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As has now happened on four rude mornings, Claudia Winkleman recently awoke with a start. She was in her beloved Highlands castle, a storied old place that she oversees with cool, witty authority. There was a clanking and clunking coming from downstairs, a shuffling of heavy objects. A sadly familiar sound. She rose from bed, went to the bathroom to apply six more coats of Benjamin Moore’s special-edition Garfield™ semi-gloss, and then made her way downstairs in a modest, but breathtaking, ensemble. 

There, of course, cluttering up the foyer were the myriad costume trunks and portable armoires that annually herald the arrival of Claudia’s counterpart and rival, Alan Cumming. It was once again time for the changing of the guard, in which Claudia cedes Traitors hosting duty to Alan, so that he can befoul her treasured estate with the stench and desperation of American reality TV stars. Chased from their chambers like rats are the humble little British regular people over whom Claudia presides (except in the recent, excellent Celebrity UK season, which you really should watch if you haven’t yet), replaced by Big Brother contestants, and gay Bachelors, and all other manner of flotsam brought over from the U.S. in belching steamships smogging up the port of Invergordon. Claudia heaved a sigh when Alan strode into the foyer—dressed as if attending a Bene Gesserit retirement party—and said, “Welcome back, you old bitch.” 

I begin this way because, yes, I am a Traitors UK loyalist, paying fealty to the King and the British way of things. I love Claudia as a Traitors host—tart, clever, endearingly invested in the game—and sometimes find Alan’s theatrics overbearing. That said, I am still quite happy that Traitors US has returned. It is, essentially, a different show altogether, a circusy showcase of stars that may lack in nuanced gameplay but often makes up for that with a genial kind of absurdism. 

They’ve assembled a nice rogues gallery this year, too. And look, there they all are, rolling up to the castle in their gleaming black horseless carriages, ready and eager to get some sweet, sweet camera time. Shall we do a little rundown of who’s who? We shall. 

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Natalie Anderson: Survivor winner from the old era of the game, who entered her season alongside her twin sister and then muscled her way to victory long after her sister had been voted off. She’s tough and cunning and—if those qualities don’t bring suspicion upon her, as they often do on this show—is a strong contender to go very far in the game. 

Yam Yam Arocho: Another Survivor winner, but one from the new era, meaning he is softer and nerdier and not quite as wily as Survivor victors from the days when it wasn’t all just superfans trying to check items off their “Survivor Bucket List.” Still, compared to a lot of the other yahoos Alan smuggled into Scotland, he’s a rocket surgeon. 

Mark Ballas: A longtime Dancing with the Stars dancer, Mark used to have short hair but now has long hair. 

Rob Cesternino: Another Survivor guy, though never a winner. He also does a lot of podcasting about Survivor and is thus cultishly beloved by that fandom. Entering this show as a famous master of games is risky, as Rob will soon learn. 

Stephen Colletti: So he sort of had a thing with Lauren, or at least Lauren had a crush, but really Stephen’s heart belonged to Kristin, though there was that one time when he showed up to dinner or something with Lauren and they played Leona Lewis’s “Bleeding Love” and it was really poignant and I dunno I kinda wish he and Lauren had found a way to make it work but that wasn’t meant to be so oh well. 

Candiace Bassett: One of the more memorable former cast members of Real Housewives of Potomac. Candiace is shrewd and funny and ought to do well here. 

Ron Funches: Comedian, actor, sweater-wearer. Ron is sweet and weird and very much admired in the comedy community. I don’t know if he has the right set of skills for this kind of program, but he’ll be amiable company at least. 

Maura Higgins: If you have not watched Maura’s season of Love Island UK, cancel your plans for the next three months and get into that. Maura blows into the villa on a witch breeze and pretty much never stops being funny. An Irish demon, Maura says “traitor” better than anyone else in the history of the show.

Donna Kelce: Her big son marry Taylor. 

