News Every Day | 06:00

‘The Traitors 3’ Episode 2 welcomes 3 new players, as the cast rebels against the ‘infestation’ of ‘Housewives’

At the end of Episode 1 of The Traitors Season 3, Bob The Drag Queen from RuPaul’s Drag Race, Danielle Reyes from Big Brother, and Carolyn Wiger from Survivor were preparing to make their first murderous decision as newly appointed “Traitors.” While they got cozy high in the castle turret, host Alan Cumming was below in the woods with Survivor legend Rob Mariano, who would join the game the following day as a fourth Traitor. Alan also teased that two additional players would enter alongside Rob, but their identities remained cloaked in secrecy.

Read on for our break down of The Traitors Season 3, Episode 2, titled “Revenge Is a Dish Best Served Cold,” which streamed on Peacock on Thursday, Jan. 9. The celebrities alive at the start of the episode were: Bob Harper, Bob The Drag Queen, Britney Haynes, Carolyn Wiger, Chanel Ayan, Chrishell Stause, Ciara Miller, Danielle Reyes, Dolores Catania, Dorinda Medley, Dylan Efron, Gabby Windey, Jeremy Collins, Lord Ivar Mountbatten, Nikki Garcia, Rob Mariano, Robyn Dixon, Sam Asghari, Tom Sandoval, Tony Vlachos, and Wells Adams.

“These Housewives are a f—ing infestation — they have too much power”

On the first night in the turret, Traitors Danielle, and Carolyn were at odds over how best to frame a Faithful for their first kill. Danielle saw Carolyn as “all over the place” and “sporadic” while Carolyn was frustrated that Danielle was trying to apply her Big Brother strategy to a game that is very different. Self-described “drama queen” Bob D.Q. as settling in for the tension between the two, but was more squarely focused on the importance of splitting up the group of four Real Housewives with a kill. Danielle and Bob D.Q. were in alignment preferring to murder Dorinda because it would frame Ivar who fought with her earlier in the night, but Carolyn wanted Robyn because it would keep Dorinda in the game as a cover shield for them.

The next morning, the slow crawl of players in to breakfast revealed that Dorinda was in fact the first murdered player. She tried to make it nice, but the chance to frame Ivar as well as one of the other Housewives was too good of an opportunity for Danielle, Bob D.Q., and Carolyn to pass up. Robyn recognized the decision as a “target” getting placed on the backs of the Housewives while Bob D.Q. and Danielle spent their time at the buffet using emotional reactions to Dorinda’s death to cover up their duplicitous roles in the game.

What none of the players knew by this point was that Alan would be adding even more chaos to the game later that afternoon. Overnight, Alan invited Rob back from exile and introduced him to Wes Bergmann from The Challenge and Derrick Levasseur from Big Brother as two other new competitors. Recognizing one another as “gamers,” the three guys made an unofficial pact to stick together to prevent the current players from eliminating them each too quickly.

“Maybe I’ll return the favor, or maybe I won’t”

To formally invite Rob, Derrick, and Wes to the game, Alan brought the players to the forest to compete in their next mission. With three shields up for grabs, the players had to confiscate bags of coins from the trees and place them in one of the tubes assigned to the three new players. If the guys received enough coins, the shield they hold would be theirs to bestow a player of their choice after the first banishment and before the next murder. In the end, all three shields were earned, $15,000 was added to the prize pot and Rob, Derrick, and Wes were welcomed in to the game with open arms because everyone thought they had a potential new ally in at least one of them.

“Let me build some trust with people that I already know”

When the group gathered at the Round Table for their first banishment, there was an unsettling amount of hesitation for people to speak up. Bob D.Q. was willing to jump in first, throwing out the “wild accusation” of Wells as his prime suspect. Wells flipped the conversation back to Robyn, who he felt got defensive earlier in the day when he made the comment that the murder of Dorinda was a “stupid” move. Tom added to the conversation by putting Chrishelle and Jeremy’s names on table and then Danielle posited that at least one of the Housewives had to be a Traitor and so they should banish one of them. At the vote, Ivar, Wells and Robyn all had four votes against them with Carolyn’s decision the last and deciding fifth vote to banish Wells. The other four votes against Wells came from Sam, Jeremy, Tony and Robyn.

Once Wells was revealed to the group as a Faithful, it was up to Rob, Derrick, and Wes to decide who to secretly hand their shields off to. Danielle was hoping Derrick would give her his as a Big Brother sign of solidarity, but he chose to pass it off to Dylan instead as a way of bringing him in as an ally. Thinking similarly, Wes wanted to get in on the majority of Survivor players by giving his shield to Jeremy. Rob’s plan was a little different, opting to put his in his friend Tony’s hands in order to shore up trust that he can later break.