Traitor (YouTube Series)

**"*Come back here Birch!*", beware, this page could potentially have spoilers! Read at your own risk!**

> "*This is all a powder keg and we're the match!*"
> ― Maxine
>
>

### Airing Date

March 27th, 2020 (Part 1)July 31st, 2020 (Part 2)

October 31st, 2020 (Part 3)

February 13th, 2021 (Part 4)

May 11th, 2021 (Part 1 Remaster)

2023/24 (Episode 5)

2023 (Episode 1 Remake)

### Written By

Ameile White (Part 1)Charmer Productions (Part 2 and onwards)

RaRaDelilah (Part 2)

GamesLiek (Episode 5 and onwards)

### Link to Episode/Playlist

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXZJ0\_6mI5KT8lRKv56sMTaV9TGcqxJCB

Traitor is an action/thriller series on the Charmer Animations YouTube channel. It takes place in December of 2039 and follows the story of Jake Birch returning to Max Hound Studios for unknown reasons, only to be roped into a war that has been raging on inside of his old workplace for years. Jake teams up with heroes like Mike and Kate with the goal of getting out alive, while stopping the villainous Ink Max from taking over the world. Jake must discover the truth about Ink Max and why Max Hound Studios abruptly shut down years earlier.

## Development

In early 2017, following the release of *Bendy and the Ink Machine*, Charmer, who was at the time creating content based off of the *Five Nights at Freddy's* franchise, began developing ideas in what would eventually become Traitor.

Originally meant as a first person video game akin to Bendy, it would've told the story of Jake Birch working at Max Hellhound Studios before one day being trapped with his coworkers due to Max coming to life and plotting violence on them. The story wouldve followed Jake as his workplace was slowly turned into anarchy before he faced Max himself and killed him.

Development of this title carried into 2018. However, no actual coding was made nor was there anything that could even hint at an actual game being made. Because of his lack of game development, Charmer ultimately changed his mind and instead rewrote the story heavily and made it an 8 episode miniseries. He later put up a casting call in late 2019, where he got ahold of his first voice actors for the series.

As 2020 began and COVID hit, Charmer was given much more time to develop this series due to getting quarantined. On March 27th, 2020, Charmer released the 1st episode to the series. To this day it remains the most viewed video out of the original 4 episodes produced.

However, as he entered 2021, Charmer was hit with standstill in Traitor, as he was also developing a film for the previously mentioned Fnaf-inspired series he had been making. After taking hiatus from Traitor for the rest of 2021, Charmer would later cancel the film and return to Traitor, constantly writing away at the plot. In late 2022, Charmer hired his friend GamesLiek as co-writer and now co-animator for Traitor's remaining episodes.

As of writing this, Episode 5 is slated for a late 2023/early 2024 release.

## Trivia

* Charmer constantly says the series takes 20 years after 2020. Despite this, Traitor takes place in 2039, making it 19 years after 2020.
	+ Originally, Traitor was going to take place in 2025 before it was changed.

* Charmer has stated that he would like to do a spin-off to the series, stating that some possibilities he would want would either this spin-off being a sequel to the current series or a prequel focusing on Mike and Kate's survival inside the studio during the long time skip in-between the studio's shutdown and the events of Traitor.
	+ This concept of a prequel was mentioned again twice, with one being talk of a series of Prequel Shorts covering more of the lore and a movie regarding Ink Max's past. Both ideas were dropped, with the prequel shorts currently being on hold and the movie being completely dropped.
	+ The idea was later revisited and brought to fruition with the release of Traitor: Crimson Gem.

* Charmer has stated that the series will slowly get darker as the episodes progress. He has stated that gore, disturbing imagery, and other things related to that of creepy television hijackings like the Max Headroom 1987 Chicago hijacking and the "You Will See Such Pretty Things" 2008 Wyoming hijacking.
* Several Casting Calls via Casting Call Club were the way Charmer found the voice actors.
* Originally meant to be pure horror, the series has turned more into a Dark Sci-fi rather than horror. Despite this, horror elements still remain (Ink Max is a prime example).