Have You Watched “The Traitors”? (My Thoughts)

We’re getting into The Last of Us, but a few days ago we didn’t have time for a 90-minute episode, so instead we checked out a show that’s been recommended to fans of Survivor. It’s called The Traitors.

The full first season of The Traitors is on Peacock now, and it includes a mix of reality-show contestants–including two Survivor alums–and some other people from other professions.

The show is essentially the game Werewolf set in a beautiful Scottish castle run by Alan Cumming (who is superb as the host).

At the beginning of the show, 3 traitors were selected, leaving around 17 “faithful” players. Each night, all players publicly vote to banish one player, who reveals if they were actually a traitor or not. Afterwards, the traitors get together each night to “murder” a member of the faithful. At the end of the show, all remaining players will split a pot of up to $250,000.

That’s all great. So far, though, the show has fallen a bit short on giving players any semblance of information to go on to determine who is a traitor or not. All they really know is (a) who voted for whom and (b) who was eliminated. It’s just too little information, and as a result, people have quickly fallen into jumping on any voting bandwagon as long as they remain safe.

The missing ingredient, in my opinion, is how the daily mission work. Earlier I mentioned that the winning pot is “up to” $250,000. That’s because each day, all players participate in a timed mission (which are fairly well designed), and the results of the mission add money to the winning pot. So the pot actually started at $0, and after a few days it’s up to $75,000. I like that.

However, the challenges don’t actually provide any information about traitors or faithful, because everyone remaining in the game is incentivized to do well in the challenges. This is where I wish the show had gone in a slightly different direction:

Instead of having a general pot for any remaining players (who could be faithful or traitors), I would have implemented two pots: One for the traitors that starts at $250,000, and one for the faithful that starts at $0. When missions go well, the money shift from the traitor pot to the faithful pot. When missions don’t go well, less (or no) money shifts.

This gives the traitors a reason to sabotage the missions and it gives everyone a big talking point: If someone isn’t doing well in a mission, is it because they’re not good at the mission or because they’re a traitor trying to sabotage it? I think this would significantly increase suspicion and just slightly increase the information players have to steer their votes.

I’m curious if the show does anything like this in the later episodes or in the second season, but I’m still enjoying it either way. Have you watched it?