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Must Readthat's a wrap
I asked my friends and coworkers what they thought of this season of The Traitors
The season had a couple of snags, but still made for an enjoyable watch – with an end none of us saw coming.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for the final of season two of The Traitors Ireland.
BEFORE THE FINAL episode of The Traitors kicked off on Tuesday night, I asked a group of friends who’ve been watching the show who they thought would win.
“I’d like to think the two faithfuls will win, but it isn’t looking like they will… I think the two traitors might actually pull it off,” said one.
“Yeah, I think it’s more of a question of will Pauric O fuck Carla over,” said another.
In the end, Pauric didn’t get the chance to prove his loyalty at the very last moment of the game, because Carla’s fate was cut short by chance.
For fans of Carla, it was a disappointing end to her journey after all her “working overtime” in conclave, as she put it – though Carla herself has taken it in good spirits and said she was amazed she got that far in the game in the first place.
It was a tricky situation from a production point of view. How else do you break a deadlock that persists through three rounds of voting? Kevin McGahern, host of The Traitors’ aftershow Uncloaked, quipped at RTÉ’s screening event for the final on Tuesday night that the only other option was to send it to penalties. I mean, it’s not the worst idea.
Overall, this season has divided viewers more so than last year’s.
Some people said they found it not quite as compelling as last year’s. Others were just as delighted by it, or came to it fresh and were totally hooked – like my mother, who didn’t tune in last year but picked it up this year and was locked in.
There are snags that aren’t unique at all to this season, or to RTÉ, but come up often in various iterations of The Traitors, like that the challenges aren’t exciting to watch or don’t feel connected to the rest of the game. Polling my coworkers this morning, that was one of the main complaints. “None of them hooked me in,” my colleague Nicky said.
My own very unpopular opinion is that the challenges aren’t skippable viewing – they’re often the breeding ground for that day’s conflict between players. The fallout of Diego stealing a shield during one of this year’s challenges, for instance, endured throughout the rest of the game. Anna dropping her bag on the €2,000 step near the end sent ripples through the roundtable. And the season-long rivalry between Kayleigh and Pauric was spawned during the challenge in the very first episode.
One question that did come up for me about the challenges, though, was in the second-last episode when the players were told that if they won the challenge, there would be no murder that night. How could there ever have been a murder? Sure, there were only four players left at that point. You could hardly have a proper final with three people, and two of them traitors at that.
The faithfuls
There was a fair bit of frustration for viewers during the season when it felt like faithfuls weren’t following through on massive clues, like Aoife writing Carla’s name on her banishment board or Pauric’s disastrous attempt at murdering Janet in plain sight. Do we have to look at those in a different light now, though, knowing that the faithfuls triumphed in the end? There’s definitely a lesson in it for future players, anyway: Don’t write something off just because it seems too obvious.
There’s also the fact that the format can encourage faithfuls not to banish highly suspected traitors, but instead to leave them in the game to the end and go after the players that people are more on the fence about. Banished faithful Pete explained the thought process behind that in interviews with media on Tuesday.
My colleague Rónán put in words how a lot of viewers probably feel: “There’s various problems with the format, but you put up with it because the round tables and banishments are basically worth it.”
Likewise, another coworker, Kate, who had a number of quibbles with aspects of the format, said: “I still love the show. I just love the strategy gameplay side, and it could be much better. These are issues with every season of the show in every country… but I do actually love the show and will be sat next year, and it’s great to see it made here.”
I have to say: Whatever about how the faithfuls’ gameplay went afterwards, that moment where Janet clocked Pauric murdering her was incredible television. The sudden stop. The gasp. “Did you murder me?” An unreal moment that should go down in Traitors history.
The endgame
How about the ending? From speaking with friends and colleagues and taking the temperature of the reaction online, the broad consensus seems to be that it was a satisfying outcome. It was definitely a surprise: it didn’t look like Diego and Anna had nearly as much trust in each other as it turned out they had.
Speaking to The Journal on Tuesday night, the winning pair revealed that they had been having secret conversations without Pauric and Carla in the final days of the game and built up their alliance.
Those conversations weren’t really shown on screen, which definitely made it a big twist for viewers – though it might have been nice to have got even a small hint that the faithfuls were in cahoots. Myself, my partner and a friend all independently had the thought while watching the endgame that we were nearly expecting it to cut to some kind of flashback scene showing Anna and Diego plotting together.
My colleague Mairead agreed: “I think they should have shown a hint of what Diego thought… I think it’s best when we’re brought along.”
To be fair, it did make for some plot twist though. As I mentioned before, my friends who were watching were all expecting a traitor win. Another friend, who didn’t catch the final live, said afterwards: “I just looked up who won. I haven’t caught up this week at all, but I’m SHOCKED.”
‘Plenty of OMG moments’
My colleague Nicky said this morning that he found the final episode dull overall, but that it was “saved only by the great ending”.
He also said he loved the clunkiness of Diego “blurting out” the reveal that Denis was his husband. That was an enjoyable moment — as was getting to watch Diego ring Denis to tell him the good news.
I’ve a friend down in Cork who’s a long-time Traitors fan, and a knowledgeable one – when I can’t remember something about the franchise, he usually does. When I asked him his thoughts on this season, he said he felt it didn’t get off to the best start but that it was “very good” from the third week onwards.
Likewise, another friend said: “It was a slow start but it definitely picked up and there were plenty of OMG! moments later in the season.”
There’s been lots of love on social media for some of the fan-favourite players, especially those who made it close to the end. There was mourning on X on Monday night after the traitors murdered Kayleigh, who brought a no-nonsense candidness that really resonated on screen, and Carla was a joy to watch as a traitor. She chatted to The Journal at the final screening about how it felt to get that warm reaction:
My friend from Cork thinks part of the reason why there might have been less enthusiasm about the show this year is the ‘oversaturation’ of the format on English-speaking TV.
A couple of colleagues made that same point. “I think I’m personally suffering from Traitors fatigue,” said Andrew.
In the interest of fairness, I’m conscious that there are probably two camps of viewers: those who are really bet into it, are fans of the format and are comparing lots of versions against each other; and those who are switching on RTÉ and settling in to watch a good show without putting their TV-critic-glasses on.
Overthinking can be a curse. Sometimes, it’s nice to just enjoy things. My partner said: “It’s still the first TV show in a long time that the majority of the office are watching and just a bit of fun. Maybe we shouldn’t take ourselves so seriously, as Irish people I mean, acting like it’s a direct reflection on our nationhood.”
My colleague Andrew picked up on the joy of that shared watching experience too. “It’s nice to have an Irish show that a decent chunk of people are all watching at the same time for once.”
And watch it we did, as a nation.
Speaking at the screening of the final, RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst revealed that the series had already attracted 3.2 million streams on RTÉ Player – a million more than the first season, and that’s before the last episode of season two had even aired.
The penultimate episode had an average television audience of 653,000, which was a 61% share of people watching television at the time.
He also confirmed that we’ll be getting a season three on RTÉ next year.
I’ve no doubt that despite some of the quibbles, we’ll all be back here again next September, waiting for 9.35pm to roll around, excited all over again to get stuck in to all the scheming and treachery.
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