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\u2019re 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\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The skaters\u2019 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. \u201cSee ya in hell!\u201d the dancer bitterly declares while climbing into his coffin, with Rausch offering up a meager \u201cLove you, man!\u201d as Ballas macabrely departs the game. With one less member of Rausch\u2019s alliance gone, Tara and Johnny just have to convince Rob\u2019s 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\u2019s entrusted over these last few weeks has been the bad guy all along. They choose to go the easier route, though, by stoking Maura\u2019s suspicions about Eric.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The final mission of the season is, fittingly, a doozy. Alan Cumming\u2014who appears to be doing a Catherine O\u2019Hara tribute with his goth ensemble, an incredible mix of Beetlejuice and The Crowening-era Moira Rose\u2014announces 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\u2019ll 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m gettin\u2019 in that!\u201d Maura immediately proclaims, joined swiftly by Rausch, who is happy that having Higgins sequestered in the aircraft means that she won\u2019t be getting fed dangerous theories by the Olympians. However, Maura does reveal Tara and Johnny\u2019s doubts about Eric, which concerns our resident snake charmer: \u201cI can see the finish line, but if Eric gets voted out, Tara and Johnny will have the upper hand.\u201d He needs to secure Maura\u2019s vote to stay alive in this thing.<\/p>\n
Cut to Rausch throwing himself out of the helicopter\u2014all 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\u2019s not an unsubstantial amount of money, and it seems the figure gives Rob a little pep in his villainous step. \u201cUnless something crazy happens, we\u2019re gonna win,\u201d he tells Maura.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u2019s for nought: Higgins faithfully follows the fellas in voting out Johnny, leaving Tara ally-less for the first time in the game. \u201cI feel really bad because you just said that you really trust me,\u201d Maura tells them apologetically. \u201cIt\u2019s really just a gut feeling.\u201d Girl, get that gut checked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With no bestie to have her back, it\u2019s not a surprise that Tara is the first one to go at the Fire Of Truth ceremony. Though Eric\u2019s 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: \u201cI really, really, really trusted you guys,\u201d he emotionally says, before pointedly telling Maura: \u201cI want you to think about why you never questioned the other player in this game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alas, Higgins doesn\u2019t take heed of that warning. She proudly reveals that she\u2019s not a Traitor, only to be left visibly gobsmacked by the news that Rob, her partner in flirty faithfulness, can\u2019t say the same. \u201cOh my god, I\u2019m so stupid,\u201d she cries, telling Rausch that he\u2019s embarrassed her with his season-long duplicity. She\u2019s obviously rattled but calms enough to reveal that there are no hard feelings between them. \u201cI think I\u2019m just in shock\u2026I really thought I was winning!\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u201cone of the greatest Traitors we\u2019ve had thus far.\u201d And he\u2019s not wrong: Rausch, the first solo victor since season one\u2019s Cirie Fields, used every weapon in his arsenal\u2014his aw-shucks boyishness, his strong jaw, those damn overalls\u2014and masterfully unleashed all of it against both friend and foe. \u201cPeople just see me as a dumb, hot person, but I\u2019ve been a Traitor from day one. And I won. I beat everyone,\u201d he cheers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Other than Maura\u2019s knee-buckling shock, we sadly don\u2019t get to see other cast reactions to Rausch\u2019s devious reveal. You\u2019ll 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\u2019s traitorous efforts pay off, or were you hoping for a dark-horse upset?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stray observations<\/p>\n
\u2022 Alan Cumming could have an entire Calm Sleep Story just repeating the word loch over and over again.\u00a0
\n\u2022 Four seasons in, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Christina Izzo is a contributor to The A.V. Club.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Love Island daters, a pair of ice-skating Olympians, a K-pop idol, and a Dancing With The Stars…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":["post-304829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}