*Spoilers for The Traitors finale below*
'Oh Mollie.' Those two words, trending on Twitter on Friday night as The Traitors concluded with a blood pressure-raising finale, summed up the sentiment of a nation. After four weeks of twists, turns and nail-biting drama, the show came to a head as Traitor Harry Clark pinched the £95,150 prize pot from under the nose of Faithful (and his closest friend) Mollie Pearce.
That final will go down as one of the tensest hours in reality TV history. In the hours leading up to it, fans theorised what would happen. For the Traitors, both late recruit Andrew Jenkins and Harry remained, but Andrew’s days felt numbered, and the game seemed likely to go one of two ways. Harry would either take the money for himself, or Jaz Singh would convince the others of Harry’s treachery and the Faithful would win.
In the end, perhaps inevitably, the final followed the former path. Jaz, Harry and Mollie made it to the final showdown, with the entire fate of the game hinging on disability model and all-round sweetie Mollie. When Harry and Mollie voted to end the game, Jaz wanted it to continue. Forced to banish again, Mollie shocked viewers as she wrote down army engineer Harry’s name on her chalkboard. But then she looked into Harry’s eyes and implored him to promise her he wasn’t a Traitor. He did, and she switched to Jaz, sealing her fate.
With Mollie excited to split the money with her friend, the reveal that nearly £100k had been taken from her was excruciating. Mollie left the room in shock, while Harry celebrated alone with host Claudia Winkleman outside. Watching along, you couldn’t help but feel terrible for Mollie. In the battle between head and heart, she went with her heart, and was left disappointed.
In one viral tweet, fans joked that Mollie was learning a message many of us did aged 21 – don’t trust a boy with “slightly greasy hair and bad grammar, who tells us everything we want to hear”. It’s just a shame her mistake was in front of 6.9 million viewers, and cost her tens of thousands of pounds.
The tweets and memes have undeniably been one of the best parts of The Traitors series two, reminding us that appointment TV is far from dead. But the jokes about Mollie quickly shifted from playful to downright cruel.
Social media users suggested she was stupid, and had fancied Harry to the point of letting it cloud her judgement (according to social media, both Harry and Mollie are in relationships). But while the pair didn’t seem entirely at ease with each other in interviews afterwards, there have been hints at reconciliation, with Mollie even saying that Harry had promised her a holiday from his prize money.
It’s easy to watch shows like The Traitors and say we would have behaved differently. As viewers, we have the omnipotence provided by the camera, and hindsight on our sides. In reality, evidence can be both missed and forgotten. My Traitors-themed group chat was convinced the entire final would come down to Evie Morrison being revealed as a Faithful, proving that Harry’s shield plan was actually a decoy and he had to be a Traitor. While Evie did go out first, the shield was never mentioned again. Viewers similarly ranted that Mollie should have known Jaz wouldn’t have voted to play again if he was a Traitor. Who knows if, in her shoes, they would have actually come to the same realisation.
However the game played out, it’s unfair to pin it all on Mollie. The Traitors is a complex game, with interlinking factors in play. Evie had accepted fate from the moment the final began, and Andrew’s attempts to blame Harry simply made him feel more like a Traitor. While Jaz did raise some suspicions about Harry, it was too little too late, discussed and then passed on.
It’s impossible to ignore the gender dynamics at play too, both in the game and in the reaction. By the time it was down to the final four, Mollie was the only remaining woman in a game which had been – whether unconsciously or by design – almost entirely run by men ('just like the olden days', as Claudia expertly put it). The pressures there would have been immense.
But blaming Mollie entirely makes one crucial mistake: ignoring that Harry played a blinder of a game. You don’t have to like him (frankly, I’m still scarred from the lick-lipping at the round table in episode one) and you can think he was too cocky. But in a reality show about treachery, where the Traitors are trying to win, Harry was strategic, smooth and slick. Whether he deserves the money is ultimately irrelevant: he played the best game. Did Mollie deserve more? Of course. That’s why he should give her that holiday.