Kirby Bentley Is The New Queer Queen Of The Traitors Australia

Kirby Bentley has done what almost seemed impossible, outwitting the Faithfuls and her fellow Traitors to take out The Traitors Australia and its entire $200,600 prize pool.

After spending the season dodging suspicion, carefully shifting the game and watching the other Traitors fall around her, the two-time Australian Survivor player reached the finale alongside fellow Traitor Rhys Nicholson and Faithfuls Keira Maguire and Krissy Marsh.

Rhys was unanimously banished at the final Round Table, but Kirby still had one last challenge ahead of her.

At the fire pit, she convinced Keira to banish again, sending Krissy home and leaving Kirby and Keira as the final two. Keira then revealed herself as a Faithful before Kirby finally dropped the secret she had been holding all game long: she had been an original Traitor from the very beginning.

Kirby walked away as the sole winner of the season and the first original Traitor to win the Australian series.

When Kirby first spoke with The Star Observer before the season began, she described The Traitors Australia as the hardest experience of her life.

At the time she could not say why, or reveal just how close she had come to winning it all.

Now the secret is finally out.

“Oh my God. Now that the secret’s out, I am so relieved because, you know, we’d filmed a year ago,” Kirby told The Star Observer after the finale.

“Just watching this season and the way that they put the edit together, even I was yelling at the TV, like, ‘Say something,’ and, ‘How am I going to get past that too?’ So, yeah, it was an incredible ride.”

Kirby Bentley kept her Traitors win secret for a year

Unlike some reality programs, The Traitors Australia did not leave Kirby waiting to learn whether she had won. She knew the result, but it was a secret she could share with almost nobody for an entire year.

“I told my mum and my sister, and that was it,” she revealed.

“I don’t like secrets. I don’t like lying. I don’t like that stuff in real life. And this game is so complex as well.”

Watching the season back did little to ease the pressure. Despite knowing exactly how it would end, Kirby found herself caught up in the tension alongside the audience.

“The way that they produced it and put the edit together, even I was watching as a viewer, and I was on the edge of my seat,” she said.

“The cast was incredible. You know, every single one of them had me on edge the entire game.

“I’m just relieved. I don’t need to hold any more secrets anymore.”

The social strategy that carried Kirby to the end

Kirby’s victory was even more impressive given how little room she had to hide. Suspicion followed her through the manor and, at times, it appeared as though her name could come up at any Round Table.

But while the Faithfuls searched for evidence, Kirby was quietly building the relationships that would help keep her in control of the game.

“The main thing that I go into any game, Survivor or Traitors, is social, and connecting on a personal level,” she explained.

“I do that authentically because I have a genuine interest in people. But the more that you speak to somebody, the more you can pick up on tells. And obviously there’s a strategy behind that.

“But if you can connect on a deeper level, you feel safe to that person.”

Those connections meant information often found its way back to her, even as other players were attempting to build a case against her.

“When things were happening around the manor and people were having conversations, I’d get Rachel and Keira — I’d get them all sort of saying to me at some stage or another, you know, ‘Luke’s not saying your name, but Josh is,’ or, ‘Somebody’s brought this up. Is this true?’

“As long as I had the social aspect — the social side — I feel like that helped me a lot, definitely.”

Kirby’s game was rarely about loudly directing a vote. Instead, she learnt that a small comment, delivered at exactly the right moment, could be enough to send a Faithful down an entirely new path.

“It takes the smallest suggestion because people are looking for something,” she said.

“The Faithfuls are looking for something because they don’t have answers. They only know their truth as a Faithful. I don’t think I could play the game as a Faithful because there’s too many question marks around it.”

Kirby pointed to the growing suspicion around Claudia and the shields as one example of how quickly one thought could take hold in the manor.

“At least as a Traitor, I know that I had my other Traitors to be able to sort of bounce off, and we can see the entire game,” she said.

“But a small little suggestion or a nudge in something — like Claudia, for example. Those shields became a big thing because, at one stage in the game, I was like, ‘Well, if I was a Traitor, I’d just want to know where the shields are, so that’s making me question Claudia.’

“That’s all it takes for somebody to fixate, and it just became so big that Luke went so hard at her.”

For Kirby, the key was allowing the idea to belong to the other person.

“It’s timing. It’s how subtle you can be, so you’re not saying it too often. You just sort of need to let it sit with that person,” she explained.

“Because they’re such independent people and they want to make their own decisions, you can’t be too forceful with anything.

“You can see what happens when somebody is. You know, Henry came hot at a Round Table and people were like, ‘Hang on a second. What are you doing? Why are you trying to influence and move people?’ And that’s *Survivor* gameplay. It just didn’t work in this scenario.”

