My strategy for remaining on The Traitors

i've texted all my friends and now it's time to text you

Note: Gavin and I have only just started watching this season so please keep the comments free of spoilers if you can

If I were on The Traitors I would die almost instantly as a Claudia-ordained Traitor but I would make it remarkably far as a Faithful-turned-Traitor. I would be so dead wrong about some poor lad from the beginning and I would write his stupid name down every single evening.

Night 1: “Look. I’ve said it to you in person, and it’s nothing personal, I just have nothing else to go on, and I need to trust my gut. Michael.”

Michael <3 x

Night 2: “Listen – I wasn’t convinced last night. I still just feel… I’m sorry. Michael, I’ve written your name down again.”

Michael x

Night 3: “On the challenge today you said to me and Lisa that, if you won the prize money, you’d use it to buy a camper van and tour the vineyards of France. And I just thought. That was a bit sus. You know? Like, why a camper van? Why do you need to be on the road? What are you running from? Anyway. I’ve written Michael.”

Michael

Night 4: “No surprises from me tonight. Michael.”

Michael >:-(

Night 5: “I have a strategy, and I’m sticking to it.”

(An exhausted sigh from the whole room)

Michael!

Michael is, of course, a Faithful, and the reason I am kept around so long by the Traitors is because I am so relentless in my witch hunt that there is really no reason to get rid of me. I’m surprised that more contestants don’t employ this strategy. Pick someone who is obviously a Faithful! Keep the Traitors off your back!

We’ve seen this kind of thing before. I remember some blonde girl on season one who was an absolute Javert for her Michael. Her downfall, from what I can recall, is that she correctly deduced that her Michael was a Traitor, and so she was eventually murdered.

By night six, a Traitor has been banished and I have been rewarded for my dogged pursuit of Michael by being summoned to the Traitors to join them. During my first Traitors meeting, I am very clear in my aims.

Me: “I think we should murder Michael.”

Traitor: “Right. But don’t you understand, if we murder Michael now, it will be quite clear that you’re the new Traitor, because you’ve been so clear about your feelings about Michael from the beginning.”

Me: “Fair enough. Perhaps we could murder a friend of Michael’s. Weaken his defences. Who is close with Michael?”

Traitor 2 (Linda): “Michael is my son.”

Me: “Wow.”

I am silent for the rest of the Traitors meeting.

At the next banishment I am still banging my drum about Michael (for consistency) and when people get fed up with me I reveal that Linda is Michael’s mother. She told me this! In strictest confidence! But I am sharing it now, because I don’t think real Faithfuls keep secrets of that magnitude. This only succeeds in getting Linda banished. This improves my standing in the group (I correctly outed Linda) but diminishes my quest against Michael (because they wouldn’t make mother and son both Traitors, would they?)

Several times Michael comes to me in an attempt to ‘clear the air’, but I’m not having it. Eventually Claudia is forced to take me aside.

Claudia: “Can I ask. Do you know Michael, or something? Is there a reason you have a… specific problem with him?”

Me: “I don’t have a problem with Michael.”

Next banishment meeting: Michael.

Eventually it is just me and Michael and some other poor fuck. Michael makes a tearful speech about how he is a Faithful, 100%, 110% even, and how he has felt attacked and intimidated by me from the beginning, and he doesn’t like how I play the game, and he’s sure I’m a lovely person in my real life, but as far as he’s concerned I seem to be a complete and total bitch.

He succeeds in turning the other poor fuck against me. I stand at the top of the room and I tell them both that I love them, and I consider them both my best friends, and incredible people besides. But that I am a Traitor. Michael and the other one rejoice and split the money. My footsteps echo through the now-empty castle.

“I did what I came here to do,” I tell Claudia, who fears me.

“Yes, and what was that, exactly?”

Our Traitors Whatsapp group, in the months and years after our season takes place, is a busy, joyful, vibrant place, where I am always sure to wish Michael a happy birthday.