The Traitors Season 3 Review (Spoilers)
The Traitors, hosted by Alan Cummings on Peacock, premiered on January 9, 2025, with its season finale launching on March 6, 2025. It has recently gained traction due to its 3rd season coming out, featuring a cast of many fan favorites as well as all-new twists to the game. Starting out as a UK reality TV show, the Traitors has recently moved its platform to the US and is now catering to its new American audience. Paving its way as a newer show, the producers have moved away from some of the UK production’s decisions and flipped the game in a way that we have never seen before. This season in particular has incorporated many new twists to the well-known game, introducing both players and fans to a whole new game.
Format
The Traitors takes place in a Scottish Mansion, where the players will compete in challenges and avoid getting killed or banished for up to $250,000. The game starts with 3 traitors and the rest as faithfuls. The goal of the faithfuls is to banish all of the traitors and split the pot amongst themselves, while the goal of the traitors is to make it to the end without getting discovered, stealing the money from the faithfuls. Every day, all of the players will compete in challenges in order to earn money for their prize pot, however, every night they must vote to banish a fellow player in an attempt to get a traitor out. Late in the night, the traitors get the opportunity to kill a faithful, bringing them one step closer to victory. Every morning the faithfuls discover who was murdered and the game continues, with many twists along the way.
Casting
As opposed to the UK’s version of The Traitors, casting mainly everyday people, the US version has opted for casting past reality stars as well as celebrities. Most of the cast is featured from shows such as Survivor, Big Brother, The Challenge, and Drag Race, as well as consistently casting a group of Housewives from Bravo. This season’s cast in particular has stirred a lot of drama in the Traitors community.
The traitors chosen for this season were Bob the Drag Queen (RuPaul’s Drag Race), Carolyn Wiger (Survivor), and Danielle Reyes (Big Brother). As well as a few traitors recruited later in the game, “Boston” Rob Mariano (Survivor) and Britney Haynes (Big Brother).
On the other hand, noteworthy faithful players included Dylan Efron (Down to Earth), Dolores Catania (Real Housewives), Lord Ivar Mountbatten (Royal Family), and fan favorite, Gabby Windey (The Bachelorette).
This cast in general has caused a lot of controversy among the fandom, specifically with the casting of some “villains” such as Tom Sandoval (Vanderpump Rules), Wes Bergmann (The Challenge), and the most hated by the fans, Danielle Reyes (Big Brother).
Twists
Overall, season 3 of The Traitors has had the most twists in the show by far. Before the players had even entered the game, they were given the option to let another player into the game, Boston Rob, by sacrificing one of their own. This opportunity, however, was ultimately passed up by the players, although Boston Rob would be let into the game later on whether they liked it or not. In a later twist, the casting was expanded to 3 new players, Wes Bergmann (The Challenge), Derrick Levasseur (Big Brother), and previously mentioned, Rob Mariano (Survivor). Both Derrick and Wes would be serving as faithfuls while Boston Rob would work as a traitor. These players would have the opportunity of providing a player of their choice with a shield, protecting them from murder for a night.
Later in the game, players would fight to possess the power of the Seer. A power where the player possessing it could choose any player of their choice and see whether they were a faithful or a traitor. The two players involved would have to go to a secluded room where one must reveal their role in the game, nobody else could hear their conversation, so it was up to the 2 players to convince the others of what happened. The player who ended up winning this power was a traitor, Britney Haynes. This meant she could either take a faithful in and frame them as a traitor, or tell the truth about their identity. Britney used her power on Gabby, and stayed truthful when telling the other players that she was a faithful.
The last twist of the season involves the process of banishing fellow players, normally, the player’s role as either a faithful or traitor is revealed at the door, however, for the last banishment the players would not be informed of the role of the banished player. This requires the faithfuls to rely solely on instincts to determine whether or not any traitors remain in the game.
Gameplay
This season has been filled with a lot of controversial gameplay, with traitors constantly turning on each other and faithfuls choosing to keep some traitors in the game to further themselves. Most of all, this season showed a new way for traitors to play the game, with Boston Rob paving the way for constant backstabbing between traitors. Very early into the season, he chose to throw Bob the Drag Queen under the bus in order to boost his credibility, and also because he felt threatened by him. This caused a domino effect between the traitors, with Danielle targeting both Caroline and Boston Rob, and Carolyn fighting back against her. When the time came to recruit traitors, Danielle chose to pull in her best friend in the game, Britney. Overall, each traitor had their own strategy in playing the game, with Danielle being known for her overreactions and violent approach, and Boston Rob being known for taking control and playing aggressively. In general, the faithful were the most surprised by Carolyn’s game, claiming she was the best traitor among them. Lastly, Britney’s traitor journey only began towards the end, so she didn’t really have a chance to strategize besides playing friendly with the faithfuls.
