What 'profoundly moving' The Traitors finale taught us about loyalty

Her cleverness, skilled misdirection of fellow players, and calm tactics under pressure had won me over, in what is a difficult game of trust, often misplaced loyalties, and oh-so human betrayal.

As the finale opened, I’d thought she was probably a goner. She would have been, if not for the luck of chance, followed by the loyalty of fellow traitor Stephen Libby, a 32-year-old cyber security consultant, with an impressive range of knitwear and a trustworthy Isle of Lewis accent.

Libby let go of the within-touching-distance likelihood of winning the entire £95k prize money for himself, opting to stick to a pact made with Duffy to never betray each other. It was touch and go at times; a tricky decision. But, when Stephen voted to banish the final faithful, Jack, instead of banishing Rachel – which, for those unfamiliar with the show, would’ve left Stephen, as the last traitor standing, the sole victor - I admit to finding it profoundly moving.

Profoundly moved?! By a reality telly gameshow? I know how silly it sounds. In the history of the show, however, it has never happened before; two traitors sticking together, faithful to each other if nobody else.

But more than that, I’ve long felt like loyalty, in the sense of keeping one’s word to someone, sticking to promises made no matter how difficult, is a value that, throughout my lifetime, has rapidly been going out of fashion.

If a display of such comes from the unlikely source of a mild-mannered, youthful, dapper young man from Lewis on a prime-time show watched and applauded by millions? I’ll take it.

I was 18-years-old when reality television came to the UK in the year 2000, via the then genuinely experimental and initially intriguing Big Brother. As TV writer and cultural critic Phil Harrison charts in his 2020 book The Age of Static: How TV Explains Modern Britain, it wasn’t long before such shows became ubiquitous.

The contestants were fairly ordinary people back then, largely because we all were. Before long, however, the possibilities of fame and riches led to more outrageous, attention-seeking players.

“Soon, a greasy pole was in place that the most rapacious and marketable contestants could scramble their way up,” Harrison writes, noting that into this mix came the “hyper -accelerating and disorientating churn of social media”, alongside traditional tabloid gossip.

Over time, it seemed dysfunctional personalities became “a grimly marketable commodity.” For my entire adult life, I’ve watched politics and culture adapt to the twin forces of voyeuristic reality TV and social media influences, becoming ever-more personality driven, shallow, and lacking in substance as a result.

Those of us long enough in the tooth will remember ‘WebCameron’ (2006), where then opposition leader David Cameron of the Conservatives posted homely, relaxed – and highly mocked – videos in a modernizing bid to shed off the Tories ‘toff’ image.

Then followed various footage capturing the early buffoonery of Boris Johnson (circa 2008 onwards), alongside the grim exaltation and aggressive narcissism of the now President of the USA Donald Trump’s US series of The Apprentice (starting in 2004). Steadily, these new ways of communicating – and entertaining - disrupted the line between truth and spectacle, politics and frivolity.

The Traitors, by comparison to all that’s preceded it, feels wonderfully wholesome in comparison to shows like Big Brother. Players are set up to deceive, yes, but there’s not been a season yet where contestants don’t also display solidarity, guilt, compassion. While competitive, participants genuinely come to like each other.

There’s no audience vote, no public humiliation, no gain from contestants playing to the cameras. The object is forging trust, with the cast of characters – all highly relatable - entirely responsible for what happens. Ultimately, whether the contestants – ranging from builders, foster carers, to retired police detectives – decide to stick to promised loyalties or act purely in self-interest means the outcome is often unexpected.

Like, in the end, someone being so loyal to a relative stranger, who has only recently become a trusted friend, that they decide to forego £47k rather than betray them.

Many thought Stephen’s choice ridiculous. Who would willingly give up a fortune in what is, ultimately, just a game? “I couldn’t go back on my word to you,” he explained to a very

grateful Rachel. “It wasn’t worth the money.”

After a quarter-century of reality TV and social media, watching such chivalry was a wonderful collective moment. Libby has a very expressive face. Viewers could see the churn and angst he felt, leading up to his decision. I kept thinking of GK Chesterton’s famous quote about how, as we’re all “in the same boat in a stormy sea… we owe each other a terrible loyalty.”

Such a value is lost on the most aggressive, narcissistic, reality TV show ‘star’ that has ever existed; a man who gained a Presidency from the slop-politics of division nurtured by 25-years of spectacle over substance. We’re a long way from ‘Cam-Cam’, as David Cameron’s early attempts at combining politics, social media, and reality TV was dubbed.

Trump’s world is one where nothing is real, everything is treated as a game, and nothing and nobody matters outwith the pursuit of naked self-interest. Other countries, once recognised as allies, are now treated as bit-player competitors or prizes to be won on missions, ‘truth’ as something manipulable by edits.

If only Donald Trump’s behaviours and values had stayed confined to a reality TV show. If only loyalty like Stephen Libby’s could come back into fashion.