Everything You Need To Know Going Into ‘The Traitors’ Season 3

It’s January, reader, which means one thing and one thing only: it’s almost time for The Traitors, my favorite reality competition show.

The American format of the show pits reality stars and other celebrities against each other. This season we have former Survivor people Carolyn Wiger, Jeremy Collins, Tony Vlachos, and Rob Mariano; former Bachelor people Wells Adams and Gabby Windey; current and former Housewives Dolores Catania, Chanel Ayan, Dorinda Medley, and Robyn Dixon; former Big Brother people Britney Haynes and Danielle Reyes, and a smattering of randoms from across the reality/social media universe, like Bob Harper of The Biggest Loser, Bob The Drag Queen of Ru Paul’s Drag Race, Chrishell Stause of Selling Sunset, Ciara Miller of Summer House, Tom Sandoval of Vanderpump Rules, professional wrestler Nikki Garcia, professional brother of Zac Efron, Dylan Efron, former husband of Britney Spears, Sam Asghari, and, oh yeah, British Royal Lord Ivar Mountbatten.

This is, in my opinion as a Traitors expert, the best cast yet. The show’s secret sauce is that all of the contestants are professional television personalities, but they aren’t all professional gamers. This makes for a ridiculous mashup of strategy and personality, and the most strategic players are often not who you’d expect. Last season, Phaedra Parks of The Real Housewives of Atlanta and Married to Medicine was the one to beat before she got sent home, and she made Dan Gheesling, a Big Brother winner, shit his pants more than once.

This season, though, there are some big names from the competition world, the most obvious being the three Survivor winners. Tony Vlachos won seasons 28 and 40, Jeremy Collins season 31, and Rob Mariano, or Boston Rob as he’s referred to in the fandom, only technically won season 22, but he’s been on just about every other season of the show in some capacity, and is probably the most famous player of all time.

All three of these guys are strategic powerhouses, and all three of them definitely don’t want to lose to each other. A new sneak peek of the season just dropped, however, revealing the first seven minutes of the premiere, in which we learn that Boston Rob (maybe) enters the game as a pawn in a first challenge. Once the rest of the cast is assembled in front of the castle in the Scottish Highlands, Alan Cumming introduces them to a lone, trenched and masked figure who, once their identity is revealed, can only enter the game if one of them picks someone else to be sent home in their place.

Of course, we don’t know yet if anyone takes the bait, but we already have a sense of who might. Britney Hayes and Danielle Reyes were adversaries on Big Brother and might want to be rid of the other right away. Tony and Jeremy are already wary of each other for obvious reasons, and that castle may not be big enough for the three of them. Carolyn Wiger, their other franchise sibling, is the biggest star to come out of the new era of Survivor, and though Tony and Jeremy acted like they were excited to see her and considered her their equal, I’m sure they underestimated her. Carolyn didn’t win her season, but she made it to the final three and was famous for her heart-first approach to the game. Legends like Tony and Jeremy probably won’t take her seriously, but I bet Rob, who lost one of his seasons to his now wife, Amber Brkich, and is famous for his strategy of befriending the beautiful woman no one takes seriously to use as a shield, would recognize Carolyn as a useful ally. It would be a great first move for Carolyn to send either Tony or Jeremy home and bring Rob in, and it would establish her as more of a strategist than even her own fans know her to be. In a game like Survivor, a move that big would put a target on your back, but this isn’t Survivor, and the rest of the cast would probably respect her for it.

Speaking of the rest of the cast, I wouldn’t be surprised if people like Bob the Drag Queen, Ciara Miller, and Gabby Windey did well by virtue of being popular, but the one to watch for, I’m calling it right now, is Dolores Catania. If you don’t know Dolores, you have a week between now and January 9th, when season three airs, to catch up on her show The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

Regular readers know Jersey is my favorite reality show of all time and that I’m always looking for ways to bring it up. Dolores was on the outskirts of the show since the beginning but didn’t officially join the cast until season seven, and now is the best hope for it continuing as we know it since we’ve reached an impasse in the war between the Giudices and the Gorgas. Raised in Paterson in an Italian-American family, Dolores is famous for being “Switzerland” between Teresa Giudice and Melissa Gorga, and while she touts loyalty above all things, this is a tough-as-old-boots woman who cannot and will not suffer fools, but she’s also street-smart and scrappy as hell. If I know my Dolo, she’ll make her friends quick and her enemies quicker, but she’ll keep her signature steely reserve all along. Unless someone says something stupid, at which point she will not hesitate to cut a bitch. She’d make an excellent Traitor. This is a show that loves villains, after all—especially the female ones.