The Traitors Season-Finale Recap: Fire Away
Our long national nightmare is over. After a week of stewing over a brutal cliffhanger, we finally find out how Britney voted. Over the course of this past week, I became more convinced that the cliffhanger was just to build suspense and we weren’t lucky enough for her to actually turn on Danielle. Thankfully, I couldn’t have been more wrong, and when she turned that little chalkboard around, she tearfully admitted to knocking Danielle out of the game. “Did it to me again,” Danielle says, referring to the similar betrayal that played out between them on Big Brother.
This is cinema. This is history repeating itself. It is bonds being broken. And all of the frustration the audience has had watching Danielle is suddenly worth it just for this moment alone. To be successful on The Traitors, you either have to be a good game player or make good television. For much of the season, Danielle has done neither. Her moves were often devoid of logic or sense, but luckily for her, The Traitors is a game of chance more than anything — so making poor moves didn’t hinder her. Poor moves would have been forgivable if she had been entertaining us while she made them, but whining is rarely entertaining. That being said, all of those hours of watching Danielle wreak havoc this season have paid off in the form of this dramatic blindside.
But while the audience is rejoicing in this twisty turn of events, Britney isn’t reveling in her own win because she didn’t intend for it to go this way. She voted for Danielle, thinking Dolores already sealed her fate, and she wouldn’t have done so if she had known she would be the deciding vote. As Danielle walks to the circle of truth, keeping her composure for the first time all season, a distraught Britney looks to Dolores and mouths, “What the fuck?” Dolores looks back as if to say, What are you looking at me for? Trying to gauge Dolores’s vote based just on her facial expression was Britney’s fatal mistake — we can barely gauge Dolores’s votes from her words, let alone her expressions. Trying to figure out how Dolores is going to vote is like trying to catch smoke with your hands.
Danielle reveals her identity to the group with a hair flip, and in her confessional tells us that it was a mistake to recruit Britney. Somewhere Carolyn is kicking her feet in glee right now.
While there won’t be a murder tonight, there’s still more business to get to. We still haven’t found out who our Seer is yet! Well, as if things couldn’t get any better for Britney — the title goes to her, meaning she doesn’t have to worry about being exposed as a Traitor. But nobody can truly ever rest easy in this game, and despite knocking out Danielle, Dylan is floating the possibility that she too could be a Traitor — especially given how betrayed Danielle seemed to be. He also warns everybody that if Britney is a Traitor, she could lie about the identity of whomever she chooses for her Seer powwow.
She ultimately chooses to convene with Gabby, and who wouldn’t? A one-on-one dinner with Gabby? A dream! I’d be too busy giggling and having an absolute blast to even remember to ask if she’s a Traitor or Faithful. But of course, when the subject does come up, Gabby shares her Faithful status. But will Britney be honest when telling the rest of the group about this meeting?
The answer is yes! At breakfast, Britney tells everybody that Gabby is, in fact, a Faithful — which is a smart move all around. First, it wins Gabby over, who feels like she was bestowed a beautiful ticket straight to winning the game. Secondly, it nullifies Dylan’s theory about her wrongfully accusing someone of being a Traitor. But Dylan’s mind is still racing, and he considers everything, including the possibility that Britney and Gabby could both be Traitors and this whole thing was a little performance all around.
That’s just one possibility of many — but just about everybody seems to agree that there’s still a Traitor left in the game. Dylan is trying to get Dolores and Ivar to put their beef to bed and focus on getting Britney out, who in turn has her eyes set on Dylan.
But first, it’s mission time, which means Lala is dressed like a little queen with a gorgeous velvet robe. Less importantly, it also means our players have to do some sort of heist challenge to collect the remaining prize money. There’s math, there’s running, there’s cars — but just as I was ready to deem this the most boring mission yet, a helicopter swoops into view. Our players have to dangle from the helicopter and drop their winnings into a blazing ring of fire to double their earnings. Now we’re talking! Getting to see a Real Housewife airborne is the main reason why I watch this show. “If I was supposed to be flying, I’d have wings,” Dolores says, but nonetheless, they all take to the skies for a challenge that feels specifically designed to expose their hair extension tracks.
While that proved to be a fun bonding activity for our remaining players, as soon as they’re back down on earth, the war wages on. Britney and Dylan waste no time going after each other, trying to rally everybody to their respective cause ahead of the roundtable. Everybody’s so on edge that Dolores even threatens to kill Dylan if he ends up being a Traitor, and rightfully so!
