formed a \u201csecret alliance\u201d<\/a> as the game drew to an end.<\/p>\nDiego said that he\u2019ll be putting his winnings towards a honeymoon on a tropical island for himself and his husband, Denis, while Anna said that her and her partner will be saving her share for when the couple are ready to start trying for a child.<\/p>\n
A traitor\u2019s fate comes down to luck<\/p>\n
The end could have gone very differently. Fans of Carla will be devastated that the culmination of her game came down to chance.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790124493_787_.JPEG\")
\n Carla was the victim of a deadlocked vote. RT\u00c9<\/p>\n
RT\u00c9\n<\/p>\n
Throughout three rounds of voting at the final roundtable, neither Pauric nor Diego would budge from their choice of whom to banish (Pauric wanting to banish Anna, Diego wanting to banish Carla). And so, it went to \u2018the chests of chance\u2019, a mechanism we\u2019ve seen play out before on the UK version of the game when successive rounds of voting couldn\u2019t break a tie.<\/p>\n
Pauric and Diego, as the two players without votes against them, picked between two chests, one of which contained a dagger granting the power of an additional vote. Diego won the dagger, and so, it was goodbye to Carla \u2013 an unfortunate end for her.<\/p>\n
Although it was an unfortunate end for Carla, she said this evening that she\u2019d been surprised to make it as far in the game as she did in the first place. \u201cI knew I was never winning,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
A house of cards tumbles down<\/p>\n
Carla\u2019s departure left just one traitor, Pauric, still in the game.<\/p>\n
Pauric remarked in previous episodes that he had all his game pieces lining up, and for a while, it certainly seemed that way.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790124494_892_.JPEG\")
\n Pauric seemed to have his plan all worked out, but it came tumbling down in the end. RT\u00c9<\/p>\n
RT\u00c9\n<\/p>\n
If Diego had voted the way Pauric wanted him to and banished Anna, it would have been up to Pauric to choose whether to stick with Carla and vote out Diego to split the money between the two traitors, or to side with Diego and vote out Carla to win all the money for himself.<\/p>\n
A few episodes ago, Anna had been a pretty good ally for Pauric, but by the final, her trust in him had eroded, as we saw during that conversation she had with Carla \u2013 no doubt helped along by him putting her name down for banishment at the previous roundtable.<\/p>\n
Anna mentioned her doubts about Pauric in an interview with producers shown early in the episode, but later seemed to swing back towards being predominantly suspicious of Carla and Diego. We know, of course, how it played out in the end.<\/p>\n
If Pauric had stayed close with Anna \u2013 if he hadn\u2019t been gunning for her at recent roundtables \u2013 could the ending have gone differently for him? All he needed was one of the faithfuls to vote for the other. Instead, he put his faith in Diego, but Diego wasn\u2019t nearly as convinced by Pauric\u2019s faithful act as he\u2019d been letting on.<\/p>\n
At the finale screening event this evening, Pauric said he knew he could be in trouble once Pete was banished. He felt Diego had a sense that either he or Pete was a traitor \u2013 and, of course, they all found out it wasn\u2019t Pete.<\/p>\n
An unexpected alliance<\/p>\n
Did Diego just play the best endgame a faithful has ever played? He had just a touch of suspicion on him \u2013 never enough to be in real danger of banishment, but enough that he was nowhere near a priority for the traitors\u2019 to murder. Neither of the traitors were gunning for him in the final. Pauric had every reason to believe that Diego trusted him, meaning it was in his interest to keep Diego in the game to the end.<\/p>\n
All that stood between Diego and the prize pot in the end wasn\u2019t the traitors, but Anna. The two of them didn\u2019t seem to have much trust in each other, a divide that was driven by Anna\u2019s (correct) suspicion that Diego stole money from the prize pot to buy a shield in a previous challenge, and Diego\u2019s irritation with Anna\u2019s reaction.<\/p>\n
But that all changed in the final days \u2013 much of it, it turns out, outside of what was shown on screen.<\/p>\n
The pair revealed they had \u201csecret conversations\u201d<\/a> near the end and \u201cformed a secret alliance\u201d.<\/p>\nDiego started to become suspicious of Pauric from the time that Kayleigh was murdered, while Anna was tipped off by Pauric\u2019s intense reaction to her taking \u20ac2,000 for herself in the second-last challenge: \u201cIt was honestly like I took it out of his own pocket.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790124494_844_.jpeg\")
\n Diego and Anna celebrate their win alongside host Siobh\u00e1n McSweeney. RT\u00c9<\/p>\n
RT\u00c9\n<\/p>\n
At the end of the day, what really matters isn\u2019t who wins, but the friendships you make along the way. Wait, no, that\u2019s not it \u2013 what matters is that Diego and his husband Denis \u2013 a faithful who was murdered earlier in the game \u2013 are going to get to go on their honeymoon.<\/p>\n
There was a lovely moment at the end of the episode when we got to see Diego ring Denis to tell him the good news. \u201cHow much have we won?\u201d Denis asked. \u201cWe?!\u201d Diego replied.<\/p>\n
Denis may be the real winner in all this \u2013 he got to go home early to put his feet up and still get his hands on the prize pot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lauren Boland reports from live RT\u00c9 screening Spoiler warning: This article contains spoilers for the final episode of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[158878,60001,259231,208271,32795,42,43,268673,6085,268683,6568,6569,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-632977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-and-the-winner-is","tag-anna","tag-carla","tag-diego","tag-finale","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-pauric","tag-rte","tag-siobhan-mcweeney","tag-the-traitors","tag-the-traitors-ireland","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790124493_297_.jpeg\")