The Traitors UK: Twists, turns and betrayals

Devious betrayals, shock twists and mortifying fails, this season of The Traitors UK has had it all.

The format-breaking twists began in episode one when the group had to choose three contestants to get off the train to the castle and potentially face leaving the game before it even began.

And the chaos didn’t end there, with daily missions that pitted the group against each other, tears at almost every roundtable and constant eye rolling.

While we ponder what will fill the void left in our weeknight evenings, here’s a look back at the 13 most memorable moments of epic treachery.

From the moment Linda risked whiplash by turning her head so quickly when Claudia said the word “traitors”, she became the darling of series three.

The retired opera singer channelled her GCSE drama skills to hide her true traitor identity – and even earned herself a central London billboard.

“Oh my god, who the hell is not going to come back?” she asked unconvincingly one breakfast as they waited to see who had been murdered.

Linda’s fiery side began to emerge during the narrowboat challenge, in which the contestants jabbed at each other for their poor rowing skills.

At the roundtable that followed, Linda told Anna witheringly: “You don’t need to be a sailor to know how to tie a rope, sorry.”

But all good things must come to an end, and, by episode seven, the rest of the pack had caught up with faithful Jake, who suspected Linda “from day one”.

Studies have found the Welsh accent to be the most trustworthy and while that didn’t help Welsh native Elen who was banished second, it certainly came in handy for Charlotte.

“I’m not actually from Wales,” the 33-year-old Londoner privately admitted to the camera in episode one, as she dropped her fake accent.

“I’ve been putting on a Welsh accent because my mum’s from Wales, it’s one of the most trustworthy accents.”

While her fake persona has served her well, it was a hilariously pointless plot twist, and, by the end, her two accents had begun to blur into each other anyway.

Move over Mark Darcy, there’s a new handsome, charming and slightly bumbling man in town: Alexander.

From falling into a flower bush while playing badminton to opera-singing “Sperbu Yur Wur Wur” – which now lives rent free in my mind – Alexander wins the award for nicest contestant, and, thanks to Claudia, we now know that he’s also single.

After he (literally) did most of the heavy lifting during one of the challenges, the nation gave an audible gasp when fellow faithful Joe claimed Alexander’s tiredness was “an act”.

It was heart-breaking to see loveable doctor Kas ostracised by his fellow contestants in the day before his banishment.

At the roundtable, he hit back at Jake for his illogical theory that Kas must be a traitor because he saves lives during the day and therefore, must kill at night.

“You’re basically calling me Harold Shipman or something!” he replied, in what became one of the most viral moments of the series.

Kas (sort of) got his revenge with his exit speech, as he made the others think he was about to admit to being a traitor before pivoting to the truth.

“Joe, who would have thought you’d caught me based on a twinkle in the eye?” he said before revealing he was, in fact, a faithful.

Roundtables are full of treachery, tears and… shocking spelling.

One of the worst cases this series has to be Keith spelling Nathan as “Nather” – but the name people struggled with most was Minah’s.

The traitor (rightfully) wasn’t having any of it and death-stared Anna when she wrote “Meina” on her chalkboard.

She finally broke the apparent code of silence about the cast’s awful spelling when she told Alexander there was a ‘h’ at the end of her name – right before being banished.

Who would’ve thought lovely “Welsh” Charlotte would turn out to be a smiling evil mastermind and betray not one, but two fellow traitors.

First, it was poor Minah. Much to the original traitor’s surprise, Charlotte turned on her at the roundtable – after Minah had spent the whole day telling the cameras she totally trusted her fellow traitor to have her back.

If that wasn’t enough, Charlotte then chose to recruit faithful Freddie and encouraged him to murder Leanne, despite knowing she had the shield.

A cunning move and one that helped her achieve her aim of getting him banished, but perhaps she schemed too hard as Freddie chose to write her name on his card at the roundtable, casting doubts over her true identity.

There’s nothing like a bit of family drama (remember Diane and Ross?) and when Armani and Maia revealed they were sisters, viewers knew they were in for a treat.

Armani quickly established herself as the leader of the pack and was even brazen enough to advise her fellow traitors to be bolshier.

But her bold personality quickly came under fire and her fate was sealed by sister Maia who told the roundtable she was 60% sure Armani was a traitor – then voted her out.

Unfortunately for Maia, the remaining traitors chose to kill her off that same night.

From the moment Fozia reappeared in the game, she had it in for Linda and (rightly) suspected her of being one of the traitors.

When her suspicions were confirmed during a face-to-face murder by Linda and Minah, she sassily told Linda: “You’re not going to last. Get a good night’s sleep tonight because you’re going next.”

Linda, with equal sass, replied: “Get over it”.

A perfect interaction between the two queens of season three.

A rail replacement service is always bad news… But not this time.

It was when viewers were shown a mysterious carriage marked “rail replacement” that they began to suspect the three faithfuls who sacrificed themselves in episode one might be returning.

The next episode, Alexander, Fozia and Jack appeared in cages suspended above the forest and fellow contestants could choose to save two of them.

Unfortunately for Jack, his plea to stay – “I’m a gardener from Yorkshire and I’m 6’5 so I’d be good in the missions” – wasn’t convincing enough and he was banished from the game forever.

Among this year’s melodramatic cutaways to contestants supposedly in their hotel rooms was a clip of Charlotte reading a “Learn Welsh” book, priest Lisa praying and Keith practising his martial arts.

But the one that stood out to many viewers was Freddie taking a shower.

The topless video of the 20-year-old sent the internet into a frenzy and of all the thirsty comments on social media, our favourite was a comparison to Peter Andre in the video for Mysterious Girl.

Who knew that central to this year’s show would be the pronunciation of the word clique?

But regardless of how it’s said, the clique – made up of Leanne, Leon, Tyler and Livi – soon turned on their own in an attempt to distance themselves from their supposedly traitorous friendship group.

Ultimately, it was Tyler who was thrown to the wolves at the roundtable in an ambush subtly triggered by scheming Minah.

Contestants have a habit of concealing what they think are beneficial professions (think actress Maddy in series one).

This year, Lisa chose to conceal the fact she was a priest but revealed her true identity halfway through the series as a way of proving she was faithful, claiming her calling meant she couldn’t lie or deceive.

Not only did everyone seem pretty unfazed by this announcement, the traitors also later chose to murder Lisa, knowing her pureness of heart meant she’d never be banished.

A lose-lose for Lisa, unfortunately.

The mega twist this year was the introduction of the seer – a powerful ability never seen on the show before, which allowed one contestant to find out whether another player was a traitor or a faithful.

With a bit of help from Alexander, Francesca collected the most gold in the challenge and was awarded the power.

And with great power came great responsibility, and unfortunately for Charlotte, Francesca inadvertently chose to find out the true identity of the one remaining traitor.