Speaking of Dolores, this feels like a good time to highlight some of her greatest hits from this episode. Firstly, she said that Danielle deserves an Oscar for her performance as a Traitor, citing, “The way [she] carried on and convulsed on the floor after they voted Carolyn out.” Then she gave us another great moment when asked if she was emotional over it being their last breakfast: “I’m not emotional, that’s for pussies.” Queen. And lastly, I simply have to bring up the fact that she’s dressed like Liza Minnelli for the majority of this episode in a sparkly red pantsuit.
And speaking of fashion, when it finally comes time for the roundtable, everybody is in their best looks — which makes me wonder about all of the outfits that our eliminated contestants didn’t get to wear. I mourn for them. But there’s business to take care of. At this point, we’ve really heard Dylan and Britney’s arguments against each other, but we haven’t yet seen how they’ll present them. The cases they each make and the evidence they present are very similar, but while Dylan is his normal sweetie-pie self, Britney comes for blood and eviscerates him. He’s taken so aback by it that he hardly knows what to do with himself.
It’s a phenomenal showing from Britney, and her strongest argument comes courtesy of Dylan himself when he suggests that she was recruited as a Traitor at some point. She retorts by saying that if anybody was recruited, the logical choice would have been to recruit him, not her. And she’s right! But as we know, Danielle wasn’t making logical choices. When all is said and done, even Dylan knows that he was chewed up, saying it feels like he brought a knife to a gunfight. But will Britney’s strong showing at the roundtable be enough to keep her in the game?
Nope. Britney’s moment of weakness was her response to Danielle’s banishment, and it came back to bite her. Even her expertly executed attacks on Dylan weren’t enough to get that out of people’s minds, and they all voted to banish her (and thus the final Traitor) from the game. But, because this is the final roundtable, she leaves without revealing her true identity — and she hopes she set a fire on her way out.
When it comes time for the Fire of Truth, there’s a massive revelation that left my jaw on the floor: ALAN’S BEJEWELED SNUGGIE IS BACK! This is a huge victory all around, and I’m so glad to see it becoming a staple of this show. When it comes time for our final four to decide whether to end the game or banish again, they all (boringly) decide to go to the end together. And since they’re all Faithfuls, all four of them snag the prize. We did get a mini-spoiler earlier in the episode when Gabby said if she’s victorious, she might use the winnings to get married to her girlfriend, Robby Hoffman. Since the pair literally just revealed that they had, in fact, recently gotten married, that comment was kind of foreshadowing of good things to come. With all four of them coming out on top, it marks the most Faithfuls who have won — but with no backstabbing or banishing at the Fire Truth, it does end the season on an anticlimactic, albeit nice, note. At least the reunion will give us the drama we’re left craving.
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Gabby Windey Said She Would Use Traitors Money for Wedding to Robby Hoffman if She Won Season 3 — Find Out Who Did
The ex Bachelorette entered the March 6 finale with Traitors Britney Haynes and Danielle Reyes and Faithfuls Dolores Catania, Dylan Efron and Ivar Mountbatten
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Warning: This story contains spoilers from the season 3 finale of The Traitors.
The Traitor-on-Traitor warfare has ended.
The Mach 6 finale of The Traitors opened up with Britney Haynes casting her vote for fellow Traitor Danielle Reyes, and therefore sendng her home.
“Did it to me again,” Danielle, 53, said to Britney, 37, referring to their Big Brother past.
Britney started to cry. “I just feel awful,” she said to Danielle. “One of the best things for me being here has been us reconnecting.”
On her way out, Danielle outed herself as a Traitor to Britney, Dolores Catania, Dylan Efron, Ivar Mountbatten and Gabby Windey.
“I feel stupid because I didn’t think Britney would be the nail in my coffin and I’m embarrassed that I made that decision to believe in her and I shouldn’t have,” Danielle said in a confessional. “I should have taken her out. I should’ve killed her.”
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Host Alan Cumming reminded the remaining players that, going forward, no one would reveal whether they’re a Faithful or a Traitor at the roundtable. He also shared that there wouldn’t be a murder that night, and that Britney earned The Seer power that would allow her to pick one player and find out if they were a Faithful or a Traitor. Of course, as a Traitor, Britney already knew where everyone stood, but she chose Gabby, 34, to share the intimate dinner that came with being selected by The Seer.
“I feel like I’m back on The Bachelor,” Gabby said to Britney at dinner. “Should we make out?”
