*WARNING: This article contains spoilers for The Traitors on RTÉ.*

Six episodes in, six to go, and the game is well and truly underway.

“WE KNOW ONE thing for 100% – there are fucking traitors here.” True enough, Paudie, true enough.

We’re officially halfway through the first season of the Irish version of The Traitors: six episodes down, six to go. The game is well and truly underway, and this week’s episodes brought the drama to a new level.

It’s transpired that banishing traitors is like waiting for a bus; you sit around for ages hoping for one to turn up and then you catch two. Only, some of the faithfuls in tonight’s episode weren’t too happy that their fellow passengers hopped on the second bus – they wanted to keep it in the lay-by in the hopes they could flag down a third in the meantime.

The latest three-episode run started with another blow to the faithfuls when they mistakenly banished Dr Linda, bringing the running roundtable score to 3-0 in favour of the traitors. That all changed yesterday after the explosive scenes between Eamon and Paudie.

Eamon thought he had it all in hand: trick Paudie into thinking he was on his side, ambush him at the roundtable, and serve him up like a sacrificial lamb to the faithfuls. He didn’t foresee Paudie singing from an entirely different hymn sheet, one where the lyrics were Paudie repeating to the faithfuls nearly everything Eamon said to him.

He stopped short of breaking the Traitors’ Oath and explicitly revealing that Eamon was a traitor, but by that point, he didn’t need to: it was curtains for garda Eamon, and he became the first traitor banished from the game. Slán Eamon.

Paudie escaped banishment, coming out on top in his row with Eamon.

That left remaining traitors Katelyn and Paudie with a decision in the conclave: continue as a twosome and commit a murder, or try to recruit one of the faithfuls to join their ranks. They suffered a second blow in one night when faithful Nick rejected their offer – watching them try to cover up their disappointment the next morning at breakfast and commend Nick for his “conviction” was a sight to behold.

Tonight’s episode hinged on what you could argue is a glitch in the game.

It kicked off in the cars in a conversation between Nick, Ben and Andrew where they talked about how they were certain that Katelyn was a traitor and conceived a plot whereby instead of gunning for her at the roundtable, they’d wait to get her another day and target someone whose identity they were less sure about instead (unsuspecting Andrew would later learn the hard way that it was him who Nick and Ben wanted to turn the table against).

But much like how Eamon scheming to double-cross Paudie went awry, things didn’t go according to plan for Nick and Ben either. In a close vote, the table swung for Katelyn and the faithfuls banished a second traitor in a row. Delight ensued for most of the faithfuls but it was quickly dampened by Nick and Ben lambasting their teammates for not following their lead – a lecture that did not go down well, to say the least.

Nick and Ben may have been playing the game of hunting traitors tonight, but they weren’t playing the long game of The Traitors: the game of alliances.

When it comes down to it in the final, it isn’t enough to be a faithful; past seasons from other countries show you generally need to be a faithful who is well-liked, a faithful who has friends and allies that want you to be the person with whom they make it to the endgame. Maybe these two can still turn it around, or maybe they’ll make it through by relying on each other, but alienating more than half of their fellow players is a very risky strategy.

If I was a faithful in there, knowing that Nick had admitted to having been approached by the traitors for recruitment, I might be wondering now: Why did he gun for Andrew so suddenly and so adamantly? Why was he so irritated that his plan didn’t work? Did he lie about turning down the offer of recruitment? Is he a newly born traitor eager to forge a scapegoat?

He’s not, of course. But the faithfuls can’t know that for sure.

One way or the other, the Katelyn conundrum was a reminder that The Traitors is not a flawless format. The rulemakers – the format originated in the Netherlands and has been exported abroad, with the fundamentals baked into the adaptation contracts – could do with introducing some kind of incentive for catching a traitor, or indeed, a punishment for failing to – three nights in a row of failing to banish a traitor means the traitors get to commit a double murder, perhaps? Something along those lines.

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Despite its flaws, it’s still extremely compelling television with plenty of standout moments, like when Oyin clocked the three traitors’ game in last night’s episode with incredible accuracy.

She went on to win today’s shield with an impressive combination of skills and intuition in the challenge. She’ll be able to sleep soundly for a night with the protection of the shield.

Oyin was the MVP in the casino-themed challenge. RTÉ RTÉ

There’ll be less sleep, though, for Andrew, whose father has left him with no choice but to become a traitor. Andrew doesn’t seem to particularly want to be a traitor, and since he’s already dodging allegations of being one, it doesn’t seem like the most strategic gameplay on Paudie’s part, but who’s to deny them some father-son bonding time?

The rule book

With all these recruitments, it might be a good time to go over some of the rules of the game format, particularly how recruitments work and how the endgame plays out.

When can traitors recruit?

• If the number of traitors is down to two or fewer due to banishment, the remaining traitor(s) get the chance to convert a faithful to their ranks.
• If there are still at least two or more existing traitors, then the traitors have the choice of murdering but not recruiting, or recruiting but not murdering.
• If they choose to recruit, the faithful they try to seduce has the choice
• However, it works a little differently if the banishment results in only one traitor being left in the game.
• In that scenario, a traitor must recruit a faithful, and that faithful must either accept and become a traitor or exit the game; they no longer have an option of remaining a faithful.
• Since that faithful will either become a traitor or leave the castle, the recruitment offer is made in a face-to-face meeting under the cover of darkness where the identity of the traitor is revealed.

How does somebody actually win?

• At the end of the game, the remaining players – usually a group of four or five – will face their final test. The faithfuls will try to rid any traitors from their ranks, while the traitors will fight to keep their charade intact to the last moment.
• Players will have a choice to vote to end the game or to carry out another banishment. If even one player wants to banish, then everyone must participate in a banishment vote to knock out another player.
• This process continues until players vote to end the game or until only two contestants remain.
• If only faithfuls are left, then the prize pot will be split evenly between them.
• But if one of the players is a traitor, then they’ll steal all the money for themselves.
• It gets even more complicated if there are multiple traitors still in the mix.
• In the event that the final three players are traitors, they have to play what’s known as the ‘traitor’s dilemma’, where they must each vote whether they want to share the money between them or steal it for themselves.
• If all three of them want to share, then off they go into the sunset with the pot split between them – but we know this is a traitorous game. If one of those traitors votes to steal while the others want to share, that traitor gets the whole pot.
• Similarly, if two traitors want to steal and one wants to share, the traitor who wants to share gets nothing while the other two share it between them.
• And if all three vote to steal – well, then none of those greedy traitors get anything and the prize pot is withdrawn.

That’d be a handy one for RTÉ.