Traitor, not a traitor.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Robert Voets/CBS via Getty Images, Sara Jaye/Getty Images
It’s a hard life being a [Scottish accent] trrraittooorrr. You’ve got to have a killer instinct, since you’re, y’know, killing someone every night. You’ve got to be good at lying, you’ve got to be fearsome at the roundtable, and you’ve got to be entertaining enough to carry a full third of the show. The cast of the upcoming third season of The Traitors has a lot to live up to — especially the new traitors. Last season, Phaedra, Dan, and Parvati did a bang-up job of being dastardly and entertaining. How can you beat “Lord! Not Ekin Su?” But there are some gems among this crew, and we’ve got some predictions that are also hopes and dreams. Who will be the contenders? Let’s make some bets.
The biggest community on a typical Traitors season is the Bravo cohort. Based on Phaedra’s success last year, you’d think they’d bring in someone from Bravo to play like her, but nobody really stands out as both wily enough and a big enough personality. RHONY’s Dorinda’s got the personality down, but she’d get drunk and blab. Dubai Housewife Chanel Ayan could be fun, but you know they mostly cast her so we could watch her get flustered when they pour bugs on her head. It would probably be too big a swing to go with Vanderpump Rules’s Tom Sandoval, since nobody likes watching him in the first place. Nobody ever voted “Miss Congeniality” should be a traitor, so that exempts RHONJ’s Dolores Catania, and RHOP’s Robyn Dixon doesn’t know how to make decisions with Gizelle there, so she’d just hold up proceedings. No, from Bravo we’d hope for the most under-the-radar name there — Summer House’s Ciara Miller. She could sneak through for a while, and watching the cast try to figure her out would be madding for them but fun for everyone else.
Predicted traitor: Ciara Miller (Summer House)
There’s a slew of gamers playing this season — including Survivor’s Boston Rob Mariano and Jeremy Collins, along with Big Brother’s Britney Haynes — though nobody from last season’s winning show, The Challenge. The two previous seasons have both had two of the three initial traitors be gamers, so the precedent is real. Tony Vlachos, two-time Survivor winner, seems like a guaranteed pick. Carolyn “Most Chaotic Person Alive” Wiger would be entertaining to be sure, but the likelihood of her giving up the goods seems high. She did go surprisingly long without anybody knowing she had an idol on her during her season of Survivor, though. Still, our best bet is that they’ll pair Tony with Danielle Reyes from Big Brother — she’s a certified confessional queen and one of the most ruthless BB players of all time.
Predicted traitors: Tony Vlachos (Survivor) and Danielle Reyes (Big Brother)
Then there’s the crew of reality stars who aren’t immediately a part of a larger group. The two Bobs (Harper from The Biggest Loser and “the Drag Queen” from RuPaul’s Drag Race) both fall into this category, but we think both would be better faithfuls than traitors. Selling Sunset’s Chrishell Stause is going to be busy enough trying to acclimate to a show where things actually happen. The Bachelorette’s Wells Adams will have his hands full missing wife Sarah Hyland. We’re going to go out on a limb here and hope they pick former Bachelorette Gabby Windey. She’s as sweet as pie, so nobody will suspect her, but she also puts up with her girlfriend Robby Hoffman’s curmudgeonly ways, so she’s got to have some mettle. She’d be a sleeper assassin.
Predicted traitor: Gabby Windey (The Bachelorette)
The miscellaneous cast members this year are a wild crew. They include Zac Efron’s brother Dylan Efron, King Charles’s cousin a few times removed Lord Ivar Mountbatten, Britney Spears’s ex-husband Sam Asghari, and former WWE wrestler Nikki Garcia. Okay! The only time they’ve ever picked a rando is on season one, when half the show was made up of civilians and they picked the permanently wacky Christian, who blew his game to smithereens of no accord. Of this crew, we gotta pick the Lord. British people make natural traitors
Predicted traitor: Lord Ivar Mountbatten
