Two Love Island daters, a pair of ice-skating Olympians, a K-pop idol, and a Dancing With The Stars pro: This pop-cultural Mad Libs is the crop of contestants we’re left with going into the big finale of The Traitors season four. Displaying sharp, serpentine strategy from the jump, this season has been Rob Rausch’s to lose, though the late-in-the-game groundswell for Olympic BFFs Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir has been a fun foil to that seemingly inevitable eventuality.
The skaters’ plans to target Rob and his suspected accomplice Eric Nam does get easier with the merciless murder of Mark Ballas at the top of the episode. “See ya in hell!” the dancer bitterly declares while climbing into his coffin, with Rausch offering up a meager “Love you, man!” as Ballas macabrely departs the game. With one less member of Rausch’s alliance gone, Tara and Johnny just have to convince Rob’s Love Island friend (or, based on all of that heated innuendo he was dropping this episode, friend with benefits?) Maura Higgins that the man she’s entrusted over these last few weeks has been the bad guy all along. They choose to go the easier route, though, by stoking Maura’s suspicions about Eric.
The final mission of the season is, fittingly, a doozy. Alan Cumming—who appears to be doing a Catherine O’Hara tribute with his goth ensemble, an incredible mix of Beetlejuice and The Crowening-era Moira Rose—announces that the Final Five have to choose two players who will take to the skies in a helicopter while the rest of the competitors race down the river to a loch. There, they’ll find four pontoons, each fitted with a chest bearing a question about former Traitors cast members. The answers are in corresponding key cards on the chopper, which, if thrown down correctly to the boat team below, could add $20,000 to the prize pool.
“I’m gettin’ in that!” Maura immediately proclaims, joined swiftly by Rausch, who is happy that having Higgins sequestered in the aircraft means that she won’t be getting fed dangerous theories by the Olympians. However, Maura does reveal Tara and Johnny’s doubts about Eric, which concerns our resident snake charmer: “I can see the finish line, but if Eric gets voted out, Tara and Johnny will have the upper hand.” He needs to secure Maura’s vote to stay alive in this thing.
Cut to Rausch throwing himself out of the helicopter—all because Alan offered up the opportunity to add an extra $20,000 to the prize pot if either he or Maura jumped into the water and snatched the final chest tethered to a buoy below. (And given how both Johnny and Tara, two people who have spent more time on ice than not, are violently shivering on the loch dock, that water is cold AF.) Rob offers himself up and, with mere seconds to spare, manages to secure that extra dough for the team, bringing the cash prize up to $200,800. That’s not an unsubstantial amount of money, and it seems the figure gives Rob a little pep in his villainous step. “Unless something crazy happens, we’re gonna win,” he tells Maura.
Back at the castle, Tara is desperately trying to convince Maura to join her and Johnny in voting for Eric at the roundtable that evening. But it’s for nought: Higgins faithfully follows the fellas in voting out Johnny, leaving Tara ally-less for the first time in the game. “I feel really bad because you just said that you really trust me,” Maura tells them apologetically. “It’s really just a gut feeling.” Girl, get that gut checked.
With no bestie to have her back, it’s not a surprise that Tara is the first one to go at the Fire Of Truth ceremony. Though Eric’s flame grows green with his desire to end the game then and there with his pals, Maura and Rob have clearly hatched a separate plan, both throwing red to knock Nam out at the last minute. Understandably, Eric is devastated: “I really, really, really trusted you guys,” he emotionally says, before pointedly telling Maura: “I want you to think about why you never questioned the other player in this game.”
Alas, Higgins doesn’t take heed of that warning. She proudly reveals that she’s not a Traitor, only to be left visibly gobsmacked by the news that Rob, her partner in flirty faithfulness, can’t say the same. “Oh my god, I’m so stupid,” she cries, telling Rausch that he’s embarrassed her with his season-long duplicity. She’s obviously rattled but calms enough to reveal that there are no hard feelings between them. “I think I’m just in shock…I really thought I was winning!”
But no, as was all but prophesied by the reality-TV gods, Rob Rausch is the winner of The Traitors season four, with Alan dubbing him “one of the greatest Traitors we’ve had thus far.” And he’s not wrong: Rausch, the first solo victor since season one’s Cirie Fields, used every weapon in his arsenal—his aw-shucks boyishness, his strong jaw, those damn overalls—and masterfully unleashed all of it against both friend and foe. “People just see me as a dumb, hot person, but I’ve been a Traitor from day one. And I won. I beat everyone,” he cheers.
Other than Maura’s knee-buckling shock, we sadly don’t get to see other cast reactions to Rausch’s devious reveal. You’ll have to tune in to The Traitors reunion for that, which directly follows the season finale on Peacock. So what did you think? Are you pleased to see Rob’s traitorous efforts pay off, or were you hoping for a dark-horse upset?
Stray observations
- • Alan Cumming could have an entire Calm Sleep Story just repeating the word loch over and over again.
- • Four seasons in, I don’t think there’s ever been a stranger combination of outfits than the ones worn by Alan, Rob, and Maura in that final Fire Of Virtue segment. Cumming is giving Ms.-Frizzle-by-way-of-Mel-B vibes; Rausch is, as usual, done up in his dungaree doofiness; and Higgins has gone full dominitrix diva.
Christina Izzo is a contributor to The A.V. Club.
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