Kristen Kish: Here’s someone who I think is maybe too high-end famous to be on this show? But there she is nonetheless. Kristen is a brilliant chef, a Top Chef winner, and now the host of that show. Replacing Padma Lakshmi is a daunting task, but Kristen has handled it with aplomb. That said, her personality might not be flashy enough to really pop on US Traitors, where half the game is touting your brand. 

Tara Lipinski: An American ice princess, Olympic gold medalist, and gay ally, Tara kind of annoyed me back in the day because I was a Michelle Kwan girlie and Tara skated up and stole her gold medal, but now I like her because why not.

Dorinda Medley: She was murdered first on the last season of Traitors but they didn’t bury her deep enough so now she is staggering back into the castle covered in peat and mud and is out for revenge. And she will make it nice.

Tiffany Mitchell: My biggest Traitors blindspot is Big Brother people because I just find that show so tedious. I have tried to get into it, but I just can’t. Anyway, Tiffany is apparently quite a big deal in that world. Keep your eyes on her.

Monét X Change: Of course Monét does the show the season after her podcast cohost, Bob the Drag Queen. That’s just how their dynamic works, I guess. Monét is fun and clever and will probably play a respectable game. 

Eric Nam: He’s a singer, he’s a big star in Korea, he’s very cute, and we’re getting married in June.

Michael Rapaport: Oof, this jabroni. He’s the actor who is now mostly known for shouty social media videos and politics that are harder to pin down than one of Alan’s fascinators. 

Rob Rausch: I do not watch Love Island US because that show is no fun without the accents. But I’m told he was a breakout character on his two seasons of that show. He also apparently catches snakes on the internet, something he vaguely has in common with Donna.

Lisa Rinna: Lisa Rinna is a former star of Melrose Place and has been married to actor Harry Hamlin since 1997. 

Caroline Stanbury: She’s a rich socialite from reality TV and is married to a hot, much younger footballer. Despite that, I am weirdly rooting for her. 

Ian Terry: Another Big Brother guy, not worth going into for obvious reasons.

Colton Underwood: He was Bachelor but then he came out as gay so now he’s professionally that. 

Johnny Weir: A person I was perhaps unhealthily obsessed with during his figure skating years, Johnny could have turned out so bad but it seems like he’s pretty chill and well-adjusted? If you’ve heard otherwise, please let me know. For now, I like him. 

Porsha Williams: One of the signature cast members of Real Housewives of Atlanta, an icon and legend and, whoops, not much of a Traitors player. 

Okay, so that’s the gang! Because I have three episodes to recap here, I can’t be as detailed as I’d like. But don’t worry, starting next week, I can focus on one episode at a time. For now, though:

Episode 1: Rob Rausch’s Housewives Surprise

All the contestants gather, at night this time, and say hello to one another and compare agents (“I’m with Bob at Downstairs Talent & Coin-Op Laundry,” “My team is at Models, Inc.”) and then Alan, dressed as all the madnesses of King George at once, announces that there is a wrinkle this season. The first traitor will be selected in front of everyone. Basically, one by one the contestants will approach Alan, do the necessary five bows and curtsies, and then Alan will open a small box, unleashing terrible woes upon the world and revealing to the player—and the player only—if they are a traitor or a faithful. If they’re a traitor, a card will read “traitor,” if they’re a faithful, the card will have a picture of Alan in his GoldenEye costume except nude from the waist down. 

The process begins and everyone tries to eagle-eye watch everyone else’s reaction to the opening of the box. No one howls in despair or cackles at the moon, though, so there’s not much to be gleaned. (Colton does say, “Is that from James Bond?,” though, so that’s kind of a giveaway.) This is the first time that we in the audience don’t know who a traitor is, which is maddening but also fun. 

