RECAP: The Traitors (U.S.) Season 3 FINALE
Well, it’s over. Thank god.
The Traitors Season 3 ended as it lived: disappointingly. After a truly delicious conclusion to Episode 10’s cliffhanger, we got the unsatisfying conclusion to the Seer twist, a last desperate attempt at the Round Table, more unstrategic strategy talk from any Faithful not named Dylan Efron, a final challenge that was significantly less interesting than the previous finale challenges, and a fairly dull conclusion at the firepit.
Read on for my takes on the finale of The Traitors Season 3. SPOILERS AHEAD!
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The best thing to happen all episode — really, all season — took place right at the beginning of the episode, when newly minted Traitor Britney voted to banish this season’s primary Traitor, Danielle, at the Round Table. Allow me to convey my feelings on this via a variety of reaction gifs:
This clown Danielle really thought she was a gaming mastermind by manufacturing a scenario where she could bring in this specific player to be her ally at the 11th hour, and in the end, all it did was cost her the entire fucking game. Because OF COURSE IT DID. This person had betrayed you in a game before, and you just assumed that this time it would be different because…reasons?! The unbridled delusion and hubris of this woman, I swear. One more reaction gif sums up my thoughts on this:
There has been a significant amount of online discourse about Danielle’s gameplay this season — truly, Danielle is the story of The Traitors Season 3. I have seen her supporters, including fellow Traitor Bob the Drag Queen, praise her for “playing hard” and being one of “the best to ever play” reality competitions. I find this laughable. I don’t dislike Danielle. Honestly. There are times I actually find her quite likable. But after her astonishingly bad gameplay this season, you cannot be serious gassing her up with this talk of being some kind of strategic mastermind.
Let’s set aside the Britney move for a minute. Danielle’s behavior as a Traitor on its own would have gotten her into trouble. At first, I admired her feigning desperation for safety. But as the episodes went on, we saw multiple examples of Danielle doing far too much acting/overacting, which only served to draw suspicion to her. Her reaction after the Carolyn vote out in Episode 10 was Cringe Hall of Fame material, and more than one Faithful found it highly suspicious behavior. Danielle was never in control of the Traitor votes. At first Bob the Drag Queen seemed to be pushing the murders, then “Boston” Rob Mariano completely took over as lead, and then when it was just Danielle and Carolyn, she acquiesced to Carolyn’s wishes just to get along.
The crux of most viewers’ issues with Danielle comes down to her treatment of Carolyn. Based on the reunion, that was an issue for Carolyn herself. Carolyn said she never felt respected by Danielle. She was either a piece to be disposed of, or an obstacle to get around. That is the quintessential problem with this season. The Traitors never worked together. There was no real semblance of them operating as a unit. From the beginning, Carolyn was always held at arm’s length, and once Rob came in it became every Traitor for themselves (in that way, Britney was a perfect final addition to their ranks — that Big Brother “win at any cost necessary” mentality permeated the turret this series). By design the Traitors have to turn on one another in this game. I get that. But it was game on basically right out of the gate, with Rob taking out Bob within two episodes, and Danielle immediately setting out to ice Carolyn as soon as possible, in part of her incredibly stupid plot to get rid of Rob. I know her excuse was that she was convinced that Survivor alums Rob and Carolyn would work together, but she never even attempted to work with Carolyn, she just went straight for the knife.
And her plan all along was to bring in Britney. So astonishingly stupid. There has been online chatter that Britney and Danielle orchestrated this together, that Britney knew explicitly that Danielle was a Traitor and that it was always the plan. That seems unnecessarily complicated to me. The obvious answer is that Britney just assumed Danielle was a Traitor — which Britney has more or less acknowledged — based not on Danielle’s comments, but on her behaviors. So I do think Britney was basically biding her time until she got the tip she expected to come. In fact, at least one Faithful pointed out that Britney’s behavior shifted dramatically the last few days in the castle, after she had been largely silent up to that point. I think Britney was playing the long con, and in the end, she ran out of runway.
