Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
IT COULD ALL have been very different. An alternative mix of contestants, a less compelling host, and a lack of proper drama around the roundtable … any of these could have led to a more muted national response to The Traitors Ireland.
But thanks to the spot-on mix of drama, tension and a lack of stage-Irishness, The Traitors Ireland has been a roaring success and a much-needed ratings hit for the national broadcaster.
RTÉ’s decision-makers are undoubtedly now wondering how they can capitalise on this. A second series of the show has already been greenlit – but don’t rule out a celebrity edition also being rushed into production.
When production company Kite Entertainment saw the original Dutch format De Verraders in 2021, they knew they were onto a winner.
But it wasn’t until 2024 that Kite was able to start casting for an Irish show, long after the BBC had already bought the format and made it into a success with Claudia Winkleman at the helm.
Moving the format to Ireland meant leaning into Irish culture. But anyone who was worried that this might come off as gimmicky Paddywhackery quickly discovered that this would not be ‘Traitors Oireland’.
Sure, there was tweed, Celtic symbols, and a smattering of wolfhounds, but the show capitalised on the more sophisticated sense of Irishness that people are embracing these days. Host Siobhán McSweeney’s stunning wardrobe was a perfect fusion of modern and Celtic influences, with flounces of tulle, army boots and an array of impressive headgear.
And could there have been a more perfect host than McSweeney?
The Corkonian harnessed the spirit of her acerbic Sister Michael character from Derry Girls, took a few cues from Winkleman’s camp sensibility, and created a character who could be at turns terrifying or darkly humorous.
She took the mick out of the participants when needed, and gently poked fun as the dramas playing out. Around Siobhán, the contestants had to be on their best behaviour. Yet she never spilled that she knew more than the Faithfuls did about who exactly the Traitors were.
As a setting, Slane Castle was beautiful but not too intimidating, with a kitchen as tiny as you’d find in any modern build-to-rent apartment.
Speaking of housing, it was certainly sobering that so many of the contestants in their twenties and thirties said they wanted to take part in order to be able to put a deposit on a house. One wonders if government TDs were paying attention to this particular element.
The Traitors Ireland contestants weren’t just in it for a laugh. The relatively small prize pot (€50k) compared to other countries meant something huge to them (in the US, the last season’s winners shared $200,000; the UK’s prize tops out at £120,000).
Living in Ireland in 2025 be like.. #TraitorsIRL pic.twitter.com/aNDh67TMHI
— RTÉ One (@RTEOne) August 31, 2025
The Irish aren’t known for being wallflowers, but the 4,000 applications for participants showed there were quite a few brave souls willing to embarrass themselves on television for the chance to win €50k.
The mix of ages and backgrounds amongst the chosen contestants felt like it represented the glorious diversity of Ireland, though perhaps some people’s behaviour confirmed a few stereotypes abounding about, for instance, estate agents and gardaí. But hey – it’s all in service of the game.
While some of the tasks were relatively low budget compared to the UK and US Traitors, it just added to the very Irish sense of not getting too big for your station.
“We knew we were never going to be building giant props,” said Mairead Whelan, Director of Content at Kite Entertainment on the Ray D’Arcy show earlier this week. This meant that the drama was mostly kept to inside Slane Castle and at the roundtable, where the contestants did a stellar job in keeping the drama levels up.
It was the surreal moments that made Traitors Ireland pop – from Andrew accidentally calling his father Paudie ‘Daddy’ to the keening mourners during one of the final tasks.
The overconfidence and baffling assumptions of some contestants also kept things sparky. Who will forget Faye’s diehard belief in the angelic yet dastardly duo of Nick and Ben, or Nick’s treacherous hug of Christine just as she proclaimed him to be like a brother to her?
Who will forget how Wilkin’s ‘random’ approach to things kept him safe right up to near the end, or how poor Joanna had her cool and collected attitude obliterated just as she was about to be (wrongly) turfed out of the castle?
The Traitors Ireland is not a game for the weak, and all the participants more than proved their ability to put up with all levels of manipulation, though some came out worse from it than others. The Traitor-on-Traitor deception early on showed that contestants were taking their assignments very seriously.
But thanks to the aftershow The Traitors: Uncloaked, hosted with aplomb by comedian Kevin McGahern, the contestants got to show off their other sides after exiting Slane Castle.
The growing levels of tension also contributed to the show’s success. The final week’s roundtables reached a level of suspicion and bitchiness that bordered on the untenable.
As Nick and Ben sat back and let the female contestants have at it, it looked like they were enjoying a bit too much their stoking up of what Joanna termed a “mean girls” energy. And yet … as Traitors they were doing exactly what they were called on to do: play the Faithfuls like pawns.
If anyone thought that Irish Traitors would be too nice to really go for the jugular, they were proven severely wrong. The game itself was an intense one, requiring days lasting from 7am to midnight or beyond before the contestants were ferried back to their hotel rooms for a few hours sleep. The participants weren’t allowed to talk to each other when not being filmed.
Social media played a role in the series’ success too. A decade ago, Twitter would have been the place to discuss all things Traitors. Today, the site to harness younger viewers is TikTok. RTÉ partnered up with TikTok for the first time, and even ran workshops before the show launched to help the contestants learn how to post on the app. The hashtag #TraitorsIrl gathered people’s posts together, and was used across other platforms too.
By the halfway point, there were 21.15 million video views across RTÉ’s social platforms and 1.46 million engagements on Traitors content, with 13.9m views on TikTok alone. Just the sort of numbers that the Traitors team wanted.
By appearing on a national gameshow, all the contestants ran the risk of falling out of public favour.
Both Eamon and Katelyn spoke out about unfair and gendered criticism they received, but at the same time both gained a large amount of supporters online. What some viewers failed to realise was that, as Katelyn herself said, the Traitors are typically personas and not a representation of the real contestants.
But even though the rougher moments left people feeling a bit bruised, it seems the contestants were happy with the experience overall. Speaking after she was wrongly termed a Traitor and kicked out, Faye told reporters:
“It’s absolutely amazing how supportive everyone in Ireland is being. People are coming up to me in the streets saying hello and sending nice messages and it’s just so nice to know that basically the nation’s behind you.”
When asked by The Journal about why The Traitors Ireland ended up such a success, she said: “The first season coming to a country, it’s a huge risk. You don’t know if it’s going to be a hit or a miss. Within other countries, you can see that it’s a huge success but with the Irish culture, it’s either you love it or you hate it. It was definitely a risk, but a risk I’m so glad I took.”
Wilkin, meanwhile, said: “There’s a lot of good support from the Irish, you guys are really nice people. I walk by and people will say my name and talk to me and families are getting pictures taken with me and putting them on their school’s board.”
Now that we know who came out on top, (a rare bit of welcome good news in 2025) we can look back and marvel at the dedication and smarts it took for them to win. You can’t say that the contestants were anything but committed.
The Traitors Ireland was a reality show the likes of which we hadn’t seen before in Ireland. It was a far cry from our early attempts like Popstars and Fade St. There wasn’t much that felt rough and tumble about the show. Instead, it proved that Irish production companies and RTÉ – despite its ongoing financial issues – can team up to bring a sophisticated and entertaining gameshow to the telly, and create a national conversation around it.
The big question now is: could Ireland create a new successful gameshow format all on its own?
Hey, we did it with The Lyrics Board (no, we really did).
With additional reporting by Diarmuid Pepper. Aoife Barry is the co-host alongside Lauren Murphy of the arts and culture podcast Get Around To It.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say