Treasons to be cheerful as Traitors keeps us guessing to the end

Warning: spoilers ahead...

The chalk dust has settled and the results are in for the series four finale of The Traitors. Traitors Stephen and Rachel – the first female Traitor to make it to the final – triumphed against James, Jack, Jade and Faraaz, winning £95,750 out of a potential £120,000.

The green velvet cloaks of duplicity must now be folded away. But not before noting that this series felt different from the original outing of 2022.

Part of it was timing. The phenomenal success of The Celebrity Traitors – in November, 15 million viewers watched the final, won by Traitor Alan Carr – hung over the new series like a formatting sword of Damocles.

How would the regular show tackle the post-Celebrity Traitors comedown? Viewing figures for The Traitors held their own: overnight ratings recorded 8.44 million viewers for the penultimate episode. But viewer loyalty alone couldn’t explain it. Intriguing developments – twists, tweaks, evolutions, strategies – were afoot.

Twists that never stopped giving
Doctorates may one day be written on how The Traitors became the hardest-working show on British television. This has never been truer than in series four, from the start (the Secret Traitor) to the end (the double-vote dagger), innovations and twists were central to the game. Not all were successful – that's enough of secret relationships! – but generally the chaos fulfilled its brief of frazzling the contestants to the point they couldn’t even enjoy their breakfast croissants.

Casting: the one true god of The Traitors
This series there seemed room for improvement. For too many episodes, the young men seemed to merge into one affable Starbucks barista. As a counterpoint, clever Faithful play is staying under the radar – is this now extending to viewer-recognition?

Player-evolution and agency
Series four players were a different breed, evolving alongside the show and pursuing their own complex, unorthodox strategies. Expect more of this in series to come. These are not just fans, but flint-eyed Traitors gamers, obsessives, experts, with everything to prove to their Bluesky followers.

Going rogue
Traitor-on-traitor attacks only happened at the roundtable. The peacetime offensive of Fiona, the erstwhile Secret Traitor, in the castle, surrounded by Faithfuls, presented a startling new development.

Traitor-envy
This time round presenter Claudia Winkleman had to field a deluge of wannabe Traitors. It is completely understandable to want the fabled shoulder-squeeze. You get the cloak, turret and lantern. You get the first-class Traitor experience, rather than being stuck in Faithful economy. No judgment here. We get it.

Crossing the floor
Matt secretly offering his services to the Traitors, requesting to be recruited, meant a primetime gameshow Rubicon had been crossed. Did his pitiful failure to be enlisted nip the crossing-the-floor tactic in the bud? Will future Faithfuls think twice before lunging for the mid-series cloak?

The Pretty Traitor
Whisper it: did Stephen survive – and win – because he’s so sweet and stylish? Someone who sweats, blushes and gulps that guiltily should have been Traitor toast. But who could resist that cute ’tache and the quasi-Blake’s 7 jumpsuit? Who would kick that big-eyed kitten? Was Stephen too pretty to banish?

The Sacrificial Traitor is still going strong
If anything, this series has cemented the concept of the Fall Guy Traitor. The Faithfuls must have their red meat. Rachel was planning to sacrifice Hugo before they’d even shaken off the dust of their first turret meeting.

Farewell roundtable pile-ons
Herd instinct, pack mentality, bandwagon-jumping, call it what you will – where was it?  The roundtable en masse vote is a staple on The Traitors, but this series saw markedly fewer roundtable pile-ons, leading to scattered voting patterns and people rather pompously making a massive deal of sticking to their guns. Intriguing.

Is The Traitors’ “dull task” problem finally solved?
Short answer: nope. The holy grail of Appointment TV it may be, but there’s still no denying that most tasks make you yearn for the sweet relief of watching a coat of Dulux emulsion dry. Still, here and there – a little more jeopardy, a touch more psychological pressure – there was the distinct feeling that the situation was at least being addressed.

The hardest-working show on television is still being endlessly tweaked to keep the format fresh. The Traitors may operate at night, but The Traitors is the format that never sleeps.

Photograph by Studio Lambert/Cody Burridge/Matt Burlem/BBC/PA Wire