I just finished watching the series last night. It was an unexpected surprise and a whole lot of fun. Loved the production value, the mission design, and the gothic atmosphere. However...

!!! SPOILERS !!!

I was a little disappointed in the ending. Not for who won, but in how they got there. It seemed to me that the show made it almost impossible for a Traitor to win. First off, Wilf was basically forced to choose another Traitor. It's not like he was given the option to decline and just go solo. Then, the game allowed for multiple banishments. That really skewed the outcome in the Faithfuls' favor. Finally, there should have been rules in place that would never have let Kieran say what he did and basically give up the game. It was obvious that Will was toast the minute that happened. However, since neither Alyssa nor Amanda exposed Will, I think it made Kieran look like a sore loser.

Wilf was right when he talked about there being only two paths for him to win. (Picking off Aaron & Meryl or turning on Kieran.) I can't fault him for taking the easier of the 2.

The upside of how it all worked out is that I was pretty happy with the winners. As much as I might have liked to see "evil" triumph, the fact that Aaron got part of the pot made me happy. He was a hottie and seemed genuinely sweet, to boot. (His super-tight trousers and sweatpants were a bonus.) When he had his anxiety attack at the roundtable earlier in the season, I really felt for him. Matt was another cutie and I was sorry when he was murdered. (Had I been a Traitor, I would have kept him around. Which is why I would make a lousy Traitor.)

Thank god they banished Maddy before the finale. I could not stand her. Her theories made absolutely no sense. (Other player to Maddy: "I'm not a Traitor." Maddy's response: "That's exactly what a Traitor would say." No, you dimwit. It's also what a Faithful would say.) The fact that she latched on to Wilf was totally by luck -- and, even then, she almost always voted for Aaron. The other players must have realized how half-baked she was, which was why she could not sway people to her side.

I really thought Amanda would make it to the end. She was not on anyone's radar and seemed to have everything going in her favor. Calm, cool, and collected. Then she screwed up with the Theo thing and it all came crashing down. I also think that Wilf picking Kieran as the person he trusted the most probably fed into the end result. We know that Hannah was very upset and couldn't figure out why Wilf had done that. She may have been more likely to dismiss Kieran's "parting gift" comment if that hadn't happened earlier. So that little dinner exercise, which seemed fairly benign at the time, was instrumental in the defeat of 2 Traitors.

I'm going to watch the Australian version soon to compare to the UK. It'll be interesting to see what, if anything, was changed. The US version, however, sounds awful. I don't need to see a bunch of "reality stars" from Big Brother, the Bachelor, etc. The fact that the UK version was populated with regular folk was one of the reasons it was so gripping. I just can't see getting that excited about, say, Cirie from Survivor murdering Rachel Reilly (although Alan Cumming in the Claudia Winkleman role sounds like it could be fun).