(Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Traitors Season 2 finale and reunion.)
The Traitors might be a game of deceit and treachery, but evidently, certain players took it all very personally. As fans saw on Thursday night, the finale was bittersweet: Yes, The Challenge alums and Faithfuls Chris “CT” Tamburello and Trishelle Cannatella won, splitting a cash prize of $208,100, but they did so only after kicking their fellow Faithful Mercedes “MJ” Javid out of the game. When everyone gathered for the reunion and watched the ending, you could see the shock on all of their faces—and MJ was clearly not ready to let bygones be bygones.
MJ wasn’t the only one still feeling bitter about how the game went down. Our two earliest-ousted players, RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Peppermint and The Challenge player Johnny Bananas, both seemed tight about how they went out. And Real Housewives star Phaedra Parks still wasn’t willing to forgive her fellow original Traitor, Big Brother winner Dan Gheesling, for trying to throw her under the bus. Last season’s reunion might’ve been a bit dull, and this one definitely included way too many unnecessary clip reels, but some moments got spicy as hell.
Just like last season, our Traitors host Alan Cumming offered a brief introduction to our reunion before bowing out and handing the proceedings over to Bravo ringleader Andy Cohen. Everyone but Dancing with the Stars personality Maksim “Maks” Chmerkovskiy was in attendance, and everyone evidently came prepared to stir things up.
First up, everyone but the Final Four gathered in their sparkliest formalwear to watch how the season ended. From the reaction shots, they were just as bummed to see CT and Trishelle send MJ home as we were—and they were especially shocked to see Trishelle try to vote CT out during the penultimate banishment.
It was clear from the moment that Trishelle sat down for the reunion in her bedazzled red and silver dress that MJ was still miffed; you could practically see the daggers shooting from her eyes across the stage. When Andy said that Trishelle and CT were acting like they were in a rom-com by the end of the finale, she muttered, “Manipulation—totally.” In case that didn’t get her point across, she later described the ending as having “bamboozled, grifter energy.”
As far as MJ is concerned, CT and Trishelle knew that all three of them were Faithfuls. As hard as she tried to rally the crowd against them, however, her fellow players weren’t having it. “I’m not gonna fight ya, MJ,” CT said in his special, raspy voice. Former Parliament member John Bercow, meanwhile, emphasized over and over that MJ has no right to be “aggrieved”—it’s a game!
For a reunion that went live at the same time as the finale, this episode had an awful a lot of padding, mostly in the form of redundant clip reels that showed us the season we all just watched, in case we’d forgotten the moment when Phaedra said, “Oh, lord, sweet baby Jesus, not Ekin-Su.” There were also the usual boring audience questions that mostly came and went with a whimper. Love Island alum Ekin-Su Cülcüloğl and former Bachelor Peter Weber continued to deny that they’re dating (although Peter did take a moment to plug his line of “Peter Pals” T-shirts) and Marcus Jordan and Larsa Pippen claimed their relationship was back on track after a “speed bump.” But not everyone seemed eager to smooth things over for the camera.
When Dan said he hoped that Johnny Bananas took his first-round elimination as a sign of respect, Johnny did not mince words: “I didn’t. I didn’t, no.” And while Peppermint declined to destroy Trishelle for gunning for her without any evidence, she did imply that her only reason for going after her was perhaps a result of her “biases” against people who are “the most different in the group.” Trishelle declined to say anything.
More than even MJ, however, it was Phaedra who went in deep on someone she believed had done her wrong. Looking back on Dan’s attempt to get her out of the game, she said, “He’s a low-down son of a bitch. ... I just thought he was a piece of shit.” Dan and other cast members might insist that all of this was a game, but when Andy asked Phaedra if she’s still mad, she confirmed that, in fact, she is.
Naturally, Andy had to return to MJ and her furious face to round the reunion out. You could see her mugging throughout the episode, especially when Trishelle said that in spite of her blip voting for CT, everything “all worked out.” MJ has apparently blocked them both on Instagram because as far as she’s concerned, “the Traitors were eliminated and the greedy people decided to make it a different game.”
Ever the diplomat, Andy suggested that perhaps this is a “cultural difference” between Housewives and folks who come into The Traitors from the world of competitive games. Some players come in to win at all costs, while others show up to the reunion and treat pettiness like a blood sport. To each their own! The important thing is, we’ll all be back next season to do it all again.
