and actor/model/Britney Spears ex Sam Asghari.

Almost every region of the Real Housewives empire is represented, giving the trio of Traitors many opportunities to say hilarious stuff like, “We’ve gotta kill a Housewife.” Chrishell Stause of Selling Sunset starts making alliances and enemies immediately, while RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Bob the Drag Queen criticizes Boston Rob’s backwards hat. Through it all slinks Sandoval, living out his Columbo fantasies, suspiciously chomping kebabs and gazing piercingly into the eyes of the other contestants after the first “roundtable” to find any twitchy Traitor tells.

Otherwise, the show remains the same, forcing a bunch of conniving tricksters to work together to complete daunting physical challenges, like rowing a Viking dragon boat across a loch, all the while wondering which of their fellows is a hidden assassin.

The tone is as delightful as ever, a mix of Gothic horror and Machiavellian drama, with an oh-so-serious attitude toward even its most ridiculous proceedings. It’s more like immersive theater than reality TV, Sleep No More by way of Big Brother. Survivor winners, Housewives, and a British royal ooh and aah over a bookshelf that opens to a secret passageway. Every time I start fantasizing about how cozy it all looks up there in the misty Highlands, Cumming drags everyone into the woods to show them some contestants suspended from the trees in iron cages.

Because most of those gathered in the castle are known entities, it’s especially fun watching them all do the mental math, figuring out who to ally with, who to trust, and who will probably stab them in the back.

It may seem like the most famously ruthless among the players already have the upper hand, but it’s not all alliances and mind games, as The Traitors is a unique bird in a sea of similar reality challenges. It’s not brains, necessarily, that will get you to the end. Sometimes all you have to do is be ready to talk over everyone else when the time comes to defend yourself—even if you have to lie. That’s when even Bachelor contestants and Real Housewives get to shine. Provided none of them get murdered first.