Once that ritual is complete and Alan has been borne back into the night by Inverness’s second-hottest all-male dance troupe, the cast files into the castle and begins their game. At one point Eric does a British accent in front of Caroline and she’s confused and so am I but I will have him explain it on our honeymoon. Lisa skitters around on the ceiling in her leopard print Inspector Gadget outfit, while Monét and Yam Yam bond over their mutual fandom and, one assumes, their plot to play a secret side game in which they work to psychically destroy Colton.

Maura winds up in a conversation with Michael, Kristen, and Porsha and confesses that she doesn’t watch any reality TV, so she doesn’t know who anyone is except Rob R., whom she knows from Love Island and from peering into her cauldron and seeing his face appear in the steam. Porsha seems a little taken aback that Maura doesn’t know who she is, which is silly because why would an ancient Bandraoi watch Real Housewives? 

Before they can do much more chatting, the players are summoned to the roundtable, where Alan will select the rest of the traitors. As usual, they intercut this segment with clips of the cast’s one-on-one sit-downs with Alan, who is wearing a voluminous, ruffled Grimace-skin shirt. Of course pretty much everyone says they want to be a traitor, because who on earth would want to be a faithful? Back at the roundtable, Alan stalks around the room in his Julie Taymor for Contempo Casuals couture and begins his selecting. I think he selects well. 

Lisa, Candiace, and Rob R. are chosen, marking the first time in this show’s history that two Housewives are traitors at the same time. Sometimes I wonder with these celebrity seasons if there was something hidden deep in a contract guaranteeing that a player will be named a traitor, because doesn’t Lisa being one feel like such a fait accompli? Like, there’s no version of this season in which that’s not the case. That said, I’m happy with the choices. Rob R. at fist seems kind of monosyllabic and dumb but pretty quickly reveals himself to be quite sharp. We’ve seen this kind of vaguely sociopathic handsome young straight guy go very deep in the game on past Traitors seasons, particularly in Australia season two (which has the best ending of any Traitors season thus far and the most annoying buildup to that conclusion). If I were Lisa and Candiace, I would be very, very careful about Rob. 

Once the selection is complete, everyone removes their blindfolds and regards their castlemates with a new suspicion. Lisa’s “Jareth Nights” by Labyrinth wig is a little askew but otherwise no one betrays anything. Everyone leaves the table and scatters about the mansion, trying to establish early alliances and voice nascent suspicions. Quite accidentally, but accurately, Candiace names her fellow traitor Lisa as a top suspect, which Candiace will have to manage once she realizes what the situation is. 

Michael establishes himself as a loudmouth, broadstrokes strategist, much to Tiffany’s horror. “He’s either a really bad traitor or a really bad faithful,” she declares, which is about the worst thing you can say about someone on this show. Michael is convinced that at least one of the Housewives is a traitor, just based on the numbers. He’s right, of course, but his fellow faithfuls seem to think he’s being awfully suspicious in all his sweeping declarative statements. At this point I think we all must unfortunately settle in for a lot of Michael theatrics to come. 

There is sadly no murder that night, but the traitors are at least happy to meet each other, though then Alan immediately rains on their parade when he tells them about the secret fourth traitor, who will send them a list of potential murder victims each night. They rightly see this as their power being greatly diminished. In order to reclaim some of that, they make a pledge that they will stay traitors strong. Famous last words. You know the second either Candiace or Lisa are even the slightest bit exposed, Rob will pounce. At least, I think he will.

After a restful sleep, it is time for the first mission, which involves rowing boats to retrieve coffins that have been put out on a loch. It’s always funny to think about the setup for these challenges, like a crew member is out on a first date and it’s going well but then she’s like, “sorry, I gotta get home. I have work really early tomorrow. We’re putting a hundred coffins in a lake.” Strange job! 

Anyway, the mission mostly goes well, though it is complicated by a) a twist in which certain players are put in danger of being murdered, which has Michael all upset and b) the fact that Johnny falls in the water at one point. It is sad that he will eventually start to change form as he begins his transformation into a kelpie, but for now he is fine. 

