I have to saw, they’re doing an awfully good job of wringing tension from what is ultimately a slow-moving pleasure ride on a lovely historical steam train. In the most recent civilian Traitors series, didn’t they all hang out of helicopters or something?
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To discover the keys, the contestants have to find letters and then spell them. This doesn’t bode well, because the round tables demonstrated perfectly well that barely anyone this year can even spell the word ‘Jonathan’.
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I don’t think the train is actually going to explode, because the Strathspey Railway is a major tourist attraction in the Highlands, and it’d be weird to jeopardise that just to moderately spook Alan Carr.
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And now, TRAAAAIN. The contestants pull up at a quaint little train station, where they are informed that they will be riding on The Traitors Express. They will board the train and scour each carriage for a key that will open a crate. The crates contain money, but also explode? I’m not fully fully clear on the details here.
Meanwhile, Cat has never seen a steam train before. That woman does not know how to live.
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Before the TRAAAAAIN, everyone plots to oust Cat in the round table. By ‘everyone’ I mean ‘Joe’. Nick has decided that Joe might be a traitor, because of course he has. Get a grip, Nick.
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Claudia is here (fisherman up top, ballerina down below) and hints that the task might have something to do with a train. This causes Alan Carr to scream “TRAAAAAAIN” in exactly the same way the late Queen Elizabeth screamed the word “COW” that time she saw a cow in a GIF I saw once.
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David’s testimony follows the same boilerplate formula as all the others. He’s had a lovely time and made a lot of friends. I do not care for this. I want to see someone driven to the point of paranoid violence. Do better, The Traitors.
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So far, all the contestants have turned up wearing their best clothes – Alan in particular is wearing a lovely blazer – and then Joe walks in wearing a pair of shorts. This is the Joeiest thing Joe has done all series.
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In her retrospective, Cat promises to split the prize with Alan. This has to be because she definitely will not do this. Just watch.
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The final morning begins without a murder, which means everyone gets to enjoy breakfast without having to feign surprise that nobody offed Kate Garraway in her sleep. But the lack of murders mean that there’s room for all of the finalists to give a triumphant Masterchef-style retrospective on their time in the castle.
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OK, the final of The Celebrity Traitors has finally begun, as it always does, with an enormous recap.
We see everyone who’s been banished and murdered, and treated to plenty of footage of Alan Carr being genuinely devious. And shackets. So many shackets this year. Who knew?
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Before the show begins, an advert for an upcoming series of Celebrity Apprentice. Just so we have this in writing: I would not like to liveblog that please.
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Five minutes to go. I’ve lost count of the amount of people who’ve asked me how I think the final will go (because I can’t count past three), and here’s my final prediction:
Cat will win, after promising to split the prize with Alan and then going back on her word.
However, let me refer you to the thing I linked to just now where I was wrong about absolutely everything.
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And while we wait for the show to begin, please enjoy highlights of The Guardian’s legitimately extensive coverage of Celebrity Traitors from the past few weeks.
Analysis of the series by former contestant Paul Gorton
Michael Hogan’s highlights round-up
Zoe Williams interviews Tom Daley
Alan Carr vs Celia Imrie, with mention of The Fart
Elle Hunt’s visit to Traitors Castle
And finally, a predicted ranking of the contestants that I wrote in May and quite clearly got spectacularly wrong. As ever, you are welcome.
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For those of you who have somehow chosen the final episode of the series to get into The Traitors, here are the surviving few of this year’s intake.
ALAN CARR: Traitor, and increasingly the living embodiment of the Stanford Prison Experiment. At first, Carr was bumbling and embarrassed about the pressure of being a traitor. But then he had to kill Paloma Faith by touching her face, and now you’ve never seen a more gleeful murderer. Better yet, he’s so cuddly and unassuming that he has largely escaped scrutiny. OR HAS HE?
CAT BURNS: Traitor, and one to watch. Like Carr, Burns has managed to slip under the radar for the entire duration of the series. This is largely because she has managed to publicly walk the line between friendly and inscrutable, but there’s a lot going on under the surface. The speed at which Burns turned on fellow traitor Jonathan Ross demonstrates an iciness that isn’t safe for anyone.
DAVID OLUSOGA: Faithful. Possibly the most outwardly intelligent contestant this year, Olusoga has nevertheless been hounded by suspicion that he is a traitor. However, he has escaped banishment so many times that surely he no longer fears death. Do not rule out the possibility of him going full kamikaze.
NICK MOHAMMED: Faithful, and another contestant who prides himself on strategy. That said, this is the worst performing group of faithfuls in all of human history. They have been so genuinely inept at identifying traitors that they would have had better luck letting a monkey spin a wheel, so there’s really no telling how clever he actually is.
JOE MARLER: Faithful, and witchfinder general. Marler has spent the entire series desperately trying to guess and second-guess the identity of the faithfuls, a process that has largely involved him scowling at everyone as if he’s just watched them eat his lunch. Marler ended the previous episode by correctly identifying the traitors. Whether he can catch them or not tonight is anyone’s guess.
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Hello fellow hundies, and welcome to The Guardian’s liveblog of the 2025 Celebrity Traitors final. Tonight, the biggest show on television reaches its epic conclusion, as we will finally learn the answer to several pressing questions. Who will win? Who will lose? Will the faithfuls identify the traitors? Will Joe Marler stare at someone so intensely that his skull explodes? Will Claudia Winkleman turn up wearing a Vileda Supermop as a jumper like she did last week? Soon we shall discover all.
Before we start, though, some important housekeeping. We will not be the first people in the world to watch the final, since – as has been widely reported – it has already been uploaded in error in both Canada and New Zealand. Although Traitors fans are exceedingly good eggs, and have largely refrained from posting spoilers online, I would very much like it if we could experience the final together. Which is to say that, if you do know who won, please keep it to yourself.
I’ll be back here, dipping in and out until 9pm, when the full 70-minute glory of the Celebrity Traitors final begins in earnest, and then I’ll probably liveblog the BBC Two aftershow as well, because I am kindly and generous, and also because my bosses are making me. See you soon.
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Updated at 21.36 CET
