TVTVIt all comes down to thisPeacock/Getty Images/Ringer illustrationBy Andrew GruttadaroFeb. 27, 3:12 am UTC • 7 min
After another season of the best running reality show on TV, The Traitors, we have reached the end of the road. Shields were won, backs were stabbed, and one handsome man handsome’d his way out of suspicion at (nearly) every corner. All of the roundtables are over—we have our winners. And so we will dispense of our usual power rankings and instead mourn the dead, bemoan the losers, and honor the victors. Let’s break down the Season 4 finale of The Traitors.
In Memoriam
Mark Ballas (Murdered)
Our final murder of Season 4 is the man who looks like Kenny G and who played a fairly strong Faithful game, for the most part making decisive moves while also moving beneath the fray. I say “for the most part” because at the most crucial point of the season, Mark shriveled up. Last episode, as Tara, Johnny, and Natalie banded together in suspicion of Rob, they needed Mark’s support to seal the deal Instead, Mark got gun-shy and refused to commit to turning on Rob—he either trusted Rob too much or couldn’t bring himself to trust Tara and Johnny. From there, Tara lost her nerve on the plan (and rightfully so), and Natalie was hung out to dry.
This then left Mark as the obvious choice for Rob and Eric’s final murder: Rob was never going to eliminate his closest ally, Maura, and murdering Tara or Johnny would’ve only drawn suspicion to the Traitors.
Tough break for our dancing queen, but you can’t say that he didn’t do it to himself. And honestly, he was a necessary sacrificial lamb. Because Mark getting murdered set up the funniest dynamic for the final episode.
Accidentally Became the Most Important Person on The Traitors, and It’s Ruining My Life
All images via Peacock
With Mark gone, we’re left with two two-person alliances—the Traitors, Rob and Eric, and the figure skaters, Tara and Johnny—and one little Irish woman caught in the middle. All this time, everyone’s been obsessing over Rob’s gameplay, or Eric’s nebbishness, or Candiace’s errors, or Tara and Johnny’s accidental ascendance—and it turns out that MAURA HIGGINS is the most important player in Season 4 of The Traitors. At the end of the road, she holds all of the power in her leather-gloved hands.
Whether she knows it or not.
And, uhhh … I’m not sure she knows it.
Even as Maura prattles on, saying, “I just don’t understand how the hell I’m still in this game,” she simultaneously keeps asserting, “My gut is telling me it’s not Rob.” How she never puts these two thoughts together—like, hey, maybe the reason I’ve made it this far is because the guy I’m closest to is the one who has all of the murder powers—is fucking bonkers. Immediately after Mark’s murder, Rob begins pitching Maura on a numbers game: that if she, Rob, and Eric stick together, no one can stop them from controlling the final outcome (and there is some urging from Maura that once it’s down to the three of them, Eric needs to go). He’s more or less laying out the same strategy that CT and Trishelle won with in Season 2—however, and this is a pretty important distinction, in that situation CT and Trishelle were both Faithfuls. I cannot express emphatically enough that there is no happy ending for Maura in sticking with Rob—her only hope is to break his spell.
And so many times in this finale, you think you’ve finally made it to the moment when Maura’s gonna do it—and every time, she makes the exact decision Rob needs to win the game. The first moment comes at the final roundtable, when Maura is left to choose between Johnny and Eric. A banishment vote for Eric would shake up the power dynamic in the castle and completely hamstring Rob; a vote for Johnny would seal his fate and Tara’s fate while rolling out a red fucking carpet for Rob to walk across the finish line. Of course, she votes out Johnny
Then, at the “Fire of Truth,” Maura is the deciding vote between Tara and Eric—and of course, she votes out Tara.
Finally, with only Rob, Eric, and Maura remaining, Eric tries to end the game—only for Maura and Rob to both decide to vote another person out. It’s at this point that Eric realizes what’s going on: that he was never Rob’s closest ally and that Rob was only ever going to end the game with Maura and Maura alone As this materializes, Eric makes a last-ditch plea to Maura to reconsider her trust in Rob. And credit to the editors, there is a split second when it seems like she might, which would have been both a hilarious and horrendously disappointing outcome—Maura handing Eric, one of the least active players of this season, the prize. But no. Obviously not. There wasn’t a single player in this game who was able to make Maura go against Rob; Eric certainly wasn’t gonna be able to do it. And so Maura votes to send Eric hom and end the game with Rob.
Three pivotal moments in this season finale, all centered on Maura. If she had made a different decision on any of them, Rob would have lost. But of course she didn’t. And thus we conclude with this iconic turn where Maura goes from thinking she’s somehow won The Traitors …
… to finding out that she’s perhaps one of the most easily manipulated humans in recent reality TV history:
“You pinkie promised!” she shouts at Rob. Which, yeah … that feels like a pretty good summation of Maura’s run on The Traitors.
More on ‘The Traitors’
More on ‘The Traitors’
The Snake (Slash Champion) in Overalls
They let this motherfucker win The Traitors:
He can’t even be bothered to buckle both buckles! This is your king! This is the guy who’s now in the reality TV history books as one of the best strategists to ever play the game!
“People just see me as a dumb, hot person,” Rob says after winning $220,000 for himself. And it is quite clear that he is a smart, hot person. Say what you wanna say about his competition—he may have been playing this game against plumbers and electricians—but Rob played the best game I’ve ever seen anyone play on The Traitors. He was charming but not ostentatious, he was a leader but not the leader, he gambled, but always calculatedly.
At the beginning of this season, I didn’t think there was any way that the man who’d lost his shit on Love Island USA would be able to make it 11 episodes without everyone turning on him. It turns out that I should’ve put more emphasis on a different observation of Rob from his time on Love Island: the fact that I’d never seen a more brazen gaslighter on a dating show. Just as a reