Warning: This post contains spoilers for the first three episodes of The Traitors Season 4.
Welcome back to Alan Cumming’s Scottish Highlands castle for another season of Peacock’s devilishly fun, deliciously camp, and addictively thrilling reality competition series The Traitors.
In its fourth season, the American iteration of Traitors has brought together a compelling new group of pseudo-celebrities—from Real Housewives like Dorinda Medley and Porsha Williams to so-called gamers like Survivor‘s Natalie Anderson and Big Brother‘s Tiffany Mitchell to figure skating legends Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski—to compete for a grand prize of up to $250,000. Upon arriving at Cumming’s castle in the first episode, the group was eager to head to the initial blindfolded round table and find out whether they had been selected to play as a Traitor or Faithful. But this time around, the contestants were immediately thrown for a loop when their host revealed there would be an additional “Secret Traitor,” one whose identity was kept hidden from everyone (including those of us watching at home).
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This twist was introduced in the opening minutes of the premiere and quickly cranked the game into high gear, especially after the three other Traitors—Real Housewives Lisa Rinna and Candiace Dillard Bassett, and Love Island‘s Rob Rausch—learned the Secret Traitor was working independently from them and would influence each night’s “murder” by providing them with a shortlist of victims they were allowed to choose from.
With Peacock releasing the first three episodes of Season 4 all at once on Thursday, we were dropped into the whodunnit mix right alongside the Faithfuls. Suspicions flared and accusations began to fly, leading to a near-instant feud between Survivor winner Yamil “Yam Yam” Arocho and actor Michael Rapaport, and Williams sealing her fate as the first Faithful to be banished from the castle with some unfortunate slips of the tongue.
But the juiciest reveal was still to come. After being called out at the first round table for coming off as quiet and a bit tense, America’s favorite football mom Donna Kelce—the mother of NFL stars Jason and Travis Kelce and soon-to-be mother-in-law of Taylor Swift—was on the chopping block at the start of Episode 3. She spent the time leading up to the second round table and much of the vote discussion on the defensive, arguing her unassuming personality was not Traitor behavior but rather the result of her “fangirling” over being there in the first place. As Kelce herself put it, it seemed like “low-hanging fruit” for all these reality TV stars to go after a woman with no other connections there.
Despite her pleas, the majority of votes landed on Kelce and she stood to make her exit speech—only to reveal she was in fact…a Traitor! Unbeknownst to the Faithfuls, they had caught the Secret Traitor first, surprising even her fellow Traitor cohorts.
The banishment may have put an end to what could’ve been a fun, ongoing mystery for viewers to try to solve as the season progressed, but it also felt like it upped the gameplay ante. After all, if this cast is willing to turn on a Swiftie fan favorite so quickly, they’re hopefully willing to continue taking increasingly big and pulse-pounding swings as the season progresses.
The post How a Clever New Twist in The Traitors Season 4 Makes for One of the Game’s Best Reveals Yet appeared first on TIME.
