Finale Recap: The Traitor Tantrums
+ some Boobunion thoughts
The Yearning Rating: ✰✰✰½
Stick with us to the end of this post for a dreamcast of The Traitors Season 4!
Written by Meg Steinfeld-Heim
On The Traitors, the murders persist—but so do I, dear Yearners. And at the reunion of the third season, which aired last Thursday on Peacock, the gravity-defying boob heights persisted as well. Let’s just say everyone was feeling very Faithful to their boob tape. What do you get when you put some Big Brothers, [Zac Efron’s] Little Brother, a drag queen, a handful of Survivors, and a lesbian Bachelorette-No-More at a Round Table? Well, you get drama, of course.
What started out as a season of villainous domination and entertaining infighting amongst Traitors began to shift in the last few episodes. A handful of Faithfuls—led by Dylan Efron and our beloved Gabby Windey—began to catch on that the season tell of a Traitor was…going after another Traitor. After taking down Carolyn, self-proclaimed “messy Traitor” Danielle survived a total of 8 Round Table banishments (the longest run in Traitor history for a non-winner). But the very start of the finale reveals that, in a repeat betrayal, her former Big Brother: Reindeer Games-costar-turned-Traitor Britney has put the final nail in her coffin. This left late season Traitor recruit Britney with only one more Round Table to survive to have a chance at the sole winnings.
Can we talk about Danielle’s game? From a viewer perspective, it’s pretty hard to make sense of. During the day, Danielle was disheveled and performatively nervous. At the Round Table, she regularly broke down sobbing and shaking with all the vigor of a General Hospital cast member. As Real Housewife of New Jersey Dolores so aptly put it, “She deserves an Oscar…for all that convulsing on the ground”. I wonder if the edit left out any rolling eyes as she repeatedly collapsed to the floor. In the Traitor turret, Danielle couldn’t work with anyone. She would gaslight and lie to Carolyn, then the next night beg to work together again. When she recruits her Big Brother “bestie” Britney, they don’t even initially agree on who should be murdered. It’s madness! So how did she make it so far? My best guess is that the dominating presence of her emotional chaos steamrolled the mild mannered Faithfuls who made it deep into the game (Dylan, Dolores, Ivar, and Sam) to the point that there wasn’t room to breathe, much less genuinely suspect her. While she was crying, they were just trying to eat a bagel at breakfast and admire Alan Cumming’s outfits. And in turn, she protected them.
I would make a case that, if you pick the right person, the late-season Traitor recruit is one of the most advantageous spots to play from. Most of the work is done! Unfortunately for Britney, she was playing with someone so profoundly nonstrategic that I think she was semi-doomed from recruitment. Their alliance during the season, plus the Traitor suspicion already on Danielle, was, as Britney put it, “a bit obvious”. But Britney held it together pretty well until the last episode. She kept her head and didn’t make the obvious choice to frame Gabby at her Seer dinner. Having publicly confirmed that Gabby was a Faithful to the cast, she came for Dylan hard at the Round Table, as he was her best option for Traitor diversion. And she made a good argument! I’m sure she was aiming to nab Goat1 Dolores, who famously voted incorrectly on 8 out of 10 Banishments. (Side note: I’m obsessed with the fact that Dolores is a former corrections officer with the worst investigative instincts I’ve ever seen in a reality game show). Dylan’s dismissal of her argument had yucky misogynistic undertones, but the real driver behind his attack was the (valid) Traitor finger-pointing from Danielle on her way out the door. He and Gabby both picked up on the distinctive Traitor pattern of infighting, betrayal, and throwing each other under the bus.
Watching Gabby dominate the last two episodes of the season with her strategy and composure and go on to win the game taught me something new about myself. I don’t just root for the Traitors to win on this show! I will root for a Faithful if they are interesting/smart/funny/lesbian enough. Who knew! Gabby’s post-game press has revealed that her bullshit meter was aligned with the viewers; aka, she always knew Danielle was a Traitor. The final push to the Fire of Truth with the four remaining Faithfuls was fine—I would’ve enjoyed the drama of watching Gabby cut Ivar and Dolores out of the money at the last minute. Ivar and Dolores were two of the most blah Faithfuls I’ve ever seen—and it’s not lost on me that, somehow, a member of the British royal family is being handed even more gold—and my cutthroat Survivor instincts would’ve wanted them out. But Dolores swinging from the bottom of a helicopter makes it worth it to me.
For the most part, the reunion was fun and ridiculous, just as it should’ve been. We hear more about the infamous Big Brother Reindeer Games betrayal between Danielle and Britney. For what it's worth, I would also betray somebody I’ve spent 3 cumulative hours with on reality TV if it helped my game. Danielle felt weirdly distant from the rest of the Traitors and Winners group—it seemed like she couldn’t stop being defensive about her game and missed the point that it's all actually really silly and doesn’t matter? It's just for fun! When Boston Rob jokes with Carolyn that he maaaaaybe would’ve split the money with her if they’d made it to the end together, Danielle calls across the room with all seriousness, “You’re lying through your teeth right now!”. I’m thinking Alan will have to pry that green cloak from her Traitorous hands before they go into production on Season 4.
Fresh Blood?
Sharing my personal The Traitors Season 4 Dreamcast
Real Housewife: Whitney Rose from Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
Loves to stir up trouble
Skilled at quietly planting accusations with her sweet girly voice
Would be a valuable part of her “hilling journey”
Good Guy Faithful: Ronald Gladden from Jury Duty
Familiar with having the wool pulled over his eyes
Sweet and disarming
Will he be fooled again??
Real Housewife: Jenna Lyons from Real Housewives of New York City
We have lesbians and we have housewives on this show…why not lesbian housewives?
I would love to see her and Whitney try to find something in common and forge the typical Housewife alliance
Survivor Villain: Shan Smith from Survivor 41
Manipulative, cunning and prone to gaslighting
Formerly a pastor, now a “religious content creator”—I feel like she and Whitney might have some things to talk about
Survivor Good Guy: Kenzie Petty from Survivor 46
Bambi Alliance material
Her bubbly and charming nature may help her avoid the early Gamer purge that happens on The Traitors
RuPaul’s Drag Race: Kandy Muse
Just imagine how shady she would be!
Would bring Round Table aggression to a new level
If she was a Traitor and murdered someone, I would love to hear her say, “She died.”
This is Survivor terminology. Broadly, it refers to a passive or inconsequential player that you bring to the end of the game, like a goat to slaughter, to then take out or overcome at the final moment in the game and nab the win.