The cliffhanger in this season’s penultimate episode of The Traitors was not necessarily surprising, but I can see why people would find it frustrating. The truth is the result will dramatically set the tone for where the finale will take us. If Danielle remains in the game, it becomes a tense showdown to see whether the game’s lone original traitor can get to the end having vanquished the fellow traitors who she determined were a thorn in her side. If Danielle is eliminated, the core narrative of the season is resolved, and no matter what side you were on the show gets to move forward into a lower stakes scenario where no one result will trigger the broader conflicts of the season.

And look, as someone who was rooting for Carolyn and who found Danielle’s play as a traitor to be wildly incoherent, I’m not mad that Britney decides the best path for her game is to vote out Danielle on the revote, leaving her the last traitor standing. I’m satisfied to see Danielle forced to channel all her energy into a sassy kiss-off in the circle of truth, as opposed to smugly standing at the end with her gameplay validated. I’m happy that I can just take a breath and let the mostly innocuous players work their way to a conclusion that won’t make me angry.

But I’m not going to come to you pretending that this is the most interesting way to end the season. Having all of the season-long arcs tied up in a bow means that we’re left with short-term stories with almost no context behind them. Last season was similar in this regard, admittedly, but at least there was the history between CT and Trishelle that gave it a sense of pathos. That dynamic died with Britney’s betrayal of Danielle, leaving behind two faithful with zero narrative value (Ivar and Dolores), one faithful who’s been better with one-liners than gameplay (Gabby), a traitor who became a traitor a week ago (Britney), and then one faithful who would be a satisfying winner insofar as he’s been proactively engaged in the game (Dylan). It’s just an extremely inert collection of players, amiable and pleasant but without any real meaning behind it.

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Carolyn’s exit was a bad enough omen for this Traitors season, but beginning this episode with the murder of Tom Sandoval is salt in the wound. Odious as he may be, he was a rogue agent in a show that needs one, and he did so in entertaining ways that stayed on a pleasant wavelength. He wasn’t taking the game too seriously and was consistently wildly wrong, right up until his claim at the end that he was great at playing said game.

Why couldn’t they have just murdered Ivar? The argument was that Tom was “onto” Danielle, but nobody ever took Tom’s theories seriously, and if you can’t manipulate someone with the attention span of a flea, you shouldn’t call yourself a “gamer.” They were right to leave Gabby as fodder, given the prevailing sense that remaining traitors are likely to be women, but it showed such a short-term approach to a situation where Danielle was allegedly “twenty steps ahead.” Focus on banishing Gabby with your majority—with Dylan and Dolores as fait…

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Right before the round table in this week’s The Traitors was set to begin, it became clear that no amount of snow outside could reasonably change the fact that the dog needed to go. And so we bundled up, made our way on a nighttime jaunt through the 10” of snow that fell in the past 36 hours, with Carolyn and Danielle’s fates hanging in the balance in the meantime.

It was a helpful time of reflection, because the clarity of this week’s edit was frankly distressing. Going into this week, it seemed impossible for Carolyn to be identified as a traitor in favor of Danielle—who’s engaged in more suspect behavior—and whoever they chose to recruit. Because obviously they would recruit someone, right? Surely they would look at the state of the game and realize the only way a traitor stays until the end is if there’s at least one traitor eliminated before the final. Carolyn could recruit someone, let Danielle and Britney face the music as those who have faced greater scrutiny…

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It’s been clear all season that the players are underestimating Carolyn, so it’s not shocking that Chrishell expresses her surprise that she’s a traitor when she’s murdered face-to-face. But what the beginning of this episode asks is whether we as the audience have been underestimating another player: Sam Asghari, who has more or less been hairy-chested wallpaper in the first ⅔ of the game.

It’s hard to gauge why he’s been such a non-entity. Was he buried in the edit as the producers focused on the more engaging communicators who have since been banished or murdered? Or was he legitimately—per his own words—so focused on listening that he didn’t say anything worthwhile? In retrospect, it’s not the worst strategy for staying in the game long enough to get to a point where there’s more breathing room to act on one’s suspicions. Because all of a sudden Sam is a man with a plan, strategizing on catching the traitors in lies after the murder and then leading the charge in…

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In its first “reality stars” season, The Traitors was challenged by Sandra Diaz-Twine, who looked at the state of play and realized she had no desire to hunt for traitors: she was content to remove other faithfuls who were unaligned with her path to the end of the game. It makes sense strategically, but it doesn’t make sense narratively, since the show relies on the murder mystery pretense that players are desperate to discover who is killing them one-by-one. Faithfuls removing faithfuls? It’s just unnatural!

