Yahoo Lifestyle ‘The Traitors’ U.K. Has Delivered Its Most Unpredictable Season Yet, but Self-Interest and Too Many Twists Keep It From Previous Heights
SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for Season 3 of “The Traitors” U.K., airing on the BBC and streaming on BBC iPlayer.
Put on your fingerless gloves, apply your dark eyeliner and fetch for a raven. Tonight is the finale of “The Traitors,” Britain’s biggest reality show, and right now it feels the most unpredictable the show has ever been.
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Unlike Season 2, where Traitor Harry pretty much walked it, the banishment of Traitor Minah followed by fellow Charlotte’s risky move of recruiting Faithful Freddie (who then raised eyebrows as he voted for her at the roundtable) has resulted in more erratic gameplay. That’s before we even mention the new twist of the Seer which, for the first time, allows one player to see who is truly a Traitor or Faithful during the game itself. In a cliffhanger at the end of last night’s episode, Francesca will find out that Charlotte is a Traitor.
All of this is also compounded by the fact that, in a new twist revealed at the start of this season, the remaining players do not say if they are a Faithful or a Traitor when they leave the game, which makes the likelihood of a Traitor winning ever more so slightly likely.
Got that? Whew, that was complicated. Jeez, I really do hope you’ve watched this show before reading those three paragraphs, otherwise you wouldn’t have the foggiest.
I have to say though, with the exception of the internet’s new boyfriend Alexander (a reminder from Claudia: he’s single), it is surreal to watch knowing that the show’s breakout stars have not made it to the final.
Last year’s favorite player was Diane, thanks to her revelation that her son Ross was secretly competing alongside her (revealed with an ellipsis of Coleen Rooney proportions: “Paul just couldn’t be my son… but Ross is.”)
This year, by far, the viewer favorite has been Linda, simply due to her wobbly GCSE drama attempts passing herself off as a Faithful. From her turning her head when Claudia said the word “traitors” literally seconds after being picked as one, to her delivery of “oh my god who the hell is not going to come back?” when she obviously knew who it was (she murdered them) – she was the underdog because she was so bad at it, yet kept surviving, somehow, longer than we ever expected.
“You don’t have to be a sailor to know you have to tie a rope… sorry,” Linda’s extremely bizarre reason for banishing another player became the quote of the season, followed up by the time she pretended to cry over a banished player nobody noticed she was even close to. In the end, even BBC publicity got in on the act, faking a Performance of a Lifetime Award for Linda, which they then put on a poster and displayed on London’s Leicester Square.
Linda is going to make such a killing touring LGBTQ+ bars over the next twelve months. Well done her.
But it wasn’t just Linda. Despite taking a hit for the team by sacrificing herself in Episode 1 and then leaving in that death card match, Fozia proved that it doesn’t matter how long you last in a reality show, it’s how much you shine. She was also steps ahead of her fellow faithfuls, calling out others for taking the game too seriously (more on that later) and provided the show’s greatest exit…
“Linda, get a good night’s sleep tonight because you’re going next,” said Fozia.
“Get over it,” Linda responded.
And “The Traitors” wouldn’t have been “The Traitors” without bad spelling on chalkboards. This year, my word, where to start? Kevin spelt Nathan as Nather and Jake spelt Armani as Armania (resorting to some people sharing the flag of the similarly named landlocked country). And poor Minah. Or is that Meina (by Anna)? Or Mina by Alexander? Still, it could have been worse. You could have been Geraldine in Season 1 of the U.S. version, spelt by another player as Jeryldean. That spelling deserves a banishment alone.
All of these moments have been entertaining on a season that… and I hate to be a debbie downer but I have to admit it, is the least enjoyable of all three. Perhaps, a natural consequence of when a reality show becomes a hit, the current players forensically followed the previous seasons and have adjusted their tactics accordingly. This included Elen (correctly) guessing that The Traitors could be all women, as that at one point last year there were all men.
Yet at times it also felt that the contestants took the game too seriously. Players have been judged too harshly on their personal character or have distanced themselves from other players, which has been uneasy to watch to play out on screen (justice for Kas, protected by Fozia.) Also lacking is the camaraderie of the previous seasons, perhaps because shields are at the heart of just about every mission these days, driving self-interest over anything else.
And if you follow the commentary on social media, you’ll likely stumble across a sleuth of wild conspiracy theories, such as that Francesca is actually Freddie’s mum, or that Linda and Lisa were secretly sisters. This likely reflects the fact that the actual revelations, such as that nail technician Leanne is in the army, were not that riveting. Although Charlotte pretending to be Welsh for literally no reason did have its moments.
Despite these flaws, we’re all going to keep watching anyway. 10 million of us are. It’s the show’s most successful season so far. What else are we going to do in January? Rot? And even if the self-interest is too much in this season, at least many of the players are competing for noble reasons, with Lisa revealing on “Traitors: Uncloaked” that she would have donated her winnings to a charity that had helped her three sons.
Although, this generosity wasn’t the case for all of the players.
“You’re killing me, Lisa,” said Leon. “I wanted to get a new shed.”
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