Claudia Winkleman is the queen of suspense, and she’s keeping us on our toes with how exactly the finale of The Traitors will work this year.
Season three of the runaway hit show began on New Year’s Day and will end on Friday (already!). And this year, the finale is set to be even more dramatic, thanks to an unexpected twist that really ups the ante for the contestants.
In the first episode, players were told that in the finale, they would not learn whether each player who is eliminated is a Traitor or a Faithful until after the game is over.
Now, Claudia has praised the move as a really clever twist to what is already such an exciting game. “It’s so smart of… the whole gang because it underlines the ‘you think you know how to play,'” the presenter told journalists at a Q&A, as reported by Hello!.
“If any of you were gonna think, ‘Come on let’s just go in the castle, let’s play,’ you might have a way of working it out, right? Whether you want to be a Traitor or a Faithful. And I’m going to take this path, I’m going to throw this person under the bus.”
But for Claudia: “This takes that away, all of that, and it goes back to the absolute main body of the show, which is trust and gut instinct. You’re going to like the end, I hope. That’s all I can say it. It throws it all on its head.”
Further explaining how exactly this will all work, she said: “So at the end, I will thank somebody for taking part and they will just walk out so those remaining can’t do anything, and I shouldn’t speak everything in case I [ruin it].”
Comedian Ed Gamble, who hosts The Traitors: Uncloaked, is also a big fan of the new twist.
“I think it balances it a bit more,” Ed told heat.
“Without this new twist, I think it’s slightly weighted towards the Faithful just in terms of numbers. Then if they reveal when they go out, they can be pretty sure when they’ve got rid of all of the Traitors.”
He continued: “So we’ll see. I think it balances the game a little bit more. It certainly doesn’t make it harder for the Traitors — it makes it slightly easier — but it’s still all for the Faithful to win.”