Reacting To 'The Traitors' Season 4 Cast List

And rounding up who’s missing from the cast.

Last week, hours after the rumored list was leaked, Peacock released the official cast list of The Traitors Season 4 cast. The cast includes five former or current Real Housewives: Dorinda Medley, Lisa Rinna, Candiace Dillard Bassett, Caroline Stanbury, and Porsha Williams; three former Survivor contestants (including two winners): Natalie Anderson (who also appeared on The Amazing Race), Rob Cesternino and Yam Yam Arocho; two former Big Brother contestants: Ian Terry and Tiffany Mitchell; and two Love Island stars: Maura Higgins and Robert Rausch. Rounding out the reality stars are Stephen Colletti (The Hills), Colton Underwood (The Bachelor), Mark Ballas (Dancing with the Stars), Monét X Change (RuPaul’s Drag Race) and Kristen Kish (Top Chef). And then there’s the others: Olympic figure skaters Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir, K-pop singer Eric Nam, comedian Ron Funches, “America’s most famous football mom” Donna Kelce and Michael Rapaport for no discernable reason.

This is the most Housewives-dominant cast of the series so far (Seasons 2 and 3 featured four ladies each) and notably features no other Bravo talent outside of Kish, in comparison to previous seasons which saw shows like Below Deck, Shahs of Sunset, Summer House and Vanderpump Rules on the board. It’s a cast list that also lacks the kind of star power a show like this could surely garner. After the show won Outstanding Reality Competition Program at the 76th Emmy Awards (which it could win again at September’s ceremony), the show seemed poised to access a higher echelon of talent.

Then the cast list of Season 3 dropped, and though it was an exciting bunch (Rob Mariano from Survivor and Bob the Drag Queen from RuPaul’s Drag Race, for instance), like the Season 4 cast, it didn’t have any headline generating names akin to Tiffany “New York” Pollard on House of Villains, Anthony Scaramucci on Celebrity Big Brother, Snooki on The New Celebrity Apprentice or even Mike White on the upcoming 50th season of Survivor.

In fact, I think the big missed opportunity of this cast — which doesn’t have me up out of my chair in anticipation but does include some, in my estimation, big “gets” like Rob Cesternino and Stephen Colletti — is the lack of wild cards (think: John Bercow, a former Speaker of the House of Commons, on Season 2, for instance, or Dylan Efron on Season 3). I think this show, more than any other on television right now, has the opportunity to bring together some true legends of the form. I think they’ve done this, for the most part, on the reality competition side, but I still think they lack in the two other categories: docu-reality and wild cards.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m seated for Lisa Rinna, absolutely. But Caroline Stanbury is neither exciting nor is she a big get in the way someone like Phaedra Parks was in Season 2. In that sense, I think it’s always best to find people that have been on the bench for a while, like Parks, to see if their time away has made them any wiser. The same could be said of Parvati Shallow, who became one of the franchise’s breakout stars. In that sense, Candice Dillard Bassett is a great select, while Porsha Williams (who just returned to Real Housewives of Atlanta and helped usher in its lowest rated season ever) feels a bit uninspired.

And while I’m excited to have Monét X Change on the show, I’m still disheartened by tokenizing RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants on all three seasons in which one has appeared. Both Peppermint and Bob the Drag Queen delivered big on their seasons and became fan favorites, so why not dig deeper and wider into the well that is a show with as much zeitgeist real estate as Drag Race? I think the show’s casting still ceases to realize the imbalance of casting five women from one franchise (the Housewives, most of whom know each other) vs. two from another (Big Brother) on a game that is almost entirely predicated around relationships. It gives the Housewives both a numerical advantage and puts a target on them. I think the show would fare better if it tried for an even split: Pick 12 reality shows and cast two people from each.

On the wildcard front, Donna Kelce is an ace in the hole. But she’s not padded with a slew of other Donna Kelce-types, the kind of person that you have no idea what they’re doing here but somehow it makes sense given the camp appeal of the show. But more than that, we just need bigger “gets,” the kind of person that inspires casual fans of the show to start buzzing and uninitiated to show an interest. So to that end, I put a call out asking who my followers would like to see on the show. Unsurprisingly, they rose to the occasion with a truly stellar line-up.

Here’s some of their docu-series selects: Renee Graziano (Mob Wives), Meredith Marks (Real Housewives of Salt Lake City), Snooki (Jersey Shore), Jeff Lewis (Flipping Out), Dr. Orna (Couples Therapy), Hilaria Baldwin (The Baldwins), Kathy Griffin (My Life on the D-List), Abby Lee Miller (Dance Moms), Tim Gunn (Project Runway), Padma Lakshmi (Top Chef) and Ts Madison (RuPaul’s Drag Race)

As for wildcards: Nathan Fielder, Brigitte Nielsen, Cole Escola, Wanda Sykes, Trisha Paytas, Blakely Thornton, Mae Martin, Amelia Dimoldenberg, Tonya Harding, Jussie Smollett, Nikki Blonsky, Ronald Gladden, Club Chalamet, Matt Rogers, Marshawn Lynch and Gypsy-Rose Blanchard. It’s this category that I think the show is lacking most — especially for a game that is not very physically demanding and whose strategy is often based on little to no evidence. (Memorably in Season 1 of the UK iteration, a contestant was banished after being accused of being a Traitor because she didn't raise her glass to say cheers. However, this was due to her missing a hand, and the glass being on the side where her hand was missing.) These wildcards are the kind of selects that bring in non-reality show fans, a critical audience in trying to expand the show’s appeal (and ratings).

To be clear: I’m super stoked about Season 4. The show is still very much in its infancy, and thus there’s plenty of time to tinker with the format and unlock new twists and challenges that make for better television. As I’ve written about before, it’s a great television show made out of a lackluster game. And thus this show relies especially on its casting to lift it to greatness, something it did masterfully in Season 2, at times in Season 3 and I’m hopeful it can and will achieve again in Season 4.