[This story contains MAJOR spoilers from The Celebrity Traitors season two finale.]
The Celebrity Traitors has crowned its season two winners!
The BBC reality competition series crowned Faithfuls Sebastian Croft and Romesh Ranganathan joint winners on Friday. The Heartstopper actor and comedian shared the £83,000 prize pot, each choosing a charity to receive their share.
Croft donated his share to Choose Love, while Ranganathan selected the Refugee Council.
Hosted by Claudia Winkleman, the spinoff of the original Traitors follows a group of famous contestants living together as they try to identify the secret Traitors among them.
The contestants must make it to the end without being banished or murdered. If the Faithfuls successfully eliminate all the Traitors, they win the prize pot. However, if a Traitor remains at the end of the game, they claim the money instead.
At the start of the finale, the remaining contestants included Croft, Ranganathan, James Blunt, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, King Kenny, Maya Jama and Michael Sheen. However, Sheen was murdered by the Traitors overnight, leaving six contestants to compete for the prize.
The episode featured several twists, beginning with Jama’s banishment after her fellow Traitor, Kenny, turned against her. Pinnock, a Faithful, was also banished before the remaining contestants turned their attention to identifying the final Traitor.
Eventually, Kenny was exposed and banished, leaving Croft, Ranganathan and Blunt as the final three Faithfuls. Although Ranganathan and Croft wanted to end the game, Blunt chose to continue with another banishment. The decision ultimately backfired, as Ranganathan and Croft voted him out, leaving the two as the final contestants standing.
Following the finale, Ranganathan spoke about his victory during The Celebrity Traitors: Uncloaked, describing the experience as “happiness tinged with a little bit of embarrassment.”
“You’ve got to think about my level of contribution to the game compared to some other people who have fallen by the wayside. James Blunt, at some point in the future, will kill me. You think of all the possible outcomes of the endgame. What wasn’t a possible outcome was a nemesis. I didn’t expect to make enemies. The better news is he’s been military trained!” he said.
Speaking with the BBC, Croft explained the decision-making process behind his “wild” finale.
“I think until about an hour and a half before I was so split between whether I was going to go with James until the end or with Romesh and Kenny,” he said. “I wrote a list of everything that I thought James, Romesh, and Kenny had done that was Faithful since Hannah’s banishment and the Traitors last recruited, and my list for Romesh was really long. My list for James was even longer, and my list for Kenny was almost non-existent.”
He added, “When we went to four and Kenny voted to end the game, I just knew he was a Traitor, and I was banking on James voting for Kenny, so it would be a split vote, because if he’d gone for Romesh, James would have gone, and then it was just like Romesh seemed convinced that James was a Traitor, so I was like, ‘Shit, I have a big job to do,’ and for whatever reason, Romesh and I just really trusted each other.”
Comedian Alan Carr won the first season of Celebrity Traitors.