The next season of hit murder mystery series The Traitors looks set to ditch the show’s big new Secret Traitor twist.
That’s according to an executive behind the series, who said the idea had served its purpose — and that The Traitors’ original format was strong enough to survive without it.
Stephen Lambert, founder of The Traitors’ U.S. and UK production company Studio Lambert, made the remarks at a recent event attended by IGN, while discussing his hopes that the show would run for years to come.
Studio Lambert produces both the U.S. and UK versions of The Traitors back-to-back each year at the series’ iconic Scottish castle, making for a joined up production schedule that helps keeps overall costs down, as in-game challenges and format twists are often replicated across the two versions.
The most recent seasons of both the US and UK Traitors introduced a major twist — a Secret Traitor role that was kept hidden from the other Traitors, and also the show’s audience. For once, viewers were placed in the same position as the Faithful, not knowing if who they were watching was really a friend or foe.
But the twist drew a mixed response from audiences, particularly its short-lived usage in the US version, and now Lambert has said the idea was not intended to return. Indeed, the original idea behind having a Secret Traitor was simply a way to differentiate the latest UK season from last year’s first UK Traitors Celebrity spin-off, Lambert said.
“A good format is something that’s designed in such a way that people feel a sense of familiarity with it, which is why they want to keep coming back to come back and watch it,” Lambert began, speaking during an event at the University of East Anglia in Norfolk.
“But intrinsically it’s designed so that there’s sufficient variation — partly, obviously, through the change of cast, but also you want to make little changes within it… What I like about The Traitors is there’s so many ways that story can go, that once you add a different cast and once you think of some additional tweaks here and there.
“After the huge success of the Celebrity Traitors, we introduced the idea of a Secret Traitor as a way of doing something that was different,” he continued, “but it wasn’t something we wanted to keep going with. It was a clever way of signalling we were doing something different, but I go back to the pleasure of the show being that the audience doesn’t know who the Traitors are.
“There have been other shows which have done something similar, where the audience didn’t know who ‘the mole’ was,” he concluded, “and the trouble is you’re completely a victim of the edit… and that doesn’t feel very satisfying.”
New seasons of both the U.S. and UK Traitors are on the way for 2027, with filming set to begin back in Scotland in a few months’ time. This year, a civilian-led US season will also be filmed, while the UK will get a second season of Celebrity Traitors alongside its usual civilian format.
Image credit: Euan Cherry/Peacock via Getty Images
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
