“Murder and treachery, secrets and lies! They’ll all stop at nothing for the ultimate prize!” Alan Cumming coos as the new season of The Traitors opens, and it makes me wonder why more reality competition shows don’t feature more iambic pentameter, but that’s what makes The Traitors so perfect, isn’t it? This season, a new group of celebrities (a big group of reality stars-slash-fame-adjacent people and one British guy you’ve never heard of till now, ’cause if it ain’t broke…) have gathered at Cumming’s castle in the Scottish highlands to participate in the game where some of them are secretly labeled as Traitors, moles within the group who have the power to “murder” one of their own, and inch ever closer to the $250,000 prize.
The show is strategically cast so that many of the competitors have a preexisting relationship and can form alliances (or revive old animosities). This is where I give you the Mean Girls run down of all the cliques in school, except instead of the Plastics, the Desperate Wannabes and the Cool Asians, you’ve got Bravolebrities (Real Housewives Chanel Ayan, Dorinda Medley, Dolores Catania, Robyn Dixon plus VPR‘s Tom Sandoval and Summer House‘s Ciara Miller), Strategic Survivalists (Big Brother stars Danielle Reyes and Britney Haynes, who have beef, and Survivor‘s Tony Vlachos, Jeremy Collins, and Carolyn Wiger, who aren’t necessarily beefing but are all wary of one another), and the Bachelor Nationals (Wells Adams, Gabby Windey) and an assortment of Reality Stars With No Allies (Drag Race‘s Bob The Drag Queen, Biggest Loser star Bob Harper, and Selling Sunset‘s Chrishell Stause, whose only interpersonal cast drama is that she’s friends with Ariana Madix). And then there’s a random assortment of other Actual Human Beings: Sam Asghari, who’s most famous for marrying Britney Spears, WWE star Nikki Garcia, British royal Lord Ivar Mountbatten, and Zac’s brother Dylan Efron.
After they’re all driven to Alan Cumming’s castle – flanked by Cumming’s creepy masked, caped crusaders, Cumming alerts the new competitors to the season’s first big twist – and there will be many new twists: A new, unknown masked figured standing next to him is a potential competitor in the game.
Cumming explains that if any of the contestants are bold enough to shake his hand, this new contestant will enter the game, and the hand-shaker will get to choose another player to exile. The mysterious figure under the cloak turns out to be Boston Rob Mariano, who wore his formal backwards cap to the castle.
Despite the fact that Survivor‘s Carolyn Wiger was itching to shake Alan’s hand in order to eliminate Tony Vlachos, she ultimately held back, meaning that Boston Rob is not an official part of the game (“I’m just super-frustrated with this group of idiots,” is Rob’s response), but Alan hints that this may not be the last we see of him. (Later in the castle, when Chanel Ayan is asked about whether she considered bringing Rob into the game, she explains, “I get paid for being beautiful, stunning, no one on earth has ever paid me for my brain. I keep reminding myself, ‘Activate the brain!’” If this is the caliber of confessional we’re getting this season, Phaedra’s legendary one-liners have got some competition.)
At the first round table of the season, Alan has everyone blindfold themselves so he can select the Traitor in their midst: the first to be chosen is Danielle Reyes, whose response is “I’ve never felt so happy to be so bad.” Also selected are Carolyn Wiger (whose bloodlust for Vlachos is evident in everything she does), and Bob the Drag Queen. Three whole Traitors right out of the gate feels like a lot, but it’s not the only difference from last season. Alan informs the cast that, in another twist, in the finale, whatever cast members might be left will not have to reveal whether they’re a Faithful or a Traitor.
In a move that surprises no one, Tom Sandoval immediately becomes the Most Annoying Person On The Group Vacation (and not even because he insists on wearing a stupid kilt) when he starts accusing Chrishell of being one of the selected Traitors behind her back, just because that’s his gut feeling. It’s giving real “Trishelle ‘I Have A Notebook’ Cannatella” vibes. Meanwhile, Dylan Efron is doing his best innocent Bergalicious by declaring that he’s a true Faithful and will not be making any pronunciations of guilt just yet.
