Two Traitors contestants return after being kicked off train in first episode

Two contestants have returned to The Traitors after being booted off a train heading to the castle in the series’ first episode on New Year’s Day.

During a mission on Wednesday’s episode of the BBC reality game show, contestants Fozia, Alexander and Jack were revealed suspended in cages in a forest, with their fellow players challenged to use coins to lower them.

Players collected coins by beating bags with a stick and then choosing which contestant to contribute their coin to, while each of the caged contestants had a shield which they could give to a player to save them from murder after the roundtable.

Fozia was the first contestant to reach the ground, followed by Alexander, bringing them back into the game, but Jack remained in the air, never to be seen again according to presenter Claudia Winkleman.

After the two contestants joined the group, Winkleman said: “Are they entering as a faithful, or a traitor?”

She went on to say that the new players would not have a roundtable vote, and would not be able to be murdered or banished, that night.

The group also won £6,500 for the prize pot during the challenge.

During the episode, faithful Kas was banished from the castle, and decided to trick his fellow contestants when Winkleman asked him to reveal whether he was a traitor.

Speaking as he left the show, Kas said: “It’s been fantastic, and you are all fantastic people, I know it’s just a game.

“And Joe, who’d have thought? You’d have caught me based on a twinkle in the eye, on the first roundtable, I was selected to be a faithful.”

The banishment prompted arguments among the contestants, with Livi exclaiming “I knew it, I knew it” as Kas left.

Speaking after leaving the show, he said: “It was everything I expected. It was really cool and so grand.

“I definitely have mixed emotions, from about the second roundtable, I realised that it would be really difficult to win, because I was under so much suspicion.

“I really tried to focus on enjoying the experience and being as useful as I could be to the team, and make sure that whoever does get the money gets a good amount.”

Following the roundtable, Fozia gave her shield to Leanne as she said “you got me the most coins”, while Alexander gave his to traitor Minah, meaning only one person had been saved from murder.

While traitors Minah and Linda were discussing who they would murder, Winkleman arrived and told them they could forfeit their murder to recruit a new traitor.

The pair decided they would seduce a new traitor and gave Winkleman a letter to give to their selected contestant.

At the start of the episode, it was revealed that Maia, the faithful sister of traitor Armani, who was banished from the castle in last Friday’s episode, had been murdered by the traitors.

Speaking about what she would change if she could play the game again, Maia said: “I would have done it completely differently, I wish I’d stuck to my original plan of not putting too much emotion into it.

“You have to experience it, I was judging people before on showing too much emotion when I watched previous series but when you get there, it’s a totally different kettle of fish.”

The tense BBC game show sees contestants attempt to identify who among them are “faithfuls” and which are “traitors”, with the traitors plotting to murder the faithfuls, and the faithfuls trying to identify and banish the traitors.

Finalists have a chance of winning a chunk of the £120,000 prize but if a traitor survives until the very end, unidentified, they take home the full prize pot, while any faithfuls left go home with nothing.

The Traitors returns to BBC One and iPlayer on Thursday at 9pm.