Fiona’s grenade on tonight’s episode of The Traitors has crossed the line

*Warning: spoilers ahead for the Traitors 

There’s nothing wrong with backing the wrong horse, but when the one you were rooting for makes a mistake as erratic as Fiona’s tonight, it’s just unedifying. 

Yesterday’s secret Traitor reveal left me touting the 62-year-old as the second Alan Carr coming: a whip-smart, tongue-in-cheek Traitor masquerading as a doddering biddie who can’t remember who said what when and is primarily there for comic relief, not Machiavellian scheming. 

Just as quickly as she jumped to the frontrunner spot in the castle, she has set the entire place alight.

With Amanda banished and her secret identity as a detective divulged, Fiona decided Rachel had made up the copper backstory to wield influence. She then accused Rachel, in front of the entire cast crammed in the kitchen, of being a Traitor. Rachel tried to laugh the charge off, but in their turret, gave Fiona a stink eye that means war. 

From the moment Fiona removed her scarlet cloak to reveal that bouncing blonde head of hair, Rachel has looked ill at ease. Their tete-a-tetes were a crossfire of accusations: one wasn’t a team player, the other couldn’t be trusted. Ineffective Stephen looked on. 

It was clear trouble was ahead, but we could never have guessed how soon. In our second week of the series, Fiona’s self-professed ‘grenade’ has exploded on the board game and made shrapnel out of all the pieces. 

It’s marvellous telly, but there’s no realm of possibility where the two strongest Traitors both emerge unscathed.

When this series began, the most trumpeted cast member was real-life detective Amanda, whose stony-faced demeanour at the roundtable put viewers in mind of an AC-12 interrogation. 

In practice, her experience in clearly having to weigh everything up resulted in her hemming and hawing before just nominating Jade again. 

But revealing her former job to Rachel before being banished (on a coin toss against Reece!) lit the touchpaper between Fiona and her fellow Traitor.

Do you think Fiona’s move was a misfire? Have your say in the comments belowComment Now

Rachel should never have shared Amanda’s secret with the group post-banishment, not because she could have predicted Fiona would stab her in the back, but because sticking your neck out in any way can just as easily backfire as bolster you. 

It doesn’t even make sense to reveal anything about a banished contestant – there’s no use crying over spilt milk, or departed Faithfuls, after the fact. Roxy and Ellie knew enough to keep schtum about their late loved ones.

But the real mortal sin is on Fiona’s part, for a scene of Traitor on Traitor violence that will no doubt go down in the show’s history. 

The murderous cabal is always betraying one another, particularly in later weeks once the herd has thinned and the paranoia sets in, but this move came when suspicion had barely troubled Fiona or Rachel. I can’t think of a more spectacular unforced error.

Fans might have bemoaned the secret Traitor reveal coming too soon, but Fiona’s behaviour shows its biggest drawback yet – going from omnipotent to almost powerless leaves her in serious danger. 

For days on end, she was the only player who could completely orchestrate the game, with near-total impunity. The secret Traitor was essentially a producer.

That power has been taken away, putting her on a level footing with the other Traitors, but Fiona’s accusation that Rachel is donning the cloak has all the arrogance of someone who still thinks they’re presiding from that elevated position.

If Fiona was still operating from the shadows, Stephen and Rachel’s pact would likely have fallen to pieces when the real suspicion started to fall on either, which I say charitably, because it would definitely have been Stephen. 

That said, neither of them would have dared to do what Fiona has. There’s no honour among Traitors and even less when one was once a secret Traitor.

‘This game has officially started,’ Rachel said in response. Except, it hasn’t, because Fiona’s bold kitchen accusation that Rachel is a Traitor, knowing full well she is, will only result in their mutual demise. 

Suspicion can swing like a pendulum from one person to another on things far smaller than this argument. Although I’m as giddy as anyone to see the pyrotechnics go off in that turret during tomorrow’s episode.

What’s even worse is that Stephen is probably on his way out too. 

He had one slip of the tongue at the roundtable yesterday, another at breakfast and has the constant ruddy hue of someone who’s hiding something. What a disappointing batch of Traitors this series has provided so far.

The cast all wanted to be in the turret this series, but on the UK series it’s most often been the Faithful who have won it. Harry Clark’s series two strategy proves that staying under the radar is key to clinching the cash as one of the green-cloaked baddies. 

Every Traitor this series has failed to strike the balance between stoking suspicion among others and avoiding it themselves.

But Fiona has blown things up by openly turning on one of her own for no apparent reason other than annoyance at not having been let in on the secret and – for the first time this series – being out of the loop.

The coming fisticuffs will certainly be good TV, even if it isn’t good gameplay; maybe that’s what Fiona wanted all along.

I backed her as the dark horse to become the frontrunner, but she’s fallen at the first hurdle. 

Either way, she’s thrown her grenade, and the fallout will be explosive.

The Traitors continues on BBC One and iPlayer on January 7 at 8pm.

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