Britney affirmed that Gabby was a Faithful and told the rest of her castmates as much at breakfast the next day.
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But Dylan, 33, remained suspicious of Britney because of her behavior at the last roundtable. “If I’ve learned anything from my big brother, it’s how a good actor operates,” he told the cameras of Zac Efron. “Britney is acting, and in this game, the only reason you need to act is if you’re a Traitor.”
The final mission required the contestants to answer riddles to find the location of bags of gold in the woods. When they all returned to the castle, Alan, 60, revealed a final twist: the contestants could hang from a helicopter and drop the bags into a ring of fire on the grass in order to double their winnings. The players would go up in pairs, with one dangling solo due to the odd number.
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“I’m not doing that,” Gabby declared.
But she did, going up with Dylan and making one of their shots. Britney and Dolores, 54, didn’t make any of theirs, but Ivar, 61, got one in by himself.
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The final five added $37,500 to the prize pot for a total of $204,300.
Ahead of the last roundtable, Britney tried to convince the others that Dylan was a Traitor and wouldn’t split the money with them. She came for Dylan at the roundtable, too, but ultimately, she received the most votes and was banished.
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Before heading to the fire pit, Alan asked the finalists what winning would mean to them.
“I think of my girlfriend and I think she would be so proud,” Gabby told Alan. “It would mean so much. Like, maybe we could get married.”
Gabby did go on to secretly marry her girlfriend Robby Hoffman in January in a Las Vegas wedding that cost them $799.
At the fire pit, Dolores, Dylan, Ivar and Gabby all voted unanimously to end the game, which brought it to a close. They then revealed to each other that they were all Faithfuls, so they’d all split the money.
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“We did it, despite all the odds!” Gabby told the cameras. “It’s the most Faithfuls to ever win, and it honestly, it feels so good.”
Before the reality stars left Scotland, Alan informed the winners that Britney was a Traitor.
“The Faithful have triumphed!” the Tony winner declared.
Dylan called it “an underdog story.”
“It feels amazing,” Dolores said in a confessional. “This is such a moment in my life. I wouldn’t have wanted to end with anybody else. We’re not leaving with money, we’re leaving with friendships.”
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‘The Traitors’ was a big loss for the bad guys: How the 5 Traitors’ strategies went awry
Spoiler alert: This post contains details from the finale of “The Traitors” Season 3 (now streaming on Peacock).
It was a cannibalistic season for the murderous Traitors, who went at each other more than they targeted Faithfuls to kill off on the competition show.
Their strategy was so individualistic, so uncompromising, that it cost the group – comprising Bob the Drag Queen, “Boston” Rob Mariano, Carolyn Wiger, Danielle Reyes and Britney Haynes – the prize pot of up to $250,000. They left the door wide open for Faithfuls Gabby Windey, Dylan Efron, Dolores Catania and Lord Ivar Mountbatten to take the bragging rights as the Season 3 winners.
Here are Season 3’s Traitors and how they were plucked off, one by one.
First to go from the murderous bunch was “RuPaul’s Drag Race” Season 8 winner Bob (who is non-binary and uses he/him and she/her pronouns), affectionately known to some as Bob TDQ/Tidicue. He landed on Boston Rob’s bad side with one simple comment in Episode 4 and ultimately drowned under Rob’s underhanded vote collecting tactics ahead of the roundtable.
The beginning of the end: “I did think that one of the new guys needs a head up there because we all think one of them might be a Traitor.” Rob felt this offhanded comment after the statue-building game put “the sus” on him, and he started launching an offensive against “the head of the dragon.” Rob embarked on a campaign to get Bob off the show before the drag queen could do the same to him, and this set the tone for a season full of traitor-on-traitor crimes.
How Bob the Drag Queen got banished: Bob did not do himself any favors with his overly defensive strategy at the Episode 4 roundtable. Dolores, Danielle, Chrishell, Britney, Ciara, Dylan, Carolyn, Sam, Ivar, Rob and Bob Harper voted for him after Rob managed to turn them against the drag queen.
But before his grand exit – and as he floundered in the face of Rob’s direct attacks – Bob managed to get in one low blow to fellow millennials: the cutting remark that Dylan Efron’s older brother, Zac Efron might be an actor, but “not a good one.”
His gaming prowess, banishment of a fellow Traitor and ability to wiggle out of the spotlight in multiple roundtable conversations didn’t keep Boston Rob safe for long. The “Survivor” legend was voted out of the castle in Episode 7 after he saw to the murder of his biggest threat, Derrick, which placed “the sus” on him (as Rob would say).
