The Traitors' Big Red Twist

As millions of fans of the BBC mega hit The Traitors look forward to the return of Series 4 on New Year’s Day, the programme makers have launched a tease so fiendish, it has left viewers as confused as Kate Garraway just after she’s had a mission explained to her.

Let’s start with the first sign that something might be afoot: the first teaser trailer for the new series.

In an otherwise black and white trailer, we see the colour red highlighted in the Traitors’ wax seal and in Claudia Winkleman‘s fingerless gloves. What seemed like just a stylish aesthetic was soon revealed to be much more specific to this particular upcoming season of The Traitors by the next promotional trailer.

The promo starts with the classic festive ditty Santa Baby playing, but immediately when we see a red hooded figure scurrying past the window, we know it ain’t going to be Saint Nick.

Instead, the figure is revealed to be wearing a red Traitors’ cloak rather than the traditional green one – sparking a frenzy of speculation amongst excited fans of the BBC gameshow. What could this Red Traitor mean for the game was the question on everyone’s lips. Here is The Recs’ deep dive into these murky rouged waters.

The Red Traitor was just the show being festive. Have you seen this show? It lives on twists, turns, and paranoia. No way are they being throwaway with the red cloak. Yes, holidays were coming, holidays were coming, but they’re over now, and the red-cloaked mystery remains. Given the ceremony with which Claudia hands over the traitors’ ceremonial robes in the dead of night, no way are the programme makers going to introduce a new colour glibly for it to mean nothing.

A Super Traitor returns? Just as the image of Santa Claus with his red hood is synonymous with giving presents, could this Red Traitor be gifting their presence? On the British iteration of the franchise, the Faithful have been defeated by the Traitors twice. Once, recently on Celebrity Traitors, when Alan Carr sweated, laughed and hid in plain sight on his way to victory. But this celeb series was filmed in April and May 2025 in the Scottish Highlands and Season 4 of The Traitors was recorded immediately afterwards in June – so no time for the Traitor winner to be recruited to this upcoming season.

Instead, cast your mind back to Season 2, when the baby-faced assassin, Harry Clark, schemed his way to the win and the £95k prize. Could Harry be returning, not to play the game necessarily, but to give strategy and advice in the Traitors turret to this year’s treacherous gang? Possibly. But it feels a little overhyped for a mentor scheme, so let’s rule this one out as possible but unlikely.

Red Riding Hood? There’s something about a particular colour of red that is forever and ever after associated with fairy tales. Is there a link to Little Red Riding Hood perhaps? Or is that just in our minds because of the excellent production of Sondheim and Lapine’s Into The Woods that is running at Bridge Theatre? Probably not – but what a fantastic excuse to invite you to read our ★★★★★ 5-star review of that production – HERE.

A mystery wrapped in red – One of the most-repeated requests from some fans of The Traitors franchise from the off is to have a series where you as a viewer don’t know the identity of The Traitors. When BBC’s Chief Content Officer, Kate Phillips, chatted on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast, she said something along the lines of the show needing the viewers to be in on the machinations and schemings of the traitors for it to work.

But what if there were just one traitor whose identity the viewers did not know? There are two ways of doing this.

First, people receive the Claudia Tap on the shoulder (a deadlier version of a Hollywood Handshake) at the round table, and when she meets them afterwards, while most are given the traditional green cloaks, one is given a red cloak, and their identity is not revealed to the watching audience at home. Their back is always to the camera in the Traitors’ turret; their voice is disguised in the edit, so we hear them in discussions but cannot identify them. This is the option that has had the most traction online. It’s deliciously tempting. But… let’s just say the show had tried this on the Celebrity Traitors with Alan Carr, Cat Burns and Jonathan Ross, with Jonathan being the “red traitor”. Because of the height and build of contestants in the show, it’s not going to be that hard to work out who someone is even with their back turned to the camera and their voice disguised.

But there is one other option that still could give the at-home audience the vicarious thrill of not knowing who the Red Traitor is. And that would be if the green-cloaked traitors did not know of the identity or even the existence of the red-cloaked traitor. What if this new role were to play their own game? What if green for go could be frustrated by red for stop? If there were a mystery figure in their own part of the castle, cloaked and vocally disguised, chatting to Claudia, who could perhaps take out both faithful and traitors hidden from all the other players in the game and unbeknownst to viewers, wouldn’t that be a great twist?

And at that point, Tom Daley just voted us out for using the word “unbeknownst”. ‘Who uses a word like that?‘ asked the Olympian. ‘I’m flabbergasted.‘