An unprecedented season of The Traitors, hosted by Alan Cumming, came to an end on Thursday night, revealing the winners of the reality competition show did not include any “gamers.” Instead of contestants from Big Brother, Survivor, or The Challenge making it to the end, four so-called Faithfuls — Dolores Catania from The Real Housewives of New Jersey, Gabby Windey from The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, British aristocrat and distant cousin of King Charles III Lord Ivar Mountbatten, and Dylan Efron, influencer, producer, and brother of actor Zac Efron — walked away splitting the cash prize, after successfully identifying the show’s Traitors.
Survivor’s Cirie Fields and The Challenge’s Trishelle Cannatella and CT Tamburello won the first two seasons of the U.S. iteration of The Traitors, enforcing the idea that cast members who have a background in competition shows have a leg up on the Peacock reality series. But now the game has been flipped on its head, with Season Three proving any contestant with the right skills, strategy, and in some cases the luck can leave the Scottish castle victorious.
“That was my goal, absolutely, coming into the show. I wanted to win,” Efron tells Rolling Stone on a call alongside the other winners. Prior to filming, Efron watched both prior seasons of Traitors, analyzing past players’ strategies. “I was a kid that watched Survivor, and, like a lot of the audiences that watch these shows, I was like, ‘Man, I want to go on one of those shows. I think I could win.’”
This season’s Traitors were never able to fully get on the same page, perpetuating a lot of Traitor on Traitor crime. Tasked with “murdering” one of their fellow contestants each night in the turrets of the castle, Bob the Drag Queen (RuPaul’s Drag Race), Carolyn Wiger (Survivor), Danielle Reyes (Big Brother), and Rob Mariano (a.k.a. Survivor’s Boston Rob) spent more time disagreeing with each other than working together. There was infighting among them all season long, including at the evening roundtable discussions where both the Traitors and the Faithfuls raise suspicions about who could possibly be a Traitor and vote to banish someone from the castle.
All of the turmoil among the Traitors wasn’t obvious to those inside the castle, which made it surprising for cast members to watch the show back as it streamed. According to Lord Ivar, it was “a huge surprise” to learn that Bob the Drag Queen, Wiger, Reyes, and Mariano were at odds.
“I remember seeing one of the ads for the show where Alan Cumming said, ‘It was incredible, the fighting that was going on,’ and this and that, and I was thinking to myself, ‘Really? There wasn’t much going on in our little worlds,’” Lord Ivar tells Rolling Stone. “So when I saw it, I was actually staggered. I had a little friendship with Danielle [Reyes], only because we used to hug every morning because she shook like a leaf so I tried to calm her down. At the time I was thinking maybe she’s just a nervous character, but once you see the episodes back and you realize what’s going on, it all falls into place.”
Windey was a fan favorite this season, eclipsing nearly every other contestant on the show by successfully strategizing and voting off the Traitors hidden in plain sight. During one of the last roundtable discussions, Windey and Reyes had a contentious back-and-forth in which Windey called herself an “easy target” for the Traitors, prompting Reyes to respond, “I don’t think you’re an easy target, I think you’re super smart, Gabby.” Windey snapped back, “I’m not saying I’m dumb.”
When asked about that moment, Windey tells Rolling Stone she was “just telling [Reyes] the truth,” adding, “Her defense was bad and she sold herself out. She was like, ‘No Gabby, I actually think you’re smart.’ Like, whoa. That’s not what we’re talking about at all. So, you kind of know what she was alluding to.”
As to why she might have been underestimated by other contestants, Windey says, “I think they just assume somebody who talks like me and maybe is bubbly has to be dumb. But whatever, we come in all different shapes and sizes.”
At the Traitors Season Three reunion, which also streamed on Thursday night, host Andy Cohen noted that Catania is the first Real Housewives cast member to win The Traitors, even though she voted incorrectly eight out of 10 times at the roundtable.
“I’m not a gamer — I am now, but I wasn’t — so I go with my heart because that’s just who I am,” Catania tells Rolling Stone. “I did it like I do on Housewives. I never did what the popular vote would be, I never did what people want or what the girls wanted me to do. I always did what I would normally do.”
Still, she admits, “This is not real life so I kind of got confused between the two worlds. Even the gamers, they’re good people in real life, but they’ll stab you in the back in the game because that’s the game. I just couldn’t put the two together yet. I can now.”
Now that they’ve watched the show’s episodes, the winners don’t think there’s any world in which Reyes and Wiger, the two Traitors who stuck around the longest, could have pulled off a win. For Lord Ivar, things may have gone in Reyes’ favor if she recruited Efron to join her as a last-minute Traitor instead of Britney Haynes, who Reyes has a history with on Big Brother.
“But she didn’t,” Windey chimes in. Catania agrees, saying, “That was the stupidest move she could have done, to pick someone that already stabbed you on the back [on another show].”
There was never any hope for the Traitors to win the game, according to Efron, who says he thinks “Carolyn and Danielle were just oil and water.”
“They couldn’t have gotten along in there, especially once Danielle crossed Carolyn. Carolyn already has a hard enough time trusting people, and once you burn her once, she’s never going to trust you again.”
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