If you’re at all interested in reality TV culture or strategy games, then you’re probably watching Season 3 of The Traitors (and living for the commentary in your group chat). If you aren’t—and I say this earnestly—please get yourself right and catch up before this Thursday’s finale.
Set in a Scottish castle, The Traitors is based on the game “Mafia,” featuring reality TV stars, B- and C-list celebrities, and strategy game champs. Host Alan Cumming secretly splits the cast into two groups: Traitors, who murder their costars at night under the shadow of darkness, and Faithfuls, who try to identify and banish the Traitors. Players compete in daily challenges for a prize pot of up to $250,000. If the Traitors remain undetected at the end, they keep the money; if the Faithfuls banish them all, the good guys win.
The show has become nearly my entire personality since I started watching. For one, it’s objectively great TV. It’s hard to beat the appeal of Alan Cumming as devious Master of Ceremonies, fan favorite Gabby Windey’s confessionals, the red herring theories that grip the blissfully clueless Faithfuls, or the sheer insanity of watching disgraced Vanderpump Rules villain Tom Sandoval regard himself as a primary theorizer and contender. Watching Sandoval warm up with vocal runs to sing backwards lullaby gibberish from a creepy doll into a payphone to win a few hundred bucks tops my list of best television moments of 2025: a scene well worth its weight in advertising dollars.
For two, the show is perfect high camp. Alan and rescue dog Lala Cumming are absolutely serving (nay, eating!) looks by the plateful. I’m talking about cloaks! Tartans! Blazers adorned with green gauze and actual moss! One single, tiny nub of a ponytail at the crown of the head! And don’t even get me started about the hats.
For three, there’s a new traitor in the turret, and she just so happens to be from Tulsa:
Alan Cumming called her a vision in tartan. Britney Haynes calls herself “just a sweet, innocent little mom from Oklahoma,” who is also “salivating” and “blood-thirsty” for some (make-believe) murder. By day, she’s a real estate agent for Own Tulsa and mom of three, but in the castle, she’s a former Amazing Race and Big Brother fan favorite getting a new turn at reality TV fame. Britney showed up on day one in a Cher Horowitz-esque plaid ensemble, and I have to wonder if she’s ever shown a house wearing that fishnet headpiece (I really hope so). But Britney isn’t just notable for her fashion and hysterical confessional quips. She’s also my pick to win it all.
The season started out with a number of rivalry plotlines, the most central of which was between former Big Brother contenders-turned-best-frenemies Haynes and Danielle Reyes. The two had some bad beef over something that went down in the Peppermint Forest while they were both on Big Brother: Reindeer Games. (File that under sentences I never thought I’d write in my life.) But when Reyes and Haynes found themselves on this season of Traitors, they decided to bury the hatchet and form an alliance. Even with Danielle’s status as a Traitor unbeknownst to Britney, the deal worked out, and Danielle has made it her beeswax to keep Britney in the game thus far.