(Red) Cloak & Dagger: We’re All Being Played | Traitors 2026 - Thread 2

[CaveMum]

Link to previous thread here: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/5467284-traitors-2026-new-years-day?page=1

Stats as per this morning after Episode 1 - I’ll update it again after tonight’s episode.

Confirmed Traitors
Hugo
Rachel
Stephen

Confirmed Faithful
Netty
James
Maz

Secret Traitor Suspects (# of votes)
Fiona (13)
Ross (12)
Amanda (11)
Judy (11)
Roxy (8)
Jade (6)
Harriet (6)
Jessie (3)
Sam (3)
Jack (2)
Netty (2) - Not the ST
Ben (1)
Faraaz (1)

Interestingly, only 4 players have not been named as ST suspects at this point

Adam
Ellie
Matthew
Reece

Yes, I wondered whether that was significant as well.

Judy was from Doncaster.

When The Rest is Entertainment has someone from the BBC in they asked about whether the production team got involved in the game. She said that because there was a cash prize they weren't allowed to interfere at all. Any guidance could be seen as unfair because of the monetary reward.

So whilst they obviously try to deceive the viewer in the edit, the game itself is the players making their own decisions.

Thank you @MrsLeonFarrell

I can see why we might think production get involved but their reasoning made sense.

From a reddit thread that Zach of Season 2 posted on there seems to be quite a lot of mental health support behind the scenes with some things like panic attacks edited out and support given frequently. I suppose that was in reasons to poor Aaron breaking down in Season 1 which was really uncomfortable viewing.

I'm glad there is behind the scenes support and also that we aren't being played by production.

I was merely pointing out that people can be connected in many ways - they don't have to be in a relationship.

And surely the whole point of this thread is to come up with endless speculation, the wilder and more unlikely the better. That family tree thing with the Latin inscription on it is there for a reason. Whether it is to give clues to the participants and us the audience, or whether it is a massive red herring is up for debate. Which is what we are doing.

Some people will have used their current residence to describe where they are from which can 'hide' their origins. Roxy is listed as from Amsterdam but she clearly didn't grow up there.

As someone that moved areas several times as a child and has lived in a couple of different parts of the country as an adult I never quite know how to answer the where are you from question. So if I was on Traitors and wanted to disguise a relationship with my husband I might give the county I was born or where I spent my late childhood early adulthood in rather than where we now live. I also have a totally different accent to both my parents (who have different accents to each other) so we wouldn't necessarily sound like family - even my siblings sound slightly different to me/ each other.

the Beeb have done a pretty good job on representation so it would be wild to have a non rep team of traitors!

The BBC does not make the programme.

Well, that's the same as me and Ross and his mum sounded different but I think we still need to stop trying to connect everyone!

Yes, there's a psychotherapist listed on the credits.

Maybe, as Judy works in fostering/adoption, anyone in the game and under 35 or so was someone Judy “knows” because she was involved in their placements 😂

Not to re-open the racism debate, but it may also be the case that the contestants are wary of accusing or voting for any of the interchangeable young white men at this stage because, like us, they’re not 100% sure yet which is which. So it’s racist in the sense that the POC contestants stand out more as different or as individuals but not in the sense that anyone is more likely to assume they are untrustworthy.

I like the ST twist. The Beeb seem to have listened to viewer feedback about how it’d be good if viewers didn’t know who the traitors were and have found an interesting way to introduce an element of that.
My favourite is Maz, because when he first saw all the biscuits in the kitchen he cried, ‘Look at all the biscuits!’ and proceeded to name all of them 😄 Man after my own heart.
For ST I suspect one of:
Amanda, because from the producers’ POV she’d be good; able to think as a traitor and as a faithful. Although I do think she’s revealing herself to the others to be a bit too much of a pro and needs to be careful.
Jade, because she seems twitchy and was VERY defensive (almost aggressive) when Amanda made the observation about her demeanour when they all took their masks off.
Roxy, because she seems very tightly wound. She could just be that sort of person, but she comes across to me as if she’s hiding.

Isn't it interesting how we all seem to resort to ‘instinct’ and trying to read someone’s behaviour, quite possibly in nonsensical ways, now we’re being forced to play the game ourselves?!

Am I the only one who finds Amanda’s former career as a police detective amusing, bearing in mind this resemblance…

I can’t help thinking of the programme every time I see her.

I think this was shown in Episode as well. That and the ‘family tree’ do point to people not being who they appear. There must be a couple in there and possibly a brother and sister

Someone up thread pointed out that over the four series it's been more balanced than people perceive because they notice the people of colour getting voted off first. It's the reverse of unconscious bias.

Overall Traitor UK has had a reasonable good record on diversity tbh.

Much more so than public voted reality TV.

I also don't think it would be great to get to the point of contestants going "I can't vote off the twat / obvious person to vote off because of their race" either.

Judy had ruffled feathers. I remain unconvinced it's because of her race. She was gobby and wasn't holding back enough. The gobby ones ALWAYS go first regardless of ethnicity.

I read somewhere, don't think it was on here, but would it be possible for one of the 3 normal traitors to also be the secret one? We don't know how Claudia chose the secret traitor or what was said to them. It will be really interesting at the end of the game to see how they were picked and their reaction.

Ok wonder if 1934 is important or not.

Bonnie and Clyde ... Hmm.

Or... Hitler becoming a dictator... Kinda like the.... Secret traitor..

Someone on Reddit managed to reverse the second list of names that the traitors were given. The handwriting is completely different than the first list so I assume it is either production staff writing the names or the ST is very good at disguising their writing. I’m ruling handwriting out of any of my ST theories for now either way.

I wonder why we are all fixated on finding connections between the players? It must be cos they have always featured either a couple, mother and son, sisters and now mother and daughter.

They have nearly always had a POC as a Traitor.

We're been given lingering shots of books before and it was a harbinger of an event. (Pretty certain this happened for the much hated Seer!! Also another time a plain sight murder.)

Same with shots of items in the Castle- they were something that ended up important to tasks. So possible one of the task will incude questions about the tree picture, rather than showing how there's only three degrees of separation between the contents (and why not also the production crew!)

There’s a lot of subconscious ageism in traitors, as well as racism, in previous years it’s nearly always been the oldest person who’s been voted out first – and Judy is one of the older people this time.

The gobby ones ALWAYS go first regardless of ethnicity.

The gobby women. Some of the gobby men do quite well.

Not convinced by this. They maybe do better than the gobby women, but I wouldn't say they 'do well' either.

I've read a few of Harriet's books. They're good, though I wouldn't say they stand out in the over saturated crime / thriller genre. I wouldn't have recognised her in person, but know the name.

It will be interesting to see if the brain that constructs complex fiction plots can unravel this!