This first season of The Traitors was damn fine television. We got suspense, drama, backstabbing, Alan Cumming in a variety of tartans whose colors are insulting to nature, more stale danishes than you can shake a Holiday Inn continental breakfast at, and Kate Chastain sassing her way into America’s hearts. What we also have is an utterly deserving winner in Cirie Fields. Being a huge fan of hers from Survivor, I knew from the minute the cast was announced that if Cirie was a traitor, she would take every single one of those coins home with her. (P.S.: Did you know that Cirie, Rachel, and Stephenie all played in a game called Snake in the Grass on USA last year that is very similar in format to this game? She talks about that and much more in her Vulture exit interview.)
These last two episodes, though padded out with too much filler, were also packed with a lot of action and started with my favorite traitors’ meeting of the whole season. The trio can barely get their community-college graduation gowns off before Cirie says to Christian, “You talk too much!†She’s mad at him for his gag about being recruited by the traitors and turning them down. Making it even worse, he’s gleefully plotting to murder Stephenie as if he were M3gan and he just finished doing a TikTok dance down a maroon hallway. Cirie is not only pissed at Christian’s mouth but also that he’s targeting her friend and closest ally in the game.
The next morning, the producers do Arie and Cirie a favor and put them in the breakfast room without anyone else. Cirie tells Arie that he is her boy and that they both need to worry about Christian. Arie asks if he is always this excited to kill people, and Cirie practically shouts, “Yes!†as if they feel like one day his story will be turned into a Ryan Murphy Netflix series. What makes Cirie a true master of the reality-television arts and sciences, however, is that she never forces him. She just shows Arie the danger and tells him he can make his own decision. She knows the most power comes when other people fall behind her willingly.
We find out Stephenie was murdered, much to Cirie’s chagrin. But with Arie and Christian wanting her gone, she was outvoted among the traitors anyway. While Cirie had some alliance with Stephenie and Rachel Frizzle, Ms. Frizzle’s niece, she is rolling deep in this game, and everyone who is in the finals trusts Cirie implicitly. She has so many avenues to the end that it would be almost impossible for her not to score the money.
With Stephenie dead, the suspicion again falls on Kate, but Cirie and Arie are ginning up Kate and Andie’s inherent suspicions of Christian. Um, Kate! Your girl Brandi was onto this guy from the jump. Why not try to take him out sooner?
On to the challenge: Everyone is taking it seriously, including Kate, who comes to play. How do we know? She takes off her boots. This is getting serious when our diminutive yacht stewardess willingly gives up an extra three inches. The challenge is to avoid a bunch of lasers while stealing artwork for Cumming’s Scottish neighbors or something. Nothing of note really happens except Christian is so cocky that he’s going to do well and flubs it in the first 15 seconds.
Going into the roundtable, Christian is convinced everyone will vote for Kate with him. He knows he has Quentin’s vote and probably Andie’s, but anyone else’s? When they start talking, Cirie immediately goes after Kate, who is not her target at all. This is sort of genius because it allows Kate to be the first to defend herself. It also allows Kate to target Christian so that Cirie doesn’t have to be the one to do it. She doesn’t want to come across to Arie as if she can’t be trustworthy. Oh, Arie, we have seen into your future, and you should not have believed this move.
Kate tells the crew not to gamble on voting her out now and, if she is wrong about Christian, to banish her the next day. Her best question to Christian is whom he would vote out next because there would be another banishment. This gets the few remaining players thinking he could target them next and makes them want to vote for him instead.
We know where a few of the votes are going. Kate and Arie are after Christian. Christian and Quentin are after Kate. The episode ends right before we learn who Cirie and Andie are going to vote for. That would have been a hell of a cliffhanger if only, you know, we had to wait for another episode. (A note to Peacock: Maybe roll this show out as it did in the U.K., three episodes a week for four weeks. That way, the cliffhangers mean something, and we all get a bit more time to talk about this amazing game.)
We know Cirie is voting for Christian, but what will Andie do? They give a speech about how they need to go with their gut, and this time, their gut is telling them Christian. (Huge kudos to Peacock for letting Andie use them/they pronouns and not even having to make a big stink about it. Normalize it, baby.) With that, we know his fate is sealed; Cirie casts the deciding vote with a speech about how when Kate says she is a faithful, Cirie believes her.
Christian is, of course, a traitor. He’s all smiles in the room, but then in his exit interview, he’s crying about all the lying and backstabbing he had to do. Then he says he’s sadder he didn’t get the money. Oh, this one needs to spend a little bit more time than the rest when talking to the psychologist on the way out of the game. If he can’t win $250,000, can we at least get this psychopath a little bit of free therapy?