Because once Danielle was eliminated, Britney found herself boxed out. They all knew there was going to be one more banishment before the ending firepit. With only five players remaining — sole Traitor Britney, Bachelor star Gabby Windey, Dylan Efron, Real Houswives Dolores Catania, Lord Ivar Mountbatten — Britney was in a serious jam. No serious person would believe Ivar was a Traitor (so of course Dolores was suspicious of him). The same was true for Dolores, who was simply there for the ride. Dylan had been leading the charge against the Traitors the entire season. That left only Gabby as a potential target for banishment…but Britney couldn’t do that because of the power of the Seer.
The Seer is an interesting twist in theory. It gave the winner the ability to learn, for certain, a specific player’s alignment. Had a Faithful gotten it, it could have been a game-deciding advantage. But here it went to a Traitor, and that screwed Britney, I think. Britney decided to use it against Gabby, and even during their dinner, the other Faithful all agreed that if Britney came back and said that Gabby was a Traitor, it would imply that they were both Traitors. Britney assumed as much, and so she reported out honestly that Gabby was a Faithful. Which meant that it was down to Britney and Dylan as the only possible options for the final banishment.
Britney came in loaded for bear, attacking Dylan ferociously, to the point where he was literally shaken by the barrage. This is another example of poor gameplay by a Big Brother alum. Those players tend to lack finesse; they have two speeds, behind-the-back scheming and all-out assaults. It made Britney look desperate, and although the edit made it seem like the other Faithful might be wavering in their conviction, in the reunion it was made clear that they were committed to sticking with Dylan and never seriously doubted him. And thus, the last Traitor was eliminated. I don’t know if any late-addition to the Traitors would have had a fair shot at this point. I really think the other Traitors had played this game so poorly, and left that position in such a bad position, that it was basically hopeless.
The only real question at the end was how many Faithfuls would split the prize pot. There was, by the way, one last truly lame challenge to win back a bunch of money that had been lost in previous challenges. Was the suspended helicopter ride dangerous? I guess so, but I personally found the whole thing lame, and the riddles that led to the initial bags of cash kindergarten-level easy. When I think back to the elaborate, thrilling final challenge in Season 1, this all felt supremely lame. At the final firepit, there was great suspense around whether any of the Faithful would call for a last-minute banishment, either because they didn’t trust one of them, or because they wanted more money for themselves (see: S2’s vicious final cut). But ultimately, they all voted to end the game, and they each took home around $50,000.
Was that because they really thought they were all Faithfuls? Or because they just wanted to be done? I suspect it was a bit of both. As Danielle herself said in the reunion (echoing Season 1 winner Cirie Fields), the money at play here isn’t exactly life changing. It’s a lot, sure. But we’re not talking $1 million prizes like Survivor or The Amazing Race. We would all love to take $50,000, but the real prize for all of these people was the exposure and the boost in social-media followings, which can be monetized to many times the $50,000 each of these winners took home. They also, I am confident, had an appearance fee that in some cases probably exceeded that share, even for the people who went home early. This is an issue with this game. I don’t think the prize pot is a big enough carrot for the players to go hard, especially if it’s Faithfuls splitting it multiple ways. I don’t see any of these four being devastated if they lost $50,000, like the way the non-reality-TV-stars were when they got screwed in the S1 finale.
That said, it’s only appropriate the Faithful won this season. The Traitors certainly did not deserve to. I hope future players of this game take a lot of lessons from this season, particularly on what not to do. There were a lot of useless Faithful this time, but the Traitors themselves were a hive of dysfunction. I don’t know if that’s what the producers/casting team expected, but it’s sure what they got, and it made for a deeply frustrating season that I think squandered what on paper should have been a top-tier cast.
The reunion was…fine. My primary takeaway was that Real Housewives and first two murders Dorinda Medley and Chanel Ayan came in hungry for camera time, and were determined to get. I like both of those women but this was a super annoying look. When Tom Sandoval exits a season as one of the more likable members of the cast, you need to look at your life and look at your choices.
What do you think of The Traitors Season 3? Drop your thoughts in the comments. The floor is yours!
