The days are short, everyone’s broke, and January has been limping on for what feels like decades. Thank God, then, for The Traitors, delivering its yearly dose of cosiness and diversion. This season, the nation was as rapt as ever – as were the cast, even if their viewing experience was less than escapist. “Watching it all back with family and friends, it’s like you almost relive it,” laughs finalist Faraaz. “You’re sat there in the living room, but you feel like you’re at the roundtable at times.”
While much of the show’s appeal comes from its being soothingly formulaic, this iteration of The Traitors broke new ground on two fronts: not only was Rachel the first woman to win as a traitor on the UK series, but she and Stephen were the first traitor duo to win together. “It was the nicest outcome – obviously, for us!” laughs Rachel. “But a lovely outcome for people to watch, too – us [traitors] being faithful to each other.”
Certainly, the inimitable combination of savvy Rachel and sweet Stephen foxed many of the show’s most basic assumptions. Among them, the idea that The Traitors is a tactical game rather than a social one – that is, to what extent can strategy be meaningfully applied in a popularity contest? Can you make it to the end simply by being friendly?
Jack was the only UK Traitors faithful ever to get zero votes in 12 roundtables (Photo: Paul Chappells/Studio Lambert/BBC/PA Wire)If finalist Jack is anything to go by, proud to be “the only UK Traitors faithful ever to get zero votes in 12 roundtables,” the answer is yes. Fellow finalist Jade took another approach, aiming to create friction in order to evade murder – a tactic that worked a little too well, she admits, laughing: “It was always part of my plan, but I didn’t warrant as much suspicion as I [ended up getting]!”
That both made it to the final is proof that there’s room for each approach – and in fact, the winning duo combined the two. “I was the more strategic one, for sure, [while Stephen’s] social game was stronger,” recalls Rachel, and Stephen agrees. “I didn’t keep any notes in a diary, I didn’t keep track of what lies I was telling. […] My strategy was, make them like me so much that they just do not want to write my name down,” he explains. “That is what became my main motivator, really.”
Whether by happy accident or design, the combination resulted not just in a traitor win but the first for a UK woman. So, why hasn’t there been one before? Do gendered expectations mean that women behaving tactically are viewed with suspicion and therefore end up being banished, while strategic men are lauded as cool headed and admirable?
Rachel thinks so. “Sometimes women can be underestimated, you know? And I think it’s really, really hard for a woman to stay strong – like, I’ve been criticised for being cold and calculated, because I’ve been strategic. Amanda, too,” she muses. Stephen agrees: “I’ve never heard [cold and calculated] being used to describe a male traitor, and I do think that is maybe why women traitors do struggle to get further in the game,” he notes. “If they show that composure like Rachel has done, people might think, Oh, she’s a bit standoffish.”
Jade aimed to create friction in order to evade murder (Photo: Paul Chappells/Studio Lambert/BBC)Like the unconscious racial bias played out across the show’s roundtables, perhaps gender stereotypes are another case of The Traitors reflecting the world beyond it – women punished for being anything other than smiley and amenable, quel surprise. Walking an unimaginably fine line between personable and practical, then, Rachel arguably emerges as this year’s breakout star.
Stephen, though, deserves plenty of praise too (and not just for his fleet of extraordinary jumpsuits) – because truthfully, how many of us would actually have split £95,000 with someone who was a stranger just 12 weeks ago, as he chose to at the final’s crescendo, rather than taking it all for ourselves? “The ending that we had to this amazing series is the ending that everyone hoped for, but no one actually thought would happen,” he says. “And I’m so proud of both of us, that we were able to prove that you can do this as a team.”
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Hear hear. Yin and yang, Bonnie and Clyde. That there is real affection and loyalty between the winning duo is abundantly clear; here’s hoping it’ll be infectious as well. “The game isn’t designed to allow the traitors to win together, [but we wanted] to flip that on its head and really prove that if you can just hold your nerve and really stick to your promises, then you can have the same outcome,” Stephen says.
With the world beyond the castle walls inevitably leeching through them, perhaps some wisdom could stand to transfer the other way, too.
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