Back at the castle, the players are agitated, upset about who got put up for murder and why, and nervous that these could be their last few hours of precious, precious screentime. Suddenly a scandal erupts: Porsha tells Michael that Candiace said that Michael said he was going after the Housewives, which isn’t exactly true, but Michael had indicated that one of the killers was probably a Housewife. It turns into a heated argument that never quite tips over into actual anger, but further suggests that Michael is going to be a very volatile presence in the house. Which is kind of good for the traitors—but, I gotta be honest, not so great for this viewer. 

Rob R. worries that Candiace is sticking her neck out too much during this conflict, but I think she is protected by her Housewife status. The Housewives love getting into loud arguments! It’s just what they do. Sometimes at the doctor’s office, the physician will look down at his clipboard and frown and say, “your argument levels are a little low,” and then he’ll advise his patient to go to a wine tasting and start a fight over something that happened at a bris three years ago. It does their bodies good. So, for now, I think that most players think this is just Candiace being Candiace. She should be mindful of not tipping over the line, though. 

Candiace keeps trying to insinuate that Michael is a traitor, which is an easy target. Rob C., though, thinks it would be a crazy traitor game to play that big that early, and he’s not wrong. Rob C. really is doing the best, most cogent thinking of all the players, which is why he’s gotta go. But, not tonight. 

The traitors gather at the turret to plot their first murder, and the choices given to them are: Ian, Colton, Eric (rude), and Rob R. himself. I don’t love that last bit. On the UK season currently airing, the secret traitor knows who the other traitors are from the outset, which makes it a much more strategic position. This is just flailing blindly. Oh well. Obviously Rob will not be murdered, so it’s down to the other three boys. I worry for Eric and send him a text message, which pings on his phone on the nightstand next to our bed but he does not stir from sleep. 

Episode 2: Ride the Rickshaw to the Conga Line

The next morning, a lovely breakfast has been laid out in the appropriately named breakfast room. A great carving pheasant, bowl upon bowl of jellied eels, glistening mung berries and stink eggs, a box of Boo Berry cereal for Colton. The contestants trickle in, eager to rehash last night’s Michael freakout and to learn who was smothered with a pillow while they slept in their stiff bed at the Inchlumpie Red Roof Inn. 

Maura enters looking like she just betrayed Indiana Jones to the Nazis, while Johnny is wearing the housecoat that Iris Apfel was buried in. Candiace arrives straight from working the red-eye flight on Luxembourg Air. One thing celebrity Traitors has over the normie version is, of course, the fashion. It’s wonderful to see what everyone packed and whose stylist is apparently going through a personal crisis. So far, the looks have been bold and good. 

Okay, so eventually it becomes clear that Ian from Big Brother is the first victim, which feels pretty whatever. He didn’t really pop during his limited time on the show, and it’s probably smart to get a gamer out of the mix. And thank god! Dorinda has finally survived long enough to see her first breakfast. She stumbles in grinning and goes right for the eels. 

Tiffany gives a little speech memorializing Ian, which raises Colton’s suspicions. As it should everyone else’s! I mean, we know Tiffany is not a traitor, but any grand gesture like that must be examined. But the players are too distracted by a much bigger suspicion: Donna. People have been on Donna since she showed up, noticing her quietness and awkwardness. Donna explains to us that she’s just nervous because she’s but a lowly mom, she’s not an internationally famous person like Caroline Stanbury. Which, okay, sure, but lady you do know Taylor Swift, which means you probably have at least met Abigail Anderson, the most famous person in the world. 

