Review: The Traitors, "Let Battle Commence," "Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold," & "Nail in a Coffin" | Season 3, Episodes 1-3

Welcome to Episodic Medium’s coverage of Peacock’s reality mashup The Traitors, which returns for its third season after a breakout second. Episodes debut Thursdays at 9pm, while reviews will mostly follow on Friday morning. This first review is free for all, but future reviews will be exclusive to paid subscribers.

For more on our coverage, and our full winter schedule, click here.

Given how The Traitors works, I figured it was very likely Boston Rob—who was announced as part of the show’s cast—wouldn’t actually leave Scotland after the opening gambit of the U.S. version’s third season. But let’s for a moment accept the show’s premise that no one choosing to bring him into the game meant he would be going home to Amber and the girls.

It seems like a waste of a big name in the show’s investment in established reality stars on its face (not that I necessarily need to see Rob play another reality show, and I didn’t even see him on Deal Or No Deal Island). But even if Rob didn’t show up in the game again (spoiler: he does), it serves an immediate function of foregrounding one of the appeals of the reality star format: existing grudges between “gamers” that are built to be resolved within the castle walls. Not shockingly, the first story that emerges is the other alumni from Survivor, since they understand each others’ gameplay better than anyone else. Will Carolyn take the chance to remove one snake—Tony—even if it means replacing him with another? And in the cars on the way to the castle, we meet Britney and Danielle, Big Brother alumni who it would seem also have history that could lead the latter to push the former out of the game.

My uncertainty here is ultimately why this opening choice exists. It’s possible that someone reading this is aware of every single one of these contestants and their history in either reality TV or some vague approximation of “culture,” but chances are the average viewer is coming in with some considerable blindspots. In my case, I remember Danielle from her first season of Big Brother, but I don’t know Britney, and I chuckled when I realized their “beef” was from the Christmas-themed Reindeer Games spin-off (oh, the humanity!). It’s a reminder that the specifics of the beef don’t really matter—it just needs to add a subtle layer to the early dynamics so that we’re not watching a bunch of random people. There are already explainers helping viewers get however much context they want or need (even broken Google will pull them up), but creating the Rob choice brought two stories to the surface without the need for additional research.

As we embark on another Traitors journey, I hope you’ll forgive that my analysis might be even more meta than usual, but that was my takeaway from season two: this is less a structured game and more a murder mystery party, meaning that the twists and challenges are all about what reactions and stories they create. If we look at the first challenge, for example, the component asking the group to sacrifice two players at each interval in a physical challenge is naturally going to lead to the Housewives being in danger: it’s pretty likely that they’ll be among the first to volunteer to stop rowing, even if it puts them at risk. It means that before the episode is even halfway over, producers have rekindled the second season’s gamers vs. Housewives narrative and attached it to new players who established Traitors viewers may or may not be familiar with.

It doesn’t matter how much the contestants win—in the first mission they leave behind $20,000 to avoid putting two more people at risk and potentially running out of time, but who actually cares? The final prize won’t be close to $250,000, but the amount they collect won’t change the endgame. You could argue that The Traitors lacks substance as a game, but that’s because its style is its substance, and the game parts are inherently extraneous. You could say that it’s unfair that Rob, Wes, and Derrick are spared from the first murder by being introduced to the game later, but it’s an automatic reshuffling of existing relationships, and that’s the only logic that matters to producers. Making them immune to banishment and murder? Giving them three shields to give to other players? Tony tries to sell all of this as a “game changer,” but the game isn’t stable enough to make “change” perceptible. It’s just an amorphous blob of triggers for interpersonal conflict and meta-narrative.

The biggest producer decision evident in this three-episode premiere is obviously the choice of traitors, as it dictates so much of the story the season is going to tell. The choice of Bob the Drag Queen is about having a comic narrator, who can turn every emotional turn into a quip or one-liner. Danielle, meanwhile, is the master strategist, convinced they need to be 20 steps ahead at every interval and probably getting burned for it. Carolyn is a more chaotic choice, admittedly, but she’s a valuable narrator for her willingness to be critical of her fellow traitors, and the contrast between her lack of filter within testimonials and the need for a filter in her interactions with everyone else. The initial reveal benefits from the serendipity of Danielle and Bob spending the challenge pretending to be faithfuls to one another, but we quickly see they don’t necessarily agree on their strategy, even before a fourth is added to their midst by Alan’s latest twist.

Making Boston Rob a traitor is…look, nothing matters, okay? But I do think what makes Boston Rob an effective reality contestant is that he has this huge ego and personality, but he’s also a reliable narrator of events. He immediately clocks how much conflict exists within the existing traitors, and realizes that he needs to step in to try to moderate. Carolyn concludes after their first meeting of four that she still feels like a team of one, but that’s always the case: while there’s no incentive for traitors to target one another at this point in the game, that incentive can emerge situationally, and we know gamers won’t hesitate to—say—cut Bob the Drag Queen if the desire to control the game in the turret and the round table makes him too much of a target. And it’s clear that Rob isn’t going to hesitate to remove Danielle if she insists on trying to win an Oscar at breakfast.

