Spoiler warning: this article reveals the winners of The Celebrity Traitors series 2.
The Faithfuls finally got their win. Comedian Romesh Ranganathan and actor Sebastian Croft were crowned the winners of The Celebrity Traitors on Friday night, October 30, after the last two Traitors, Maya Jama and King Kenny, were banished. And the finale did not just deliver on drama. It set a new ratings high for the celebrity spin-off.
Here is what happened, based on the BBC Media Centre and The Independent.
A record audience
According to The Independent, citing the BBC, the finale drew an average overnight audience of 11.2 million viewers on BBC One, with a peak of 11.6 million and a 62.9% audience share. That made it the most-watched episode of the celebrity version to date, edging past last year’s finale, which averaged 11.1 million overnight.
The series had been a ratings hit from the start. Its premiere at the beginning of October averaged 8.9 million viewers, the most-watched debut episode of any series of the programme in the UK.
How the end game played out
Hosted by Claudia Winkleman, the show sent 21 famous faces to the Traitors castle in the Scottish Highlands to compete for a charity prize. Faithfuls must find and banish the Traitors, who secretly “murder” players overnight.
In the final, the remaining players banished Maya Jama and King Kenny, leaving Ranganathan and Croft as the last two Faithfuls standing.
In his BBC interview, Croft explained that he had been torn until shortly before the end between going to the finish with James Blunt or with Ranganathan and Kenny. When the group was down to four and Kenny voted to end the game, Croft said, “I just knew he was a Traitor.”
Ranganathan admitted he had been suspicious of the wrong person at the end. He told the BBC he had locked onto James Blunt, partly because of a parting line from Maya Jama: “Good luck. You’re going to need it.” He called his win “happiness tinged with a little bit of embarrassment” and joked that his “key development area” in the game was identifying Traitors.
The prize, and where it is going
The pair will split an £83,000 prize pot, The Independent reports. Croft, known for “Heartstopper,” is donating his £41,500 share to Choose Love, a charity supporting refugees and displaced people. He told the BBC he volunteered with the organisation as a teenager and is now an ambassador. Ranganathan said he would give his winnings to the Refugee Council.
The quotes everyone will remember
- Croft on his strategy: he learned from Nick Mohammed’s play in the first celebrity series, trying to stay aligned with everyone so nobody saw him as a threat.
- Croft on the final Mission: being strapped to the outside of a helicopter, abseiling off it and dropping into a freezing loch. “That’s the kind of thing you see on telly,” he said, “but I actually had to do that.”
- Ranganathan on the famous “sniff theory”: a fellow player decided he was a Faithful because she heard him sniffing. “Now I have to admit that I’ve got sinus issues,” he said.
- Ranganathan on James Blunt: “James Blunt at some point in the future will kill me.”
Why the show keeps winning
The Traitors format has become one of the BBC’s most reliable hits. The Independent notes that the first celebrity series’ finale peaked at 15.4 million viewers, the biggest UK TV audience of 2025, and the civilian edition’s most recent finale was its most-watched ever.
This year’s finale also went up against Netflix’s live darts event “Beat Luke Littler” on the same night, and still set a celebrity-series record for its average overnight audience.
Final word
Two Faithfuls, two refugee charities and a record overnight audience: series 2 ended about as well as the BBC could have hoped. Now the wait begins for the next trip to the castle.
Image: Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness by BIG ALBERT via Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0
