It’s been a year since I played in the first season of BBC1’s hit game show The Traitors (and a year since I was ceremoniously banished as part of the world’s worst magic trick). Having covered pretty much every international version since on my podcast, I thought I knew everything there was to know about how season 2 would play out. Turns out, I’m wrong…
1. Claudia has an owl
Let’s start with the important stuff. It’s now canon that Claudia delivers invitations to appear on The Traitors by owl: a creature who is also capable of accompanying a train and five Land Rovers, containing 22 extroverted strangers, back to the castle. Is this an upgrade from last year’s peacock? Yes, certainly. Will they have to find an even better bird for season 3? Absolutely. They’re likely scanning eBay for swans as we speak.
2. Everyone is an expert now…except they aren’t
It’s fascinating to watch a cast of players who Get It. They know their Wilves from their Maddies, they’ve revised their curveballs, their blindsides, and their parting gifts. When Claudia asks them to stand in a line before entering the castle, they all expect two players to be sent home…until they aren’t. It seems like the producers will have to do everything they can to repeatedly confound a group of people who’ve studied the previous season, which gives the entire experience a very new energy. Studio Lambert has gone overboard with twists in different shows…will it be forced to resort to that here, too?
3. There’s a kitchen!
In an effort to keep things fresh, they’ve built a kitchen in the castle. It has a boiling water tap, a lovely marble worktop, and presumably no actual food to cook with since meals are already provided. Unless the Traitors get up early to prepare the breakfast spread?
4. The Traitors recruit, and they recruit early
In a lovely twist, Claudia picked three Traitors (business manager Paul, baby Corporal Harry, events coordinator Ash) and then asked them to choose their fourth member. They went with mild-mannered Miles, a lovely pick if you ask me, to round out the group. It builds a fast and fascinating power dynamic where the three “core” Traitors sit one step above their one-day-younger apprentice. They even consider picking a chump that they can cash in, though decide against it. It doesn’t look like Miles is given a choice to decline the offer, as Alex was last year, but I also see no reason why he would.
5. They’re making us play the game, too!
From not telling us the identity of the fourth Traitor for a day to hinting that there’s a mother/son pair in the castle (there is!), we’re being treated to glimpses of what it feels like to be a clueless faithful. This comes after the UK viewing public (or at least a mob on Twitter) clamored for the BBC to give us a “Faithful Edit” where we didn’t see the Traitors Tower scenes and had to guess along with the goodies. What’s interesting is that the original format was created in the Netherlands to be a sister-show to Wie Is De Mol?, where the viewers spend the entire season guessing who’s the secret saboteur. So you can see why this format was designed to show you the action from the opposite angle. For that reason, would too many secrets held against the viewers put too much tension on the format? Maybe ⏤ we’ll see.
6. Missions have evolved, for the better
In season 1, the missions existed to (apparently) fill the prize pot, though the overly-generous last mission seemed to make up for any pounds we missed along the way. So was it to keep viewers interested? Well no, anecdotally, most of my friends skipped through the missions entirely. Were they there to root out Traitors, then? Absolutely not, they were as invested in earning money as the rest of us. In my opinion, it was a delightful form of social manipulation: build the group bond only for it to so painfully shatter again that evening. Nice, but maybe not worth the effort.
But this year, they’ve done something different. In each mission, players can forgo the efforts of the group and waste time finding a shield, reducing the group’s chances of maximizing the prize pot. In holding that shield, the player cannot be murdered that night. It’s great: it sows mistrust of the shield-grabbers, highlights players who are happy to play saboteur, and as the show goes on, it’ll become a fascinating way of protecting strong faithfuls if used intelligently. More of this!
7. Scottish boats have grown yet more evil and must be stopped
Damn those boats! Not only are they spinning in even tighter circles than last year despite Anthony rowing REALLY HARD on JUST ONE SIDE which should definitely have made it go straight, right? But now they’re capsizing under the gargantuan, chiseled bod of Andrew after he put his 250lb of prime marbled beef right on the edge for no reason. Look, it’s not his fault he has the same body shape as Optimus Prime! The boats are massive Traitors, man.
8. They’ve finally fixed The Breakfast Problem
I wonder if you noticed last season: the last two contestants to come to breakfast were always faithful to keep the viewers guessing who’d been murdered right up until the end. The players didn’t pick up on it in season 1, since without already knowing who was faithful and who was a Traitor, this info was useless until after the player had been eliminated. (It would be astonishing if, after learning of Alyssa’s treachery at her banishment, somebody recalled that she had never arrived to breakfast last. Why would they even think about that?)
But now that the season 2 cast knows to look for it, it had to change. For now, they’ve got the last three living players arriving at the same time and then a player getting murdered at the same time. We’ve already had Traitor Ash in that last three, so the leak has been plugged. Well played, Studio Lambert!
9. The players aren’t scared to upset each other anymore
Zack is a top-quality player. He’s very happy to cajole, dig, threaten, and lie just for the fun of it. And we shouldn’t be surprised: he’s a parliamentary advisor. He’s here for a good time, not for a long time, but he’s survived thus far by simply pissing people off. He’s also, in the process, somehow figured out that there’s a mother and son in the game. The players in my season were so terrified of being picked off for being nasty that we steered away from arguments whenever we could. Well, almost all of us.
But it stands to reason: we’ve learned from season 1, the Traitors are lovely. They’re smiling assassins. So feel free to be an idiot: it probably means you’re faithful.
10. There’s another couple! But of a different sort…
Drama! We have a mother and son in the game. Twitter favourite Diane and gentleman Ross haven’t yet been rumbled, but they’re milking the connection for all it’s worth. At one point, Ross insults his mum’s cooking right in front of her, to which Diane replies, “Well you’ll have to come to my house then.” Genius.
11. We now know what happens if there’s a tie!
For the first time in UK Traitors history, we’ve had a tied vote at the round table. So, here are the rules of what happens next: the players with the most votes get to make a short speech, after which everyone else votes again, but only for those players. If it’s still a tie, it’s decided by chance. Where episode 3 left us, Traitors Paul and Harry have blindsided Ash to get rid of her, but she’s tied 6-6 with Brian in the second round of votes with just Anthony’s vote remaining. Of course we all want the drama of Ash surviving and lambasting the boys for their treachery, but she might have to survive a tense round of Rock, Paper, Scissors or something first.
12. If you want to find a Traitor, simply have a meltdown
Photographer Brian, bless him, had been accused at the episode 3 roundtable along with eight other players. And he definitely wasn’t on the chopping block until he had a huge wobble and interrupted the discussion, demanding out of nowhere that everyone tell him if they thought he was a Traitor or not. In the most remarkable example of ludonarrative suicide, he consequently earned himself a bunch of votes and is a single Anthony away from going home. But within all that, still burbling, he was the only player to vote to banish popular Paul! So there you go, it pays to lose your marbles.
We’re only three episodes in, and by the looks of the previews, we’re in for an awful lot more shocks before the season’s over. The dungeon, anybody? I, for one, can’t wait.
Ivan Brett is a guest contributor and was a contestant on series one of The Traitors UK.