With a cloud of doubt surrounding Donna, the players head off to their second mission, which involves carting rickshaws through the woods, just as Dorinda used to do in the Berkshires, ferrying people in the inky dusk from their dinner reservations to Tanglewood. The twist is that whoever is sitting in the rickshaws when they cross the finish line will get a shield. But if anyone finds a medallion in the woods during the death march, they can replace someone in the rickshaw. So it’s a lot of scrambling to be safe but also not raise suspicion and, as expected, Michael has a big old tantrum about how they are deciding who gets to sit in the rickshaw. He seems to think that something unfair happened to him when all he had to do was, y’know, just find one of the medallions. Which he didn’t. Alan descends from a tree and handles Michael a bottle to soothe him.

There is also a tense moment in which Yam Yam decides to unseat Maura, which is a very dangerous thing to do. Hope you like waking up to find a bunch of earwigs in your bed, Yam Yam! Because that’s going to be happening for the rest of your life now. 

Ultimately, Yam Yam, Caroline, and Colton are the three protected from murder, which is fine because I don’t think they were really going to be targets anyway. During mealtime, people lean on Donna again, asking her if she has any theories, trying to poke and prod at her to see if she might give anything away. Donna does not do a very good job of defending herself. Dorinda tries to stick up for her, saying that Donna is 74 years old and doesn’t know anyone else in the house and is probably just uncomfortable. She also says that she is scared to vote for Donna because of the Swifties, which is very prudent of you, Dorinda. (To Colton’s credit, he expressed the same fear.)

At this point, all three known traitors have done a good job of keeping themselves quite far from suspicion. I mean, part of that is owed to the fact that plenty of other contestants are walking (and, in one case, yelling) red flags, which the traitors can just passively let happen. But there is also some actual game playing here. I am, I must say, impressed by Rob R., who is very capably blending in as just one of the anonymous guys. I’d have to imagine that Candiace and Lisa, who want to make good TV, will slip up at some point. But Rob? Not so much. 

During the roundtable, it seems like it’s gonna be a total bloodbath for Donna, and it almost is, except that Ron presents some evidence that implicates Porsha. On more than one occasion, Ron heard Porsha say something that implied that she is a traitor. “I killed” or “we” did something, etc. We know those were just unfortunate slips of the tongue, but the players don’t! And, jeez, Porsha… Those are really big fuck-ups. And they cost her the game. Porsha is banished and then reveals herself to be a faithful, to everyone’s dismay. 

The traitors are glorious in victory, but they will not have an easy evening of basking in success. They are charged with executing a murder in plain sight, always one of the most exciting events of any Traitors season. The challenge involves finding some cards behind a trick painting on the wall, then burning the card of one player in the breakfast room fireplace. 

In order to distract the players from this covert action, Candiace organizes a conga line, which is either very suspicious or just more outrageous Housewife behavior. Rob C. thinks there’s definitely a plain-sight type deal going down. He even says so to Candiace, after she returns from accidentally conga’ing poor Yam Yam and several others off a cliff. But Rob C. can’t get a handle on exactly how it’s all working. Meanwhile, Rob R. grabs the cards, and has a little confab over pretend chess with Lisa. They play this whole bit pretty well, Rob acting like he’s teaching Lisa the game while they actually talk strategy. Tara watches them for a little bit but soon grows bored and wanders off to practice her salchows in the basement ice rink that Ryan Lochte had built as a swimming pool but then turned the AC on way too high. Well done, Rob R. And to you too, Lisa. Then, a cliffhanger.

Episode 3: Donna Kelce’s Big Fumble 

The morning time reveals that the name thrown into the fireplace last night was Rob C., who seems about to burst into tears when he opens the envelope. Pretty crushing for a gamesman. Still, the right choice was made, considering how close Rob C. was to unraveling the whole thing. And it wasn’t a personal choice, as has too often been the case with petty traitor decision-making on this show.

Also during breakfast, players speculate on whether or not Ron was pulling a fast one by implicating Porsha so heavily. Also, Maura enters looking like the villainess in a G.I. Joe episode about the IRA. Yam Yam and Michael get in an argument that feels like a real argument, which brings some unwelcome reality-show acridness into this otherwise light and low-stakes and relatively clean game. 

