Don’t be alarmed by the image above. I can assure you that this newsletter features no spoilers for the current season of The Traitors. We won’t be discussing the shocking departure of REDACTED, or the nefarious actions of EXPUNGED, or the fact that CENSORED is the wife/half-brother/hairdresser of NAME REMOVED. Relax, you are in a hermetically sealed Traitors safe space here.
Indeed, what has gradually dawned on me while watching this latest series is how relatively straightforward avoiding spoilers has been. There have been at least a couple of occasions in the past fortnight where I have been behind by an episode or so, and I have never felt in imminent danger of prematurely learning of the latest murder or banishment. Friends who have texted me about the show’s goings-on have done so in the most cautious, detail-light manner possible, regardless of whether they knew if I was up to speed. I, in turn, am sensible enough not to wade into corners of social media where I’m most likely to be spoiled. Despite The Traitors being the biggest monocultural TV sensation in years, I don’t feel like I have to resort to desperate measures to avoid catching the results, like Bob and Terry trying to avoid the England v Bulgaria score on The Likely Lads.
And it’s not just The Traitors. Generally, I believe spoilers are far less of a concern than they once were. A decade ago, the internet was a lawless wild west for spoilers. We were only just adjusting to streaming and its binge drops, meaning some viewers would burn through an entire series, and loudly discuss it, before others had even watched an episode. And X (then Twitter) in particular, seemed to be at its chattiest and most indiscreet: for those of us who were UK based, a Monday morning on there after the US broadcast of, say, Game of Thrones, was a Total Wipeout-level obstacle course of spoiler avoidance. No matter how many keywords you muted – “Cersei”, “dragon”, “beheading”, “RIP” – you were still likely to encounter a whacking great revelation mid-mouthful of Shredded Wheat.
Today, when it comes to spoilers, the terrain feels a lot less rocky. Viewers have grown used to the fragmented nature of streaming, now knowing not to assume that everyone has churned through a whole season of Stranger Things in one night like they have, and to behave accordingly. X, meanwhile, is no longer the babbling town square of before, abandoned by many and too slop-filled and dysfunctional to be a truly spoilerific place for those who have stuck around. And Reddit, a natural home for fevered discussion of TV, introduced spoiler tags nine years ago, making it a far safer place for the unspoiled to navigate.
The media, too, has generally become more careful about divulging details of recently, or even not-so-recently aired shows. There’s a greater understanding of what constitutes a spoiler – not just a major revelation like “so and so carks it” but smaller yet telling details too. When advance screeners for the final season of Succession were sent out to critics, they were accompanied with a note from creator, Jesse Armstrong, asking not only for them to keep stumm about “specific events” but also “which episodes might be ‘big ones’, even cryptically or indirectly”.
The Traitors has an additional advantage when it comes to spoilers: its three-days-on, four-days-off broadcast schedule, which gives those who haven’t watched the episodes livethe weekend to catch up, while everyone else holds off on the water cooler conversation until the following week.
Granted, we don’t live in a spoiler-free utopia. I’m sure plenty of people have found their Traitors enjoyment curtailed by a loose-lipped colleague or a rogue Facebook post. But things are definitely better than they were. For example, I’ve managed to get through this whole column without divulging any spoilers for anything. I feel triumphant, like Rocky Balboa after knocking out Apollo Creed in Rocky II. Or Keyser Soze as he walks out of the police station at the end of The Usual Suspects. Or … ah, damn.
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