It started with 25 people being asked to leap off a train. Along the way we were treated to premature burials, marauding clowns and the genuinely dangerous moment Alexander chased a shuttlecock into a hedge. And now we are down to just five people – only one of whom is a traitor. Will the contestants realise Charlotte has been lying – and not just about coming from a market town in Monmouthshire? Frankie certainly will, as her new power as the Seer sets things up for an explosive finale. But before that it’s time to grab your Welsh phrase books and look back on the 10 most treacherous – OK, plain daft – moments of the 2025 season …
Linda’s head turn when Claudia said ‘Traitors’
The main skill of Traitors – pretty much the only skill – is not letting anyone suspect you might be a traitor. Therefore it’s probably a good idea not to swivel your head 180 degrees the minute Claudia says “traitors”. You might as well say “Oh, that’s me!” and don your oversized hood in front of everyone. Case closed, assumed Jake, who brought this sturdy piece of evidence to the round table. Only to discover that nobody thought answering to “traitor” had anything to do with being one. Instead they focused on much more compelling evidence of treachery, such as, er, “he’s a doctor”. Which was a relief, because if they had listened to Jake we’d never have been treated to iconic Linda lines such as: “You don’t need to be a sailor to know how to tie a rope … sorry!”
Charlotte pretending to be Welsh
More than 300,000 people applied to be in the third season – so clearly some applicants thought they needed a USP to help them get ahead. Step forward Charlotte and her bizarre pretence of being from Abergavenny, on the spurious grounds that her fake lilt would ensure people “trusted” her more. Yes, this was the logic, despite the fact that season one famously had a Welsh traitor. I mean, why not make an incredibly stressful game even harder for yourself? Maybe claim you’re a world-famous circus tightrope walker or a third cousin of Mark Zuckerberg once removed? After all, it doesn’t seem to matter. In this series everybody was so focused on their utterly rubbish ability to catch traitors that they didn’t notice when Charlotte’s voice repeatedly swung back to her original London accent.
Armani telling the other traitors to act more like traitors
While Minah – and even Linda – made some effort to slink into the shadows, traitor Armani took a more direct approach, throwing out names and accusations willy-nilly. She then turned on her fellow traitors, telling them they needed to be just as loud. In a game that is all about being discreet, she was essentially telling them to act a bit more like a traitor. Um, nah, said the other two, and then gladly sat back as Armani condemned herself to banishment with behaviour so traitor-like that even her own sister was forced to turn her in.
The Harold Shipman moment
Jake might have been on to Linda like Barrow-in-Furness’s very own Poirot, but his logic regarding Kasim needed Simone Biles-level mental gymnastics to follow: “Saving lives during the day, then killing faithfuls at night,” he muttered, adding a thoughtful expression to disguise the fact that his sentence made no sense whatsoever. Guys, you don’t become a traitor based on your CV, you become one because Claudia Winkleman tapped you on the shoulder the other night. It was all so absurd that it prompted Kasim to take an even bigger leap of fantasy and bring one of the most prolific serial killers of all time to the round table: “You’re basically calling me Harold Shipman or something!” OKaaaay ….
Linda’s terrible acting
Without being rude, at times you wondered if Linda understood the basic rules of the game. While previous traitors spent their time planting seeds, following herds and making sure nobody looked at them, Linda made no tactical moves, instead voting in a fit of pique for the contestant that had brought her name up on the night. Her attempts at hiding her true identity ranged somewhere between “half-arsed” and “utter self sabotage” – especially when she, weirdly, gave Minah full permission to throw her under the bus. Yet somehow this maverick approach kept her in the game. Maybe she’d still be in there if she hadn’t suddenly changed tack and decided she needed to start acting like a faithful. She’d been accused, by Jake, of not being emotional. And so, with a thespian flourish even Withnail’s Uncle Monty might have thought was rather OTT, the retired opera singer “wept” openly at the cruel murder of her friend Liv, wailing “Oh God, she’s my little girl.” It was so out of character that it instantly made everyone think she was a traitor, but it did get her a massive billboard in Leicester Square celebrating her “performance of a lifetime”.
Freddie and Alexander’s homoerotic headstone challenge
“I don’t pay my licence fee to watch two men carrying a giant penis up a hill,” you can imagine a viewer from the 1980s seething in a letter to Points of View. And fair enough, it was hard to see the, ahem, stone column Freddie and Alexander were exhaustedly lugging towards Claudia as anything other than a gigantic granite dick. But as the giddy response to the clip went viral, we were all forced to accept that, yes, this is exactly what we all pay our licence fee for.
Everyone deciding Lisa was 100% faithful because she said so
If, like Charlotte, your plan is to go on Traitors pretending to be someone you’re not, then I would advise future contestants to say they are a vicar. That was all it took for Lisa to convince everyone that she couldn’t possibly be a traitor. The fact she was exposed for telling a bare-faced porky in front of everyone during a challenge a day or so later didn’t seem to dissuade anyone from this conviction. Sadly we were denied the seemingly inevitable story arc of seeing The Woman Who Shall Not Lie being recruited as a traitor because she got boringly murdered – boo!
Dan being the only person who realised Traitors was a game
How could these fellow human beings be so stupid, Dan seemed to be saying with every theatrical roll of the eyes. This was no time for emotion and friendships and hugs – we need round-table logic and evidence and impeccable tactics! Unfortunately, in Traitors you can only really rise above dumb human nature if the other people around you are also rising above it. Reader, they were not. Therefore when Dan explained calmly at the round table how he was playing a tactical game based entirely around his own self-interest, rather than his fellow contestants all agreeing and saying “no, of course, me too”, they recoiled in horror and sent our logical king eye-rolling out of the game.
Minah’s impeccable death stare
Minah had seemed like the perfect traitor – a great liar, quiet at all the right times, happy to throw absolutely anyone under the bus. But she forgot one crucial thing: other people can make great traitors too. As the pressure increased she started to crack and her calculations fell to pieces. Is there anything more naive than going into the final stages of a show called The Traitors thinking that your fellow baddie is going to happily fight your corner just so she can then surrender half of her prize money? Minah was shellshocked by the – duh! – treachery and fixated a none-more-deathly stare directly at Charlotte. But she must have known it was all her own fault. You can’t trust anyone here. Especially not Charlotte – she’s not even Welsh!
Freddie not being built for the traitor life
If there’s one tiny silver lining about being banished as a faithful then it’s the self-satisfaction you can take in standing up in front of your idiot mates and telling them what a hash they have made of it. Freddie was denied even this pleasure. A faithful from the very start, he was reluctantly forced into traitordom at the last minute by Charlotte, who kindly waited an entire seven seconds before sliding a knife into his posterior. So bewildered was Freddie by the machiavellian politics that he blurted out a blatant lie – Minah had told him who had won a shield. After taking an entire day to get his story straight, he then claimed that he was given this information in the bar after Minah had been banished from the game. See ya Freddie! You were a lovely lad, but the worst traitor of all time.
Article by:Source: Tim Jonze
