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The Traitors crept back onto BBC One last night (1 January), but while Claudia Winkleman’s wall of a fringe and the garishly decorated Scottish castle were both familiar sights, the smash-hit show has returned with one big twist.
Series host Winkleman had previously teased that things would be “different” in the game of deception this year, following a shocking season two finale that saw Traitor Harry walk away with the £95,150 prize pot.
“There are some really exciting things that have changed, which keeps everyone on the toes and feeds into the central premise of trust!” Winkleman said of the new episodes.
In the season three opener, the big twist was revealed, with Winkleman telling contestants that the few who make it to the final this year will no longer reveal whether they are a Faithful or Traitor as they are banished.
Instead, the final players will have to rely purely on their instincts about whether or not any Traitors are left in the castle, a twist that’s intended to make their decision of when to end the game even more tricky.
It remains to be seen exactly how this will affect the outcome of the show. If the rule had been introduced for season two, it would have made it even easier for Harry to win. In that finale, fellow Traitor Andrew made an 11th-hour attempt to bring down Harry before being banished, and this made Jaz very suspicious of him.
In another twist to the new series, three contestants were made to leave before they had even entered Ardross Castle in Inverness. Something similar happened in season one, to players Amos and Kieran, who were offered a way back into the show.
And meanwhile, a few players have introduced twists of their own, with one inexplicably pretending to be Welsh and putting on an accent, another hiding their job as a priest and another pretending she’s a nail technician rather than an ex-soldier.
The opening episode also saw Winkleman select this year’s traitors: financial investigator Armani, retired opera singer Linda, and call centre manager Minah.
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In a three-star review of the show for The Independent, critic Nick Hilton wrote: “Viewers watching this first episode will be left fearing for Winkleman’s chosen trio of Traitors. ‘I loved every minute of it,’ one of them says. ‘Am I bad?’ The answer is ‘yes, at being a Traitor’. Unsubtle looks, teary over-performance, near-audible gasping: this doesn’t look like a team capable of making it to the last leg.
“And yet, the best Traitors of seasons one and two – Wilf and Harry – made equally inauspicious starts. They grew into the game and began to edge out their teammates. And that’s what makes The Traitors so compelling. The characters, who are trying to be characters at the beginning, will slowly be drawn back into ragged, fallible humanity.”
The Traitors continues tonight at 8pm on BBC One.