Finale
In the finale of season 3, the faithfuls ended up trusting each other, despite not knowing if the last player eliminated was a traitor or not, and ended up splitting the prize pot among the 4 of them. The winner of the season ended up being Delores, Dylan, Gabby, and Lord Ivar, with the final traitor standing being Britney. Overall, fans were split across rooting for the faithfuls or the traitor, Britney. At the reunion, drama stirred between Bob the Drag Queen and Dorinda, with him calling her irrelevant when the traitors murdered her. On the other hand, the tension thickened between Carolyn and Danielle, who have had issues throughout the whole show. Lastly, Boston Rob and Ciara’s interaction was addressed as fans have been wondering if the two ever met up in New York like they promised each other during the show.
Reception
Season 3 of The Traitors is undoubtedly a big hit with 499 million minutes watched, it has become one of the more mainstream popular seasons of the show, claiming the title of the most watched unscripted show in the US. Season 3 has become known for its controversial players and fans’ negative responses toward them, specifically Danielle Reyes. Being a traitor from the start, Danielle has had eyes on her from the beginning of the season. In particular, fans are upset about her overacting, when she pretends to seize and shake during banishments, falls on the ground and cries, and when she constantly disrespects her fellow traitor, Carolyn. Fans of the show have been bashing Danielle on social media, specifically about her comments towards Carolyn, calling her “Forrest Gump,” which suggests that the neurodivergent past addict was just putting on an act the whole time. It has been made clear throughout the whole show that Danielle did not respect Carolyn, and fans have speculated that this was rooted in ableism. On the other hand, fans absolutely adored the past Bachelorette, Gabby Windey. As a winner of the season, Gabby made a huge impact on the show with her humor and her part in the “Bambi” group. She played a large role in sending Danielle home with an intense debate between the two, where Danielle basically called Gabby “stupid” while she was the one losing. All in all, Danielle is without a doubt the most hated player on the Traitors series yet.
Review & Thoughts
Personally, I’ve loved this past season and all the new twists and turns unique to the 3rd season, however I believe there should be some adjustments to the formatting of the game after watching how this cast played. First and foremost, I believe there needs to be some sort of incentive for the faithfuls to actually banish traitors. It’s been clear recently that the faithfuls have been keeping known traitors in the game in order to get on their good side and prevent getting murdered. As of right now, when a traitor gets banished, another gets recruited. This only makes being a faithful more difficult, so it is more logical to keep the traitors you know of in the game. My suggestion as an incentive would be to offer shields from murder to the faithfuls who vote for the correct traitor. This offers the same protection that the players crave and could prevent this kind of gameplay.
On the cast, my least favorite player was Danielle while my favorite was Carolyn. In general, Danielle’s acting is just terrible and extremely overexaggerated. She messed up so much in this game that it is insane how the faithfuls didn’t banish her week one. However, I do think that they all knew she was a traitor and just kept her to prevent another from recruitment. Across all the confessionals, almost every player suspected Danielle yet chose to stay silent, or once eliminated claimed that they knew it was her from the start. In one case, she was literally seen exiting the traitor’s meetup behind a bookcase, yet this was never mentioned again by the witnesses. Another instance, when she gave her shield away to Delores, showing that she isn’t truly scared of getting murdered. Throughout the whole season she can be seen on the ground faking seizing, shaking, and sobbing over a game where people aren’t actually getting murdered. Overall, I think her ego is huge considering she can’t act, she’s not a good traitor, and she’s not very smart. On the other hand, my favorite by far was Carolyn. Her game was basically ruined by Danielle’s antics, however I truly think she could’ve won without the sabotage. Nobody suspected her until Danielle brought her name up, and basically every eliminated player was shocked that she was a traitor.
Overall, I thought this was one of the more entertaining seasons, it had a good mix of players to love and players to hate which made it more watchable than other seasons in the past. The twists changed the game and made this season stray away from the norm of the Traitors series. Although there are some things I would change, this is still one of my favorite recent reality tv seasons. It strays away from the repetitiveness of reality tv shows and makes changes each season, whether good or bad, to keep it entertaining. Despite loving or hating the cast and new twists, it’s evident that this season was a great one through its record-breaking popularity, paving the way for new seasons to come.