“You can only do so much,” Luke Toki says over the phone. We are, of course, discussing his last-ditch attempt to help the Faithfuls take down the Traitors. After Annabel‘s banishment, Luke gathered all the remaining Faithful players. He told them he was about to be murdered by Sam and Blake, and that if they wanted to succeed, they needed to throw their votes on Sam. At the next Banishment Ceremony, they banished Simone. Welcome to The Traitors 2023, an endurance test for viewers’ patience everywhere.
Chatting to Luke after his murder, he says that while he and Annabel were correct in calling Sam and Blake as the Traitors, there’s also an element of luck at play.
“I think I had an advantage, knowing that Sam was one of my closest friends in the game,” he explains. “You can analyse your friends because you spend more time with them than the others. If I was speaking to Keith the whole game, or speaking to Camille and Sarah really closely the whole game, I might not have picked up on things with Sam and Blake. I think I was positioned well to see. But in saying that, I could’ve still got it completely wrong.”
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Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire
Discussing the Banishment Ceremony that led to Annabel’s banishment, Luke recalls it as “funny”, “crazy”, and “frustrating”.
“You’re trying to give them the opportunity for revenge, which is sweet!” he says. “It’s like you’re handing them a cocktail and they don’t wanna drink it, and it’s just crazy to think that they’d rather drink the poison, you know?!”
He laughs, perhaps in disbelief.
“I like to think that at least Camille picked up on the fact that I was saying like, ‘Why would I go out and be so vocal to protect Annabel?’,” he says. “And I think sometimes when two people pile in — it’s probably something to even take into the real world. If someone tells you something, and a friend or another person backs them up, it’s obviously there’s some truth behind it.
“Where there’s smoke there’s fire, and sometimes you’ve gotta just take the information on board and not be so gullible, I guess, because otherwise you’re allowing that smoke to go away and not taking it on board,” he adds.
“It’s interesting to watch back!” he says. “I do like that I jumped on a grenade to try to protect Annabel, as well. I’d rather do that than leave her out to dry.”
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What We Didn’t Get to See After Annabel’s Banishment
After Annabel’s banishment, we watched as Luke gathered the Faithful troops in a last ditch effort to throw a grenade into Traitor Towers. What we didn’t see is that Luke went to Sam first.
“Just before I pulled them aside, me and Sam actually went for a chat straight after Annabel got voted out,” Luke says. “I was lookin’ at him goin’, ‘Brother, please recruit me. Please recruit me!’, and he kept going, ‘What are you talking about, Luke? I’m not a Traitor! I’m super loyal and your mate, and I’ve helped you through this whole game!’, and I’m like, ‘PLEASE. RECRUIT. ME. That’s all I ask!’, like, I wasn’t even listening to what he was saying!”
Luke laughs.
“I was just like, ‘Just recruit me! Please recruit me!’, and then I realised, ‘He’s not going to recruit me’,” he continues. “And that’s when I went and pulled everyone aside and was like, ‘Look. Just vote him out!’
“And that’s for their game!” he says. “‘Coz if he went, one of them would get moved up, and to win as a Traitor, it’s much easier, you know? So it’s a detriment to their own game that they didn’t wanna get him out.”
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Related: “The Heat Is Always on Me!” Luke Toki Talks ‘The Traitors Australia’ 2023
Related: “Bleedingly Obvious”: Annabel on Sam Being a Traitor and Being Banished
On Watching the Faithfuls Banish Simone
Despite Luke’s best efforts, the Faithfuls chose to ignore his advice. In a baffling move, the Faithfuls banished Simone, leaving Sam and Blake to proceed with their traitorous ways.
“You know, watching last night’s episode was just like, ‘HOW?! How did you get this so wrong?!’” Luke exclaims with a pained laugh.
“Do you know what’s crazy is, I pulled all the Faithfuls aside,” he says. “I didn’t have Blake and Sam in that conversation, I had ALL the Faithfuls, which is unheard of!
“To think that I was right, and that confident to pull them all aside and to be like, ‘Listen. I’m going to get murdered tonight! All I expect from youse guys is to please just dump all your votes on Sam!’” he laughs. “But it’s crazy, it’s CRAZY! That I put it to ‘em like that, very simply, and they still didn’t follow it through. Crazy. It was definitely frustrating for me.”
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Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda
Hindsight. It’s a beautiful, bittersweet thing, and of course, Luke has been reflecting on how things could have gone differently.
In fact, he says that the original plan was to “keep quiet” on Sam and Blake, until Annabel’s name was thrown into the mix.
“That’s why I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve gotta try to save her, at least’,” he says.
The main error he and Annabel made, Luke says, was in “airing two Traitors out in one Banishment”… “especially playing with the calibre of people who were in there”, he adds.
As a secondary issue, there were players in the game who were close to Blake, and didn’t want him out of the game, Traitor or not.
“To go for two Traitors at once is a bad move,” he says. “But in saying that, I needed to put it out there that they were the Traitors, because if we went home, at least you could say that we got not just one right, we got both right! But going for both, it’s very risky.
Had Luke been able to stick to his original plan, Sam would have gone home, and Blake would have followed.
“Then you get two Traitors in a row, which, that would be a beautiful thing as a Faithful, you know?” he says. “But you know, you run it all back and say woulda, coulda, shoulda, but in the end, if it swung on Sam, we would’ve been geniuses! I’ve always been like, ‘Go for glory!’”
As his fellow Australian Survivor alumni George Mladenov would say, “Glory or death!”
The Traitors Australia continues at 7.30pm on Sunday, September 3, only on 10 and 10 Play on Demand. Miss an episode? Catch up on 10 Play.
Want more The Traitors? Read all our content here, and check out the stories below:
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- The Stunning Hotel Where ‘The Traitors’ Was Filmed
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- Meet Michelle, the Admin Behind Reality TV’s Favourite Facebook Groups
- Well Well Well, It’s Time to Meet ‘The Traitors’ of 2023
- Travel, Puppies, and Love: What Alex From ‘The Traitors Australia’ Is Doing Right Now
- ‘The Traitors Australia’ 2023: Everyone Who’s Been Murdered and Banished
- Bamboozled About When ‘The Traitors’ Airs? We Have Got You Sorted
- ‘The Traitors’ 2023 Is Almost Here, So It’s Time for an Instagram Deep Dive
- Ash Pollard on ‘The Traitors’: “I Think Sam’s Dug His Own Grave, Frankly”
- “Bleedingly Obvious”: Annabel on Sam Being a Traitor and Being Banished
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