As has been clear since, though, The Traitors doesn’t mind when its game gets challenged, and so I can imagine the producers were thrilled when it became clear that the second season was shifting from faithfuls removing faithfuls to traitors removing traitors. Y’all in the comments have a more encyclopedic experience with the various global takes on the franchise, but this certainly seems like a new high—low?—in terms of traitor-on-traitor violence, right? Rob’s…

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The thing about this game is that there’s really no attempt at narrative balance. The show is called The Traitors, and they carry disproportionate weight in the narrative. That means that there’s a disposal quality to the faithful, and the casting somewhat reflects that: this isn’t to say that the cast was full of dead weight, but there does kind of need to be some cannon fodder for the premise to work.

Some players are just not going to take up any oxygen: Britney says the above about Ivar, who is the most superfluous contestant, but there are others in the same boat. Bob H. was well-liked around the castle, it would appear, but I don’t think he was really playing the game in any meaningful way, so it’s hard to get worked up over his exit. It feels a bit arbitrary, beyond the idea he was someone who was trying to throw suspicion onto Rob but not the person most likely to make the move, but that’s fine: we tuned in …

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It was obvious how Danielle was going to respond to Rob’s choice to target their fellow traitor: she was explicit that Bob the Drag Queen was her closest ally in the game, and she was already resentful of Rob’s attempt to wrest control of power that she and Bob were wielding. But it wasn’t necessarily as clear how Carolyn would react, and not just in the way it’s always a little unclear how Carolyn will act in any given situation. She has long felt isolated within the turret, so I didn’t think she’d be excited, but part of me wondered whether she might see the removal of a traitor as a chance to reshape her game.

Rob doesn’t give her that chance, though: when they get into the turret, he suggests the traitors murder Robyn, and pretty much has no interest in any other opinions. By doing so, Rob not only solidified Danielle’s desire to enact her revenge, but he also pushed Carolyn deeper into her paranoia about her place in the game. The end result is a group of traitors wh…

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The chaos of The Traitors as a game raises some interesting questions. Let’s take the opening scenes of this week’s installment, where intrepid Dylan continues to aggressively pursue the traitors. When he sees that the door to the secret room by the bar is open, he immediately goes in and decides that something is afoot. He scours the room searching for something that has changed, unaware that the traitors’ kill list for the coming execution is sitting inside the tiny coffin where they put it. The cliffhanger last week made it seem like Gabby was going to catch them in the act, but in the end Dylan is the only one who seems willing to put his neck on the line to play the game. Which brings us to the question: what would have happened if Dylan had opened that coffin and found the list?

It’s possible, of course, that the list had already been removed by production to avoid this likelihood. But the “collaborate in plain sight” twist makes it possible that they could be caught, and while the most chaotic version of the game has never really manifested, the possibility is always there. And it makes it especially insane for Jeremy to feel like there was anything he could have done to stay in the game: his tearful goodbye talking about his desire to support his family would make more sense if he had been playing Survivor, but how could you reasonably expect to walk into this game as a faithful and have any type of control? The dynamic within the cast might have boiled down to gamers vs. housewives, but the actual competition doesn’t give the former side a distinct advantage at surviving day-to-day.

This is immediately evident in “I Will Bury You Under The Sand,” when the aftermath of Jeremy’s murder throws suspicion onto Nikki and Ciara when the players sniff out the possibility that a traitor could have been in the coffins. It’s a vindication of Rob’s refusal to support putting Carolyn in a coffin, and Wes seems to narrow in on Nikki immediately based on the “fake wrestling” argument. As ever, anyone who spends any time as a public figure is probably capable of “performing” enough for what this game requires, but the story sticks because in this game survival is just letting someone else get targeted that isn’t you. Dylan has an absolutely correct theory, but he immediately registers he doesn’t have enough support, and that there’s no way to stop the entirely wrong theory about Nikki from dominating the roundtable.

…unless an ultimate gamer steps into the spotlight to try to bend the game to his will.

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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.

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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.