Since the start of The Celebrity Traitors, there have been rumours claiming that one moment in the series blindsided producers so much that they had to rethink a planned twist.
It’s now being theorised that the latest episode of the hit BBC series, which aired on Friday (23 October), featured this moment, which might have drastically affected the episode’s outcome.
The moment in question arose during Friday’s challenge, in which Faithfuls inadvertently picked their three most-trusted contestants – only to pick the three Traitors.
At the start of the challenge, in which contestants collected bags of gold and placed them onto pitchforks positioned next to scarecrows with their names on, host Claudia Winkleman revealed that if three bags of gold were placed next to a scarecrow, it would be blown up. However, the three contestants whose scarecrows remained intact at the end of the game had a chance to secure a “game-changing power”.
In a hilariously ironic and extremely unlikely turn of events, many Faithfuls decided that the three contestants eligible to receive the power should be the ones they deemed to be the most trustworthy – Maya Jama, James Acaster and King Kenny, who unbeknownst to them, are the three Traitors.
“Have we completed the game?” Jama joke, with a stunned Acaster adding: “You couldn’t have written it.”
It was then revealed that one of the three would be given a dagger, granting them the power of a double vote at the roundtable. But viewers pointed out that, in the most recent US version of the show, this same challenge led to a different result – the Power of the Pardon, which granted one contestant the opportunity to reverse a banishment.
Some fans are convinced that this twist was changed on the UK version of the show after three Traitors were given the power, as it would not be in their interests to reverse a banishment.
Explaining the theory, one viewer wrote on X/Twitter: “Streets are saying this is the cliffhanger they had to scrap, the original power was to be able to undo a banishment and since it wasn't won by a faithful they had to change it cuz a traitor undoing a banishment wasn't as good as a faithful doing it.”
Other people were in agreement on Reddit: “Claudia did big-up the power as a game-changer. A double vote is not a game-changer,” one said, with another chiming in: “Obviously, having chosen all three Traitors, it made the whole thing obsolete because they would go with banishment in any case.”
The episode ended with a tiebreak at the roundtable, as contestants were forced to pick between Joanne McNally and Sharon Rooney. A cliffhanger ending blocked viewers from discovering who Kenny voted for; whoever he picks in Thursday night’s episode (29 October) will be banished.
And while this proved a suitable cliffhanger for an ordinary episode, it felt like a rather tame way to tide viewers over going into the final week. Meanwhile in the US series, which is airing concurrently with the UK version, the same episode ended with Alan Cumming revealing that whoever had the Power of the Pardon could reverse the banishment if they chose, meaning they could return to the game as normal.
However, the challenge that rewarded the power was different. While it did feature scarecrows, contestants were tasked with ripping them apart to find bags of money, which they then placed in barrels, but inside the scarecrows were also “black hearts”, which, if found, permitted players to immediately eject a rival of their choice from the challenge. This blocked them from winning the “game-changing” power.
The other remaining contestants on The Celebrity Traitors include Michael Sheen, Romesh Ranganathan, Sebastian “Bash” Croft and James Blunt. The current series ends on Friday (30 October) with a bumper 80-minute episode.
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