The Traitors Season 2's Casting Twist Came at the Expense of Actual Twists

When Peacock announced that The Traitors had recruited an all-celebrity cast for Season 2, the move was met with widespread excitement from fans. Reuniting the best players from across the competition show world and pitting them against some of Bravo's biggest names in a glamorous, high-stakes game of Mafia? What could be better?

The Traitors' all-famous cast addressed Season 1's greatest flaw — the strategic imbalance between reality TV veterans like Cirie Fields and their "normie" competition — but perhaps more importantly, it catapulted Season 2 even further into the cultural conversation. Many viewers were already familiar with the likes of Phaedra Parks (The Real Housewives of Atlanta), Dan Gheesling (Big Brother), and Parvati Shallow (Survivor), the core group of Traitors for much of the season, but watching them interact with one another was an entirely new experience. Their squabbles became online lore, their one-liners and reaction shots instant memes. "Oh, my Lord, sweet baby Jesus, not Ekin-Su" hit so hard because of our baked-in understanding of Phaedra as a Bravo personality and the decade she spent refining her theatrical persona, just as Dan's decision to throw Phaedra under the bus on his way out the door inspired weeks of chatter about whether he'd lost his touch in the years since his Big Brother coup.

The existing relationships (some good, some bad) between cast members also added to the fun. Early on, an alliance emerged among the Bravo stars — a group that included Shereé Whitfield (RHOA), Mercedes "MJ" Javid (Shahs of Sunset), and later Kate Chastain (Below Deck) — and with so much downtime between meals, missions, and roundtables, it often felt like viewers were given a behind-the-scenes look at the BravoCon green room as they sat around shooting the breeze.

Meanwhile, a natural suspicion took hold among the "gamer" clique, as Survivor enemies Parvati and Sandra Diaz-Twine expressed doubts about the other's trustworthiness, and players from different shows closed ranks. That tension led to a delicious moment in which Sandra and Janelle Pierzina (Big Brother) accused the other of being a Traitor from across the table — they were both Faithfuls — that stands as a testament to how delightfully dumb this show can be:

Janelle: "You're a f*cking Traitor."
Sandra: "You're a f*cking Traitor."
Janelle: "You're a Traitor, b*tch."
Sandra: "You're the biggest f*cking Traitor here, so f*ck off."
Janelle: "You f*ck off!"

But while The Traitors Season 2's vibes were as spectacular as Alan Cumming's many capes, they came at the expense of exciting gameplay. As the celebrities settled in, they divided along predictable lines: gamers in one corner, Housewives and Bravo stars in another, and the leftovers — led by former Bachelor Peter Weber, who proved surprisingly savvy at identifying Traitors — in a third. It's understandable that the cast would seek out friendly faces in such a stressful setting ("You have a tiny bit of familiarity, and you just glom onto it," Pavati said during the reunion), but with the players so firmly entrenched in their respective camps, there was little need for double-crossing or creative treachery, making it easy for contestants to skate by week after week. (Looking at you, Kevin Kreider, of Bling Empire "fame.")

Nowhere was the alliance problem clearer than in Phaedra's strategy (if you can call it that) as a Traitor. In the first half of the season, when she still shared the turret with Dan and Parvati, Phaedra gamely agreed to murder some of Bravo's finest, including Tamra Judge (RHOC), in hopes that it would throw suspicion off her. The plan worked: Phaedra flew under the radar until Dan's backstab at the roundtable, at which point she was forced to start playing defense rather than stay the course and continue sowing chaos in the castle.

Things got even more dire for Phaedra when the Peter Pals set their sights on her and Parvati in the wake of Dan's banishment. With a dozen players left in the game, there was no shortage of potential murder victims to choose from, but Phaedra opted to pick off Peter's crew one by one, with Carsten "Bergie" Bergersen (Love Island USA), Kevin, and British politician John Bercow biting the dust on consecutive nights. The decimation of the Peter Pals made it obvious that at least one of the remaining Bravo stars was a Traitor, exacerbating concerns about Phaedra (and later Kate, whom she recruited after Parvati was banished.)

The better play would have been for Phaedra to target some of her own allies — like Shereé and MJ, neither of whom contributed much to the game — earlier in the competition, but her deep sense of loyalty to her fellow Bravolebrities prevented her from pulling the proverbial trigger. Phaedra admitted as much during the reunion, explaining, "I kept the people around that I really liked." As a result, the episodes leading up to Phaedra's inevitable banishment were light on twists (and Episode 9, "A Game of Death," ended on a frustrating cliffhanger before revealing the far-too-obvious result of the roundtable vote that led to Peter's ouster), even if they did give us Phaedra's cutting "This is not The Bachelor, and I don't have to kiss your ass for a rose" insult.

The pitfalls of the cast's over-familiarity could also be seen in the Season 2 finale. After correctly identifying Kate as a Traitor, it all came down to MJ and The Challenge alums Trishelle Cannatella and Chris "CT" Tamburello, all Faithfuls, who debated whether to keep playing, or end the game and share the $208,000 prize. Trishelle and CT stuck together all season long, but it was CT who did the heavy lifting to get them to the finale: Trishelle's most memorable moments came when she spearheaded the Banish Peppermint (RuPaul's Drag Race) campaign and cried because CT lit John's torch over hers, denying her immunity. (She also wore some hideous outfits that made her look like "a 2009 Disney star," as fans were right to point out.) Her spot in the finale was owed entirely to her decades-long relationship with CT, and not, as her co-stars bizarrely insisted during the reunion, her strategy or charming personality, two things that endeared CT to the cast and audience alike.

When both CT and Trishelle opted to banish again, all signs pointed to The Challenge stars icing out MJ and splitting the prize between the two of them — an outcome that had been in the works since the gamers-versus-Housewives rift emerged in the first batch of episodes. But then, Trishelle pointed the finger at CT, explaining that his last-minute vote for Sandra at the final roundtable and the torch debacle raised red flags. Her vote marked the most shocking moment of the finale, if not the entire season, in large part because someone was finally willing to break ranks and stab one of their own in the back, friendships or long-held alliances be damned.

But Trishelle's courage didn't last. When they went back to their chalkboards to break the stalemate, Trishelle changed her vote, and both she and CT sent MJ packing. It all made for an unsatisfying ending, less because MJ deserved her share of the pot — she clearly believed she'd been wronged, as she accused the winners of displaying "grifter energy" during the reunion — and more so because it was clear CT and Trishelle planned this from the outset.

In a postmortem interview with Vulture, CT confirmed there was "a pact" among The Challenge stars to avoid sharing the money, if at all possible. "We started this competition reality-TV stuff, and we're gonna finish it," he said. "That was a conversation we had in the beginning — I believe it was on the first day."

Maybe MTV-on-Bravo crime is the kind of drama producers had in mind when they tapped an all-celebrity cast, but the tribalism ultimately worked to The Traitors' (and the Traitors') disadvantage. These famous faces provided eight weeks of campy fun, but it was far too easy for them to fall back on their preexisting relationships, rivalries, and biases, and the game itself suffered as a result. "Casting twists," as executive producer Mike Cotton has teased about Season 3, are well and good, but they should never come at the expense of actual twists, lest this Machiavellian game of social strategy devolve into a popularity contest.

The Traitors Season 2 is streaming on Peacock. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Claire Spellberg Lustig is the Senior Editor at Primetimer and a scholar of The View. Follow her on Twitter at @c_spellberg.