WARNING: spoilers for The Traitors UK season 4 ahead.
If you saw the advert for The Traitors UK season 4 over Christmas and were convinced the red Traitors cloak meant something, you were right. On top of our typical traitors turret, there's now a Secret Traitor that nobody knows about... including us.
Here's how it works. As it stands, nobody but presenter Claudia Winkleman and the production team knows who the Secret Traitor is, but they know everyone's real roles in the game. So our classic green-cloak traitors – Rachel, Hugo and Stephen – know that a fourth traitor is amongst them, but they've got no idea who.
As Winkleman herself says in the premiere, "The Secret Traitor will work alone. Each night they will provide you with a murder shortlist. You can only murder one of the people that is on the murder shortlist. You do not know who they are – but they know exactly who you are.”
This completely changes the role of our known traitors in the game. They're no longer able to freely choose who to murder, which in turn makes them a lot more vulnerable. They're not exactly thrilled about the shocking new twist, either.
For the armchair detectives among us, this is brilliant news. For the first time, we're now playing along with the Faithful, trying to work out who is under the red cloak. Thankfully, there's a clue right under our noses.
The murder shortlist cannot contain the traitors we know about, but they also can't contain the Secret Traitor either. By process of elimination, we should be able to narrow down who it could be by ruling out anybody who appears on the shortlist.
Episode 3 of the BBC show revealed that our Secret Traitor could be uncloaked as soon as Wednesday's (7th Jan) episode after Rachel and Stephen successfully completed their secret mission in plain sight.
These players have already been ruled out as The Secret Traitor in The Traitors UK season 4
Here's where we're at. Below is a list of all 22 players in this year's season of The Traitors. Those in bold are our known traitors, with the remaining being ruled out by process of elimination if they've appeared on a murder shortlist.
Banished players will also be highlighted.
- Adam
- Amanda
- Ben - MURDERED
- Ellie
- Faraaz
- Fiona
- Harriet
- Hugo - BANISHED
- Jack
- Jade
- James - RULED OUT
- Jessie
- Judy - BANISHED
- Matthew
- Maz - RULED OUT
- Netty - MURDERED
- Rachel
- Reece - RULED OUT
- Ross
- Roxy
- Sam
- Stephen
This means we've currently still got 13 potential Secret Traitor candidates heading into episode 4, which airs at 8pm GMT on January 7.
But are there any other clues we can read into to catch a traitor, or are we all just as useless as the Faithful?
Opinion: Roxy is the most likely player to be the Secret Traitor
As much as I want retired police detective Amanda to be doing a full Uno reverse as the Secret Traitor, I think it's much more likely that it's 32-year-old Roxy (and after much deliberation with my family, they agree).
There's a number of reasons for this. For the majority of the episode, she had absolutely no screentime, only coming into her own after it was revealed that fellow player Judy is actually her adoptive mother.
If you listened very carefully, you might have heard her accidentally give this away during the boating mission, but it doesn't seem like anybody else has caught on. But clearly, she's a woman with secrets.
Not only this, but she fits the profile of a Secret Traitor more broadly. If production wants to throw our trio of traitors off the scent, they'd choose somebody who is the exact opposite of their dynamic. As Rachel is the only woman confirmed to be a traitor, it's more likely that our Secret Traitor is the same.
She's a player who seemingly wants all information out on the table – a tactic which could later cost her at the roundtable. After three episodes, Roxy is my best guess... but we've still got so much to figure out.
Does the silhouette we see under the red cloak in the cutaway VTs actually mean anything? Whose handwriting is that on the murder shortlist, and did they spell Netty wrong on purpose? And just what does that family tree really mean in the castle entrance?
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