(Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Traitors Season 2, Episode 11.)
Coming into this week of The Traitors, our one remaining saboteur, Below Deck alum Kate Chastain, was not feeling great. As she complained to host Alan Cumming, our last eliminated mercenary, Real Housewives star Phaedra Parks, brought her “up into the Turret of Zero plans” and then abandoned her to clean up the mess. To make matters worse, Kate’s personal dig at Phaedra at last week’s roundtable left some folks feeling a little suspicious. Could she actually make it to the end and convince everyone to keep her around, or would this game ultimately go to the Faithfuls?
This season has been intense, to say the least. Unlike the first season of The Traitors U.S., everyone this season has been a reality star, which immediately broke the castle into factions. There were the Bravo-lebrities like Phaedra, Kate, Shahs of Sunset star Mercedes “MJ” Javid, and former Real Housewife Shereé Whitfield, and then there was everyone else. Chris “CT” Tamburello and Trishelle Cannatella have a long, complicated history dating back to their time on The Challenge, and according to Kate herself, there was one crucial friendship that viewers at home never got to see. As rough as Thursday’s finale already seemed, this behind-the-scenes reality makes the final gut-punch of the season hit even harder.
This season’s hodgepodge of C-listers has both helped and hindered the game. Their big personalities have certainly bred some fun drama, but at the same time, this has been a fundamentally different challenge than it was when a few Average Joes were in the mix. Coming into the finale, there was none of the trust that we saw last season, which means that both the roundtable and the “Fire of Truth” were more strategic than ever. Like always, alliances were tested, and some crumbled under the pressure.
Kate’s first order of business was to decide who to murder, and unlike her banished partner in crime, she actually made the most strategic choice. By eliminating her Bravo ally Shereé, she reasoned, she could lay some suspicion to rest. On her way out, Shereé actually began playing the game instead of pretending she’s on vacation, correctly deducing that it was Kate who’d murdered her. I know they say it’s always better late than never, but in this case...
Kate’s plan was a smart one, but alas, several players were still on to her when they gathered at the breakfast table. Sandra, CT, and Trishelle were all ready to vote Kate out. But our devious minx still had a few tricks up her sleeve—conniving deceptions that mostly made me wish that she’d been a Traitor from the start.
God bless MJ, but she rarely had the right instincts when it comes to Traitors. She cast the deciding vote against the staunchly Faithful former Bachelor Peter Weber a couple weeks ago, and this week she insisted that Kate had “faithful energy” and that Survivor legend Sandra Diaz-Twine was the Traitor. (To borrow a favorite refrain from Trishelle, “Honey...”) And so, Kate reasoned, all she had to do was get one more vote for Sandra at the roundtable—and survive one last, grueling challenge.
This week’s mission was simple in concept, but obviously, the producers made it hard as hell to execute. The players needed to make their way over some Scottish cliffs to Alan Cumming’s sailboat, where they’d raise a sail to collect their prize. Along the way, they could also make detours to collect extra flags, each of which would earn them more money. Naturally, everyone wanted the cash, and CT worked his ass off for every single dollar.
Everyone poked through seaweed in lobster traps and then dug through even more seaweed on the ground to earn their extra prize money, but it was our beefy “castle daddy” who ran all the way back to the start to find the combination to a lock. Then, after the group abseiled down a cliff, CT and Sandra put the team on their backs one last time and swam into a cave against the current to collect a $10,000 flag. (Honestly, give them the prize money for that feat of bravery alone!) By the time the group made it to the sailboat, they had only four minutes remaining to hoist the flag. Thankfully, they got it just in time, earning all $50,000 and bringing the final shared prize pot to $208,100 out of a possible $250,000.
Everyone might’ve been all about the teamwork during the mission, but from the moment they left, they got back to scheming. Kate wound up in a van alone with CT on the way back and wasted no time before trying to frame Sandra. He asked her directly if she was a Traitor, and she dodged it like an expert, throwing him off just enough to threaten his plan to team up with Trishelle and Sandra to vote her out. But it wasn’t until CT tattled on Kate to Sandra that the shit really started hitting the fan.
When Sandra confronted Kate for throwing her name around, Kate expertly threw the heat back on CT, implying that it was him who’d been shopping Sandra around for banishment. That prompted Sandra to suggest that she, Kate, and MJ vote out CT—an idea Kate immediately brought back to CT, shaking his confidence even more. I repeat: This woman is good at this!
Somehow, Kate’s plotting actually managed to take her through to the end. Everyone voted Sandra out—even including Trishelle, who just wanted to vote with the group.
For all of Kate’s scheming, however, it was pretty obvious from the moment that everyone gathered for the Fire of Truth that Kate was a goner. Everyone’s flames burned red once Cumming threw their pouches into the fire—meaning they wanted to banish again. The group unanimously chose Kate, who didn’t seem too upset to go home. Then came the real gut punch: MJ might’ve been ready to end the game, but CT and Trishelle were not.
Coming into this final episode, CT and Trishelle were clearly one another’s ride or die. But at the Fire of Truth, Trishelle—in a classic moment of infuriating Trishelle-ness—briefly picked the wrong person and tried to vote CT out. Luckily for her, the first vote was a deadlock: CT voted for MJ as planned, and MJ, who was clearly shocked and pissed to realize her number was up, voted Trishelle.
CT was understandably miffed that Trishelle had gone for him but, as she explained, his voting for Sandra at the last roundtable (and sparing John Bercow from elimination weeks ago instead of her) shook her faith. When it came time for the tiebreaker, everyone stuck to the plan: CT and Trishelle voted MJ out and she left heartbroken.
“I hope that makes you guys feel great,” MJ muttered on her way out, in a voice that suggests she absolutely does not hope they feel great. “It shouldn’t have ended this way,” she told producers. “That’s a plot twist of a lifetime. I hope they regret it.”
Before we could even pour one out for MJ and her iconic jeans, it was time to celebrate—and CT and Trishelle were absolutely ecstatic. In a true “castle daddy” moment, he hoisted her up onto the table to sit on the pile of gold, leaning over her and shoving the gold into her pockets before she hopped off and let him roll around on the shiny booty himself. They each went home with $104,050, and when asked about their fallen homie MJ, neither of them could even pretend to feel guilty.
“I just wasn’t willing to take a chance on anybody,” CT said. “I’m sorry.” (But, like, no—he’s absolutely not.) Trishelle, meanwhile, claimed, “I feel terrible. I mean, I love MJ, but we did say we were gonna go—us two—until the end. It was a rocky road to get here, but here we are.”
From what we’ve seen on screen, this moment isn’t too shocking. MJ has mostly stuck around the Bravo girlies, while CT and Trishelle have been collaborating from the beginning. Still, I couldn’t help but remember something Kate herself told me during our interview last month: Although we didn’t see much of it on screen, CT and MJ apparently also had a strong friendship this season.
During that torch-lighting debacle a few weeks go, Kate said, “Trishelle was not the only person that was very hurt” when CT chose John. “MJ and CT had a whole conversation, because MJ and CT have a very strong friendship that isn’t shown as much.” Retrospectively, that might’ve been a hint about this game’s outcome.
“CT is very good at a social game,” Kate said back then. “So Phaedra felt like she had an emotional connection with him. MJ felt like he was like a brother. Trishelle thought they had an emotional connection. So, CT is very good not only at the missions, but also at gaining friends and building relationships.”
With any luck, some of this will come up during the show’s season reunion on Thursday night. Last season’s was kind of a dud, but with this many big TV personalities in the mix something tells me this one could get spicy.