But the drama really gets going when Alan, dressed up as Big Bird after he moved to Berlin, enters the breakfast room and informs the contestants that they will be doing an extra special banishment before that day’s mission. So there is very little time to scramble, to forge a new plan, which means that all the same old theories from last night will be carried into this roundtable. The only thing that really happens between breakfast and roundtable is that Tiffany takes Michael to the secret room behind the bookshelf and basically swears allegiance to him—her strategy being that if he is a traitor, he’ll want to keep a close ally around. It’s not bad thinking, except that (as we see later in the episode with Colton) too much association with Michael could put her under the microscope. 

Anyway, they all tromp off to the roundtable, where Donna is almost unanimously voted out. There I was, yelling at these dummies through my laptop for targeting this old lady simply because some old ladies have been traitors in the past. I really thought they were making a mean mistake. But then, lo and behold! Donna revealed that she was indeed a traitor most foul. They caught the secret traitor!! Only, they don’t know she was the secret one. All they know is that their instincts were, for once, totally correct. And now the three other traitors are free to do as they please with no more interference. A sort of perfect outcome, I’d say. But a bad choice by the producers, too. The old lady thing is so expected at this point! I wish I could say good game, Donna, but her shortlist murder choices were kind of weird and she did get sniffed out really quickly, thus kinda ruining the whole secret traitor thing, so . . . Game, Donna. Game. 

After Donna’s corpse is hung by her heel from the castle archways, everyone goes off to gloat about their miraculous success. They’ve finally done it. Colton claims to have led the charge on Donna and declares himself a Traitor Hunter, which . . . Okay, I guess, sorta, but I think lots of people were onto Donna kind of from the beginning. It turns out she was being weird and shy because she was a traitor and didn’t know how to act normal. A lot of people had that figured out. So I’m not sure about “Traitor Hunter,” Colton. Trade, er, hunter? Sure. 

Then it’s off to the mission, where the players team up (Ron, in the dog house after the Porsha vote, does not get a partner and thus is immediately up for elimination). One of them will go running around the woods looking for bones (talk about trade hunting!) while the other sits in a cage waiting for their partner to stack ten skulls on top of each other, thus freeing the player in the cage. The caged people are carried off into the forest and I suspect a thousand GIFs of a be-sunglassed Lisa Rinna being hauled around in a cage have already been birthed. Good imagery.

It’s a very silly challenge that Johnny Weir handles in especially silly fashion. My beloved Eric, who partnered with Johnny because I told him to, sits in the cage waiting and waiting for Johnny to return from the woods with even one bone, but he never comes back. Johnny is still out there, some of the residents of the area say, drifting through the bogs at night, crying out for Adam Rippon in his plaintive kelpie moan. 

By the end of the challenge I’d become fully convinced that something is going on between Rob and Maura, which would be Rob’s greatest victory of all. I’m also pretty sure Colton has some kind of traumatic past involving stacking skulls. We should dig into that.

The people who remain imprisoned at the end of the challenge—and are thus up for murder—are Ron, Kristen (oh no!), Eric, Caroline, and Lisa, but obviously Lisa is safe. So it’s down to four choices, tied to trees and blindfolded, almost erotically. (OK, mostly just in Eric’s case.) They’re all pretty random options except for Ron. But why kill Ron when he’s likely to be banished? Whatever happens, I don’t love that the traitors had their options so limited yet again. I really need them to have full access to the players to really start executing strategically. But, oh well. I have a hunch that Eric will be the one killed, for no other reason than that all the good things in my life are eventually taken away from me. 

We will find out next week, when there is only one episode dropping, which means you’ll get a more thorough recap. Apologies that this thing is kind of broad but also as long as Alan’s receipt from Theatrical Garments Unlimited. There was a lot to cover! If you’re reading this, thank you for sticking it out until the end. You’re the real faithfuls in this treacherous, treacherous world.