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“Nobody messes with Judy,” said Judy, shortly before being banished at the round table in episode two of the new season of The Traitors. There’s only two kinds of people who speak about themselves in the third person: oddballs (hoarders, flashers, referees etc) and genuinely hard people. Judy fell into the latter camp, being a child liaison officer from Doncaster, who clearly spends her life straight-talking people as she protects kids. Unbeknownst to the other contestants, she has a foster daughter also on the show, Roxy, who after Judy revealed she was a Faithful on her way out, called out everyone who had voted for following a “herd mentality.”
And despite protestations from the likes of Sam (like a daytime TV version of Patrick Bateman), it really was herd mentality taking over the game yet again. For what had Judy done? Apparently she hadn’t reacted like other people around the breakfast table or during tasks. And she generally appeared to be quite clever.
Which are instructive things when it comes to theories around this new show…
Theory 1: Fiona is the Secret Traitor
Fiona (BBC/Studio Lambert/Cody Burridge/Matt Burlem)
The Secret Traitor in this season is a lovely spin on the format, whereby a master Traitor is now in play, and unknown to both the other Traitors (Hugo, Rachel and Stephen) and to us viewers. They are the ones who dictate who the Traitors can murder and thereby control the game; the Traitors must therefore try to figure out who the Secret Traitor is in the hope they can engineer their banishment at the round table.
Now viewers and the Traitors seem to be fixated on a few candidates, with Amanda at the centre. Amanda is a former police detective and both looks and acts exactly like one, including her hard-boiled quashing of a rumour that she and Hugo were an item: “We’re not – I’m a lesbian.” Amanda clearly has all the smarts to be an excellent Secret Traitor but it also makes her too obvious.
Also, she’s just too at risk. The Secret Traitor has to stay in the game for the good of the show, and people like Amanda don’t do well in Traitors. Y’know, smart people. They tend to be eliminated quickly, because they’re seen as threats by the Traitors or thought of as suspicious by Faithfuls for their articulate acumen. Generally they tend to be less emotional too, as they are playing the game. This is why Judy came under scrutiny, because, being a tough cookie, she wasn’t responding emotionally to situations as the other were.
One of the apparent flaws in the game is that the ‘good’ players are often the ones to go first, simply because of their engagement in proceedings they become visible. Think of Yin Lu, the Doctor of Communications who was first to be banished in Season 3, or the way Stephen Fry was ejected from Celebrity Traitors. Actually, the good players in The Traitors are the dumb or scared ones – baffled into silence the situation – and the very best players are those who pretend to be one of the two. Think of Cat Burns in Celebrity Traitors, keeping undetected as a Traitor by a silence she kept putting down to nerves and neurodiversity.
Which means Fiona might very well be the Secret Traitor. Fiona is one of the older ones and keeps referring to herself as an “old bird” even though she’s only 62. Hardly a geriatric these days. She claims confusion during tasks and generally affects a grandmotherly sense of confusion. The perfect disguise. Although, there may be a more perfect one…
Theory 2: Adam is the Secret Traitor and isn’t a builder
Adam
BBC/Studio Lambert/Cody Burridge/Matt Burlem
Adam is operating even lower beneath the radar than Fiona. A builder from Essex, he’s playing the Tom Skinner card – it’s all Bosh, Get In My Son, Job Done – and going for the man of the people, straight-up honest guv, kind of bloke.
But he might not be a builder at all.
There are sure to be further revelations about the contestants and one of them may well be that Adam’s entire persona is an act. Charlotte in Season 3 pretended to be Welsh for the entire thing in the belief that it would make her more trustworthy. So perhaps Adam is doing the same. He doesn’t come across as someone able to be that calculating but he told Claudia in his interview that he is actually “a strategist”. Apparently he’s studied body language and is an amateur ghost hunter. Which doesn’t actually suggest he’s that smart but the point remains, the unpretentious builder act is a decent one.
Theory 3: The Secret Traitor is not a cool operator at all
Jade ((BBC/Studio Lambert/Cody Burridge/Matt Burlem)
Just because the Secret Traitor is controlling the game doesn’t mean they’re the smartest person in the castle. They may have been selected by Claudia only to find themselves hopelessly out of their depth.
Think about who the Secret Traitor has selected for murder so far… their decisions make no sense. To have put forward mild-mannered civil servant Raz forward twice is baffling. He is not someone likely to be banished, nor does he seem particularly clued-up on the game, he just appears a bit rubbish at it for now. We know he’s not the Secret Traitor as they can’t put themselves on the shortlist of three to be murdered, so it’s not him being a secret mastermind. It’s just… odd.
And might be due to a lack of awareness or the kind of calculating actions that would be most suitable. So it likely rules out Amanda again. Instead, it may be that Fiona or Adam are the Secret Traitor but aren’t pretending to be a bit slow. Or that we look elsewhere, at the earnest, PhD student Jade, who seems to shut down under pressure in Zoomer style, or Ellie, who may be a psychologist but is also mostly quiet and mostly seems to be acting the part of a psychologists (lots of nodding and widening of eyes) but isn’t asking any probing questions.
This is not to say that any of these people aren’t smart, just that they are not the cold operators which we all imagine the Traitors to be… which in the context of the game, generally makes them very good Traitors. Playing dumb is a clever route to the money.
The Traitors continues on BBC One on Wednesday
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