The Traitors’ fourth UK season was full of twists, turns and unmissable moments of high drama, but some viewers thought one particular experiment in the show didn’t work. Now the show’s boss has revealed said experiment won’t be coming back.
In the first few episodes of the season, there was a lot of hype around the red-cloaked Secret Traitor, whose identity was a mystery to main Traitors and the viewers alike.
However, viewers thought that episode 4 was far too early to reveal who it was, with one even calling it a “terrible decision” and another branding it “ridiculous”.
BBC
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Studio Lambert boss Stephen Lambert gave a talk at the University of East Anglia, where he revealed that we shouldn’t expect to see the Secret Traitor in season 5.
“[It was] different, but it wasn’t something we wanted to keep going with because it was a clever way of signalling we were doing something different, but I think the pleasure of the show is [that] the audience know who the Traitors are,” he said.
Lambert referred to previous similar shows, name-dropping The Mole, which kept the saboteur’s identity secret from the audience, and said the weakness of that format is that, as a viewer, “you’re completely a victim of the edit”.
“It’s so easy for the edit to make you think that somebody is the Mole or the Traitor or whatever, and that doesn’t feel very satisfying,” he added.
BBC
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He also talked about one way the show has “improved”, which is that the missions were initially something that felt “stuck on”, but are now a lot more integral to the game as a whole.
The people behind the show have plenty of time to take the format in new directors, as the BBC has commissioned both the main show and The Celebrity Traitors up until 2030.
The lease on Ardross castle in Scotland has also been secured until that time, so expect to see plenty more Traitors enter that turret over the next few years.
The Traitors and The Celebrity Traitors air on BBC One and stream on BBC iPlayer.
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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he’s covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I’m a Fish.