The swift removal of two Housewives does a lot to shift the balance of the season toward the gamers, but the second roundtable hinges on Dylan Efron, who proves himself a shrewd observer. He immediately clocks himself as a Survivor superfan in the opening episode, recognizing the alumni from that show, and it’s clear from his interviews that he understands this game as well. He reminds me of how Peter was playing the game last season, but without the weird moralizing, which was my whole problem with his approach. While it’s not surprising that a gamer like Jeremy would clock Danielle’s over-acting at breakfast, the way Dylan breaks down Bob the Drag Queen’s “control” of the round table is a strong basic understanding of behavior’s role in this “game.”

I do think, in general, that the biggest wild card in a season of The Traitors are the players who aren’t immediately classifiable. Watching Dylan kind of test the waters of playing like a gamer is really compelling, and it’s interesting to see players like Chrisell, Nikki, and Gabby forming alliances based on vibes without having the same intimate knowledge of players like Tony that others might have. And with so many gamers within the traitors, a huge part of the game will come down to how well players like Dylan become more aggressive, and how less conspicuous players pick up on the aggression from others. There’s definitely some dead weight in the cast, as there always is, but there’s enough dynamism happening outside of the known quantities to suggest some productive possibilities moving forward.

Watching Rob shiv Tony after watching Bob the Drag Queen weather Dylan’s (correct) accusations is a really satisfying bit of Traitors gameplay, solidifying the narrative that he’s trying to save the other traitors from themselves. We’ve never had four traitors this early in the game, but it’s a dynamic with a lot of potential: sure, it more or less just mirrors the mentorship role he held in Survivor 39, but this time he has a stake in the game, and his actions will shift accordingly. It makes a productive dynamic when the game forces them to collaborate in plain sight, as he has to swiftly try to diffuse a plan to put Carolyn in a coffin that he both knows Carolyn won’t go for and could unnecessarily put a target on her if other players guess at the strategy. He seems to win that battle, but the war is far from done, and the chances of this quartet making it far in the game as a unit strikes me as unlikely.

And that’s fine! I go into The Traitors with few rooting interests: sure, Tom Sandoval is odious enough in his appearances that I’d like him off my screen as soon as possible, but I don’t necessarily think he needs to be gone given that he doesn’t stand in the way of the show working effectively. I’m sure there are people out there actively rooting for specific faithful or traitors to win, but the game isn’t logical enough to feel like any player’s result is in their control. The game has mostly embraced the same chaos that defined the second season, with the only major game adjustment (we’re aware of) being that players who are eliminated in the final showdown no longer confirm if they were traitors or faithfuls. That won’t matter for a long time, but it’s a good adjustment that will hopefully create more chaos when it matters most.

For now, The Traitors is in familiar territory, amping up the theatricality but mostly just relying on the dynamics that come from putting so many people used to being on television in a confined space. So far, you don’t mess with success.

Stray observations

• “You’re a sellout, bro”—Tony didn’t get enough time in the game for this to really land, but Rob does an especially good job of passing it off as overdramatic, so his choice to intervene during the roundtable seems to have paid off.
• We watched the first episode last night, and were naturally hooked in to seeing who was under the other two hoods, but once I realized it was two random gamers I wasn’t at all familiar with, we just turned it off and waited until this morning. These will probably be on a Friday morning schedule, for future reference.
• “Welcome to the stage, Miss Guided”—I’ll be really interested to see at what point Bob’s overperformance starts to draw more suspicion. He’s not wrong that he is A Lot and that could explain what Dylan is observing, but there’s got to be a point where the pendulum shifts, and people will remember how hard he went after his accuser (without ever claiming he was a traitor).
• I know they failed the Clown Door mission, but I also sort of wasn’t even paying attention. I get that clowns are a common phobia, but they don’t do much for me, and it just didn’t do anything interesting to me. A bit wasteful.
• I specifically tried bullying producers into not casting random British people for no reason, but we’re still stuck with Lord Ivar Mountbatten and his “a woman needs to leave the boat” energy, so I apologize that I didn’t push harder.
• I do feel bad for Ayan, who really did nothing except “be a Housewife” in a game she clearly didn’t understand, but I do think that the design of the first mission was always going to put them in danger early, and so their removal was honestly probably a foregone conclusion. We’ll see how long Robyn and Dolores last.
• “I’ll be like this turd on the wall”—Carolyn, I am not among those who will question or challenge your every statement, but why is there a turd on your wall?
• Lots of questions about Tom Sandoval’s whole deal, but his pit stains at breakfast were the most conspicuous for us.
• Welcome to Episodic Medium’s coverage of The Traitors! I don’t know that I’m going to have giant essays to say about the show every week, but there’s enough going on here for some dialogue, and I’m excited to see how the community is connecting with the cast on different levels.