After the group has a chance to splinter off and speculate about each other’s loyalty for a while, Alan brings them to their first challenge: they have to work together as a team to row a Viking-esque ship to several pontoons floating on a lake. On each pontoon is a treasure chest worth $10k and a can of fuel. They need to retrieve both things from the pontoons before coming back to shore, but along the way, two players must volunteer to stay back on each of the pontoons (and risk elimination, because they also sacrifice eligibility for an immunity shield). It’s a tricky element to the game, asking players to give up a chance at immunity, and to do so seems like it might point to any volunteer being a Traitor. But for the greater good Robyn Dixon and Chanel Ayan offer to stay behind. Somehow, it’s not until after they make this decision that they realize they’ve put themselves at greater risk for murder.
On the next pontoon, Dolores Catania and Dorinda Medley volunteer to stay back. Say what you will about the Housewives, but on this show, they are all about solidarity. On the third pontoon, with no other Housewives left to volunteer to get off the boat, the remaining competitors argue about who should stay back. Lord Mountbatten insists that it should be women, because they’re weaker (lol at the fact that Sandoval has been complaining about his weak forearms while Nikki Garcia is a professional athlete). Bob the Drag Queen insists that two men stay on the pontoon in the name of equality but no one volunteers, so he and Danielle reluctantly stay. Danielle does so with tears in her eyes, attempting to induce guilt out of her competitors; later, in her confessional, she cackles at her fake alligator tears.
“It would be really great if whoever was Traitors would get on the raft, I mean, that would be really nice,” Wells Adams says sarcastically but tragically, because literally that is who is on the raft. (“How juicy!” Alan says from the shore when he sees future murderers Bob and Danielle together pretending to be Faithfuls to each other. Later, when Bob actually finds out Danielle is a Traitor he tells her, “I believed every word you said, I was eating out the palm of your hand!”)
At the fourth pontoon, Bob Harper and Sam Asghari, realizing it’s a bad look that so many women have volunteered, also stay back, but then the remaining 12 contestants on the boat make the call that, rather than any more of them giving up immunity, they will forfeit whatever money is on the last pontoon and just head back to shore. The eight volunteers left on the pontoons are shocked at this betrayal, having sacrificed themselves for the greed of this dirty dozen. When the eight return to the castle, they find the twelve immune competitors showered and fed and showing varying degrees of remorse for leaving them behind. Dorinda and Bob the Drag Queen are the most vocal about the level of betrayal, but Dorinda, in earnest, as a Faithful, is the most upset. Which ironically gets everyone else (ohay, just Sandoval and Mountbatten) talking about how she doth protest too much, and how she’s exhibiting Traitor behavior.
When it comes time for the actual Traitors to reveal themselves to each other, it’s one of the greatest moments of the show; Bob and Danielle realize they were acting their hearts out for each other while they were on the pontoon.
When Carolyn arrives to the turret, they all are astonished at how well they’ve all been concealing their identities until now. “This wicked crew, they’re not going to see anything like this,” Danielle says.
But that’s not the end of the episode. In the final moments, Alan explains that when the contestants rejected Boston Rob earlier in the episode, they changed the course of the game for themselves. Because as of tomorrow, Boston Rob will be joining the game, but he will be one of the Traitors, but the rest of the Traitors won’t know he’s one of them until the following night. And not only that, but Alan has two additional cloaked players that will be joining the game whose identities are a mystery. My heart is racing at the idea of anyone from season two joining the cast. Peppermint, back for revenge? MJ, who deserves to win? A Kate Chastain threepeat??
“You are a sicko!” Rob laughs when Alan reveals the new twists. “Payback is coming. I’m gonna murder them all.”
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.
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