The most complex game

That difference between Survivor and The Traitors was something Kirby had tried to explain before the season began.

In Survivor, alliances and votes can offer clues about where the game is heading. For a Faithful in The Traitors, there is no such certainty and almost no reliable evidence.

After playing from inside the turret, Kirby’s assessment has not changed.

“I’ve been saying this forever: it’s just the most complex game,” she said.

“It’s so easy to sit back and watch, and people will be saying, ‘Oh, the Faithfuls are dumb.’ But they’re not. They had us on edge, and they were so great at it, and they made incredible TV.”

One of the season’s biggest attempts to regain control came when AJ tried to strike a deal with Alex, telling her he knew she was a Traitor and laying out a plan for them to work together.

To viewers, it looked as though the move might succeed. But Kirby had already noticed the way AJ’s behaviour inside the manor had changed.

“It would only work if you can actually influence the Traitor, but we were in control at the end of the day,” she said.

“I saw the way that AJ was moving around the manor, and I knew that AJ was suss on me anyway because he stopped talking to me.

“The way that AJ was moving around the manor and doing that, and then I see a shift in Alex — I didn’t know to that extent, but you can sort of see it.”

Kirby acknowledged that the plan was “cleverly done”, but said it needed the support of more than one Traitor to work.

“Again, as Traitors, we’re always in control. And there’s two Traitors — there’s not just one person,” she said.

“If he had’ve worked on me as well, potentially he could have actually pulled it off. But he didn’t.”

Why Kirby recruited Rhys Nicholson

After the other original Traitors were eliminated, Kirby recruited Rhys Nicholson into the turret.

From the outside, it appeared Rhys had been brought in as a potential scapegoat. Kirby confirmed that was initially the plan, but said their relationship and her intentions shifted as they began playing together.

“I think if Rhys played the game as a Traitor from the start, they would’ve been incredible, just because of the way they move,” she said.

“They were personable, but they didn’t get too involved with people as well. It was so fun.”

“And, yeah, I did bring Rhys in to be the scapegoat, but you then play together and the game shifts.”

By the final stage of the game, the strategic decision had become a much more personal and emotionally difficult one.

“Obviously, you can see in the final how emotionally exhausted I was and how conflicted I became,” Kirby said.

“Rhys is incredible. I adore them.”

Kirby said she had tried to prepare Rhys for the possibility that the others would write their name down. Keira and Krissy had been discussing Rhys throughout the day, while Josh had also previously raised their name.

“I said what I said to Rhys, and I was like, ‘Okay, I’m just going to be straight up. This is what’s happening. I’ve given them permission to write my name down,’” she recalled.

“I said, ‘I’ll write Krissy’s,’ and we gave each other that permission.”

But the surprise banishment of Josh changed the shape of the endgame, leaving Rhys to see Kirby write their name without being able to see the wider conversations that had led to the decision.

“That obviously created a bit of conflict, and it was uncomfortable. I Hated it,” Kirby said.

“But it was true and valid, what Rhys was saying, because I don’t know how I would’ve felt in that moment too, if it was the other way around.”

A proud queer First Nations winner

Kirby’s victory arrives during an extraordinary period of queer representation in Australian reality television.

Her win follows Myles Kuah becoming the first openly queer winner of Australian Survivor, before Parvati Shallow became the first openly queer woman to win the franchise when she took out Australian Survivor: Australia V The World.

Kirby’s own history-making result sees a proud queer Noongar and Yamatji woman take centre stage as the winner of one of the country’s biggest reality programs.

For Kirby, that visibility is not a burden. It is something she carries with pride.

“A lot of people have walked and paved the way for us before this,” she said.

“The queer community have done the hard yards for us to be able to sit in our truth of who we actually are deep down.”

“Culturally, I want to be able to shift the conversation and celebrate who we are as people. We are smart and clever and cheeky and fun, but we’re really authentic and genuine as well.”

While a game built around deception might not seem like the most obvious place to display authenticity, Kirby believes her time on The Traitors Australia still allowed audiences to see those parts of her.

“I know The Traitors isn’t the ideal game to be able to display that, but I’m proud, and I hope my family’s proud,” she said.

“Everything I do is to have stronger conversations and make it easier for somebody who’s coming next.”

The season also delivered a remarkable amount of queer representation inside the turret. All three original Traitors, Kirby, Alex Nation and Alvin Quah, were queer, before Rhys Nicholson became the fourth queer Traitor of the season.

For Kirby, however, it may be a little while before she is ready to put herself through another reality television experience.

“My stress levels are through the roof,” she laughed. “So hopefully, hopefully — but not too soon.”

The full season of The Traitors Australia is available to stream on 10 and Paramount+.