This means that, once again, Quentin is on the wrong side of the vote. This format is not easy. It’s built so that the faithful have a much harder game and will get things wrong all the time. That said, Quentin is especially bad at it. He hasn’t voted for one traitor. He hasn’t even had one of the traitor’s names in his mouth. I don’t know what strategy he is using, but it works about as much as Melania Trump, who didn’t even pick out those blood-red Christmas trees.
We have our final five, and they go off on the biggest mission yet, in which Kate and Arie have to jump out of a chopper into a freezing lake — oh, sorry, loch — and the rest have to race around the (ahem) loch in a speedboat to collect bags of money. Cumming tells them that if they collect all the money at the lake, it will put the prize pot to the promised $250,000, making losing any of that money along the way entirely moot, but whatever. Who needs consequences when people are getting murdered twice a day? Of course, they win with moments to spare, leaving Kate to give this iconic quote: “Listen, Cirie, I did not get roaches and worms dumped on my head, I did not get strapped to a piece of carnival equipment and called a liar, for nothing! Just really commit to looking for the $43,000!â€
After a victory, a banishment is about to go down. Cirie and Arie plan on voting out Quentin with the straightforward rationale that he is about as right as seven left turns. Arie has enlisted Kate in this plan because Kate knows that Andie and Quentin are gunning for her. Kate also says she is not sharing the prize pot with Quentin, who has been trying to vote her out the entire game. Valid point, Ms. Chastain, if ya nasty.
This leaves Cirie in the power position of the swing vote. She doesn’t know whether she should keep her word to Arie because she doesn’t want to piss off a traitor who could reveal her game or vote with Quentin and Andie, who trust her more and will take her to the end. When the roundtable starts, Quentin says it has to be Kate because she is really good at swaying people and getting them to go in the direction she wants them to. Um, Quentin, are we watching the same television program? Kate literally spent the first 97 roundtables trying to get people to vote for Rachel, and they never did. Kate hasn’t been able to sway anyone the entire game. That’s why she has never been murdered — because she has been trying to sway people to think she’s a faithful and they won’t listen. Ugh, Quentin.
Cirie decides to keep her favorites and cuts Kate loose. Um, what happened to the day before, when she believed in her gut that Kate was faithful? Quentin says he is shocked Kate is a faithful. Sis, at this point in the game, you should at least stop being surprised at how wrong you are. Arie is legitimately more shocked because he thought he and Cirie had the plan all sorted.
From the banishment, they go to the “fire of truth,†which is really just the firepit where Kate has been offending people over glasses of red wine. He asks the final four (including three people of color — we love to see it!) if they want to end the game because they think there are no traitors left or if they want to banish one more time. Arie, Andie, and Quentin all want to stop the game. Okay, Arie, I get, but this is Andie and Quentin’s final stupid move on Idiot Mole. It seems as if it was made clear to the players that there were three traitors. (In the U.K. version, the number of traitors was always kept intentionally vague.) They got Christian. They got Cody. If you count them up, that is one … two … um, where’s three? Folks, you haven’t gotten the third traitor. Can you not do simple math?
Luckily, Cirie wants to banish again; we see this when Cumming throws her little pouch in the fire as if he were a member of the Midnight Society on Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and the fire burns red. Then the most shocking thing in the game happens. Arie commits seppuku on his own sword of deceit and takes himself out of the game. He says he has a great business, a great family, and just wanted to have fun playing the game. He tells them all he’s a traitor, and Cirie looks like even more of a hero for getting him out. And she better give him at least $10,000 because he literally handed her the game.
I need an interview with Arie because I need to know why he did this. Also, if he hadn’t, how would it have gone down? Was Cirie confident she could convince Andie and Quentin it was Arie? I get her rationale that she was a traitor from the first time they climbed Cumming’s turret, and she thought she deserved it more. Absolutely. Before Arie was a decent traitor, he was a horrible faithful. His mediocre gameplay got him to the end, but it sure shouldn’t give him that money. Seeing the final debate would have been fascinating.
Then all three vote to end the game, and we go around the circle, and Cirie finally tells her little cherubs she has been a traitor all along. You can see Andie’s face crack and Quentin, for the final time, look at the camera as if he has no idea what is going on. Yeah, that’s the only look I think we’ve ever gotten from Quentin. Cirie tells them she loves them both but she loves her family more and had to do it. I felt a little bit bad because, after losing Survivor four times, Cirie finally got her win, but she had to do it by lying to her closest allies. But she deserves every cent for giving us an amazing and unforgettable season of reality television. Here’s to Cirie, a traitor in the game and a giant star in life.