The beginning of the end: Going so hard for Bob the Queen earlier in the season started getting the cogs turning for some players, who wondered whether it was a case of a Traitor getting out another Traitor. Then with Derrick’s murder, Dolores accurately noted that fingers could start pointing at Rob, who replied with shockingly little conviction: “Yeah, I’m being framed.”
How Boston Rob got banished: A broken clock is right at least twice a day. Tom Sandoval believed Rob was a Traitor and could not be convinced otherwise. Though Rob tried to deflect suspicion onto Britney, the roundtable discussion did not go his way. Sam pointed out that several times, those who dared to target Rob found themselves sleeping with the fishes. Fellow Traitors Danielle and Carolyn gauged how the winds were blowing and jumped aboard the “Rob is a Traitor” train just in time. Tom, Britney, Carolyn, Ivar, Sam, Danielle and Gabby cast their votes in Rob’s direction.
With her offbeat antics and sincerity, Carolyn flew under the radar throughout Season 3. Then she burned out in spectacular fashion, becoming the third Traitor to fail their mission of stealing away the prize money from the Faithfuls.
The beginning of the end: Carolyn and Danielle had been at odds since Danielle started floating Carolyn’s name earlier in the season. Things between the two came to a head in Episode 9, when the Traitors were gifted the option of replenishing their membership with a new player. Danielle wanted “Big Brother” bestie Britney to join the crew, and Carolyn accurately clocked this as a possible ploy to knock her out of the running for the prize money.
The nail in the coffin, likely, was the human chess game in which she just couldn’t keep her cool. Carolyn realized too late that, as a Traitor, her aim was not to get the superlatives correct but, rather, to be as inobtrusive as possible. She put herself on the chopping block by naming herself as a player no one listens to and, well, the rest is history.
How Carolyn got banished: In a game of Danielle versus Carolyn, the Faithfuls had a 100% chance of ridding themselves of a Traitor in their midst. (Unfortunately, Tom and Dolores did not get the memo, as they confoundingly wrote each other’s names on their blackboards.) Danielle convinced Faithfuls Ivar, Britney and Dylan to get the “Survivor” alum out of the castle. And as Carolyn admits, “I wasn’t ready to fully defend myself.” Carolyn’s dear friend Dylan was the deciding vote.
Against all odds – including eyebrow-raising antics such as her overly dramatic banishment reactions – Danielle made it to the final episode. She was a hairsbreadth away from a win when the Faithfuls finally got their act together and voted en masse to take out the “Big Brother” alumna.
The beginning of the end: It was by sheer miracle that Danielle didn’t make it on to everyone’s hit list in Episode 5, when she somehow thought it was a good idea to keep nominating players other than herself for a shield during the riddle game. Then there was the falling-to-the-ground-hyperventilating when Carolyn was banished and also Gabby’s astute observation that Carolyn’s banishment might’ve been yet another Traitor-versus-Traitor moment.
How Danielle got banished: The first of two banishments in the finale had a split vote between Ivar and Danielle. Dylan could not ignore the mountain of evidence against his friend Danielle, and he jotted down her name. Gabby also cast her vote for Danielle, and Britney – claiming she thought her “vote would not save” Danielle – did the same.
Britney had one of the show’s shorter stints as a Traitor. Despite the season beginning with an iciness between the two over Britney voting Danielle off “Big Brother Reindeer Games,” they turned into strong allies, with Danielle keeping her new friend safe from murder. But the strategy backfired as Britney contributed to Danielle’s banishment in what was either a calculated move or a fatal mistake.
The beginning of the end: Boston Rob planted the seed that Britney might be a Traitor back when she was saving his own hide in Episode 7, and he didn’t even know the prophesy would turn out to be true. Between this niggling thought in the back of some Faithfuls’ minds, as well as the fact that Danielle was so aghast at her best friend’s betrayal earlier in the final episode, the remaining contestants could not in good conscience go to the fire pit with Britney still alive and breathing.
How Britney got banished: As the finale came to a close, Britney’s offensive against Dylan did not go according to plan. Her argument that Danielle being “visibly distraught” by Dylan’s vote for her banishment meant he was stabbing a fellow Traitor in the back did not win anyone over. For once, the roundtable had a unanimous vote, and Britney was cast out – and was unable to reveal her status as she left the Faithfuls to guess whether there was another fox in the henhouse.
