Minah Shannon has played the best game by any contestant on The Traitors ever – until now.

The 29-year-old call centre manager has carried the third series on her butter-wouldn’t-melt shoulders as the perfect assassin, with the charm of a high street hun to the faithful’s faces but bursting with the ruthlessness of an evil genius as soon as their backs are turned.

I’ve never wanted anyone to win The Traitors more. I’ve always wanted a faithful and traitor to somehow clinch the prize money together knowing that they can’t but for the first time no one else deserves a penny of the prize pot.

Yet sadly, after sailing through the first half of this series without a single faithful mentioning her name, Minah is suddenly prime suspect and I’m petrified she has just made a colossal mistake that could see her lose out altogether

In the latest episode, after somehow scraping through seven roundtables as the worst traitor imaginable, Linda Rands finally fell on the sword of the faithful.

She agreed with Minah beforehand that it was time for her to go and that she needed to be sacrificed for the sake of ‘the sisterhood’ making her the first traitor in the show’s history to voluntarily be banished – incredible.

Subsequently Minah the last original traitor standing, meaning she inevitably needed to recruit from the faithful.

Determined to keep the sisterhood going, she was torn between Francesca Rowan-Plowden, Lisa Coupland and Charlotte Berman with her chosen recruit having to meet Minah face to face and either accept becoming a traitor or be immediately murdered.

Minah went for Welsh imposter Charlotte – unaware that she is keeping her real English identity a secret and playing the weirdest game possible.

Having now slept on it though, I now think Minah might have threatened the rest of the series which is so dependent on her staying in the game until the final.

Charlotte could be a good traitor, and do the sisterhood proud but why would she show any loyalty to Minah?

Minah tried to get her banished earlier in the game, and she’s already voted out two of her fellow traitors.

Why wouldn’t she also sacrifice Charlotte to hand the faithful a third traitor? She absolutely would and Charlotte, despite what her game plan suggests, isn’t an idiot.

If anything, now some of the stronger players have left, she is probably one of the smartest contestants still standing.

As a faithful she hasn’t had to be ruthless but we know she’s comfortable being deceitful – even if the level of deceit is completely pointless and only hindering her own chances of winning.

Regardless, she has pulled the wool over everyone else’s eyes, largely in part because no one would ever imagine someone would pretend to be Welsh as a genuine plot to win.

But what do I know? Charlotte has made it through the halfway mark and is now the most powerful contestant left.

And as we’ve seen before, contestants are now learning exactly how to play becoming a late recruit to their advantage.

The Traitors Australia winner Alex Duggan did exactly this. She’d completely won over the trust of the faithful when she was on the same team and didn’t change her character at all when she’d secretly switched sides.

She manipulated the game to banish other traitors and when it came to the final, no one was more certain they were going to split the prize money with another faithful than naïve Craig Carr.

The thing is with The Traitors, a problem which can’t really be helped, each series the contestants will have studied every series before their own, knowing what game play works and what doesn’t.

Granted, no one has previously pretended to be Welsh so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how that pans out, but they do now know how to play, becoming a late recruit to their advantage. It’s been done by Alex Down Under and it will absolutely be done again..

I can’t see how Charlotte has any other option than to stab Minah in the back, and in that battle of the sisterhood she by far has the upper hand.

Minah could have avoided this by picking her closest friend Leanne Quigley, who would have gone full traitor, stood by her side and trusted she wouldn’t eventually get thrown under the bus like Linda and Armani Gouveia.

Or she could have picked Alexander Dragonetti, the former diplomat who is so good at being a faithful they already think he’s a traitor.

He would have broken the pact of a sisterhood, yes, but he’s wasted on the faithful who don’t even appreciate his insight – they don’t deserve him and another reason they don’t deserve the prize money.

He would inevitably have faced banishment at the roundtable sooner or later without Minah having to get involved at all anyway, and she could have just looked ahead with her eyes on the prize.

Should Minah be banished – which suddenly I fear could happen soon – someone needs to step as a player to root for. Charlotte might be the one.

Perhaps she’ll be much more cunning and prove that, despite the fake Welsh accent, she’s actually the brightest contestant in there and born to be a traitor.

If not, without Minah in it, I fear we’re heading to a weak final week without a satisfying outcome.

That said, every episode so far has driven the game into places I never imagined. Dan Bird was a dead certainty for the final for me this time last week and then a day later he was gone. Leanne looked like she was going all the way too, but her days now seem more numbered than Linda’s did just 24 hours ago.

Will Charlotte outsmart Minah? I fear for the rest of the series if so but then, really, the star of the show is always the game itself.

Across all series of The Traitors, both in the UK and internationally, I’m yet to be disappointed. But will this series be worth watching without Minah? I know how I feel but I hope and know I can be proved wrong.

The Traitors continues tonight at 9pm on BBC One.