The Traitors final twist that could change everything – and ruin it all
There’s not long to go now before The Traitors season three comes to an end, and we won’t quite know what to do with ourselves as we impatiently wait for the celebrity version to drop.
This year has been full of even more iconic one-liners, misspelt names on chalkboards and Claudia Winkleman’s incredibly outfits, and has given us all the drama we never knew we needed.
The three original Traitors in the ‘sisterhood’, Armani Gouveia, Linda Rands, and Minah Shannon have all now been banished, with Charlotte Berman and her fake Welsh accent having just recruited Freddie Fraser to join her on the dark side.
Before we find out if they’ll make it to the very end, and follow in Harry Clark’s footsteps after he walked away with the £95,000 prize pot, we have yet to discover one more twist to the game.
Plenty of fans think they’ve worked out what it could be, with a shocking additional role in the form of a ‘Seer’ being hinted at already, but there may be another surprise awaiting us.
Claudia previously teased: ‘One of you will win an extraordinary power that could turn the entire game on its head.’
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She’d also earlier revealed that for the first time, the finalists wouldn’t discover if the banished players in the final roundtable were actually Faithfuls or Traitors.
But other versions of The Traitors have a whole new twist – though we’re not sure we’d want this one.
Some international editions of the murder mystery gameshow have a ‘Traitor’s Dilemma’ at the end, where those remaining can choose to split the money or steal it all, whether they be Faithfuls or Traitors.
If they all choose to share, they do so, but if only some choose to share, the others that chose steal take it from them. If none choose share and they all choose steal, no one wins the money.
This could happen with all Traitors, all Faithfuls, or there are even versions with a mix of them, meaning being the only Traitor in the final wouldn’t guarantee an automatic win, rendering that achievement effectively pointless.
One fan argued on Reddit that this twist should however only apply to Traitors and not Faithfuls, explaining: ‘The answer is Trust. In order for them all to win a share of the gold, all the Faithful must Trust that the players they end the game with are all Faithful, like themselves. Because they don’t know who’s Faithful and who’s Traitor.
‘But when Traitors end the game together, they know they’re there with Traitors, so there’s no Trust involved. And that is the purpose of the Traitors Dilemma, to ensure that, like the Faithful, all the Traitors only share the gold if they all Trust each other.
‘So The Traitors is a game where not only are Faithful required to Trust each other, but Traitors must do the same if their claim is to share the win.’
In season one of the UK version, Faithfuls Aaron Evans, Hannah Byczkowski, and Meryl Williams won the game, so their final risk was choosing to end it even though they didn’t know for certain if their fellow players were still Faithful or tricking them.
In season two, Harry was the only Traitor remaining. But this time around, could there be more than one, forcing them to split or steal? Or could the remaining Traitor have to play the split or steal game against the Faithfuls?
It seems fans aren’t hoping so, as one labelled the Golden Balls-style twist ‘so bad’ on Reddit, while another called it a ‘disgrace’ and the third pointed out it was ‘fundamentally flawed’.
However, when it was applied to the Australian Traitors season two finale, it was widely applauded.
In that series, all three final Traitors chose to steal, after two had conspired to work against one and steal it for themselves, leaving her with nothing, before she played them at their own game and declared that if she wasn’t winning any money, ‘none of us were going to’.
At the time, Dav-Kripler said on Reddit: ‘Brilliant. I feel like I witnessed the greatest finale in reality television history.’
‘I loved it in the sense of AU S2 Finale – it is iconic now and forever will be remembered. However I agree that i only loved it because I hated Sam and wanted him to get what he deserved (Blake also for not standing up to him and getting rid of him),’ @GG90s agreed.
But could we see the same happening between Freddie and Charlotte, or between them and the Faithfuls? Only time will tell…
The Traitors continues tonight at 9pm on BBC One and iPlayer.
The Traitors final twist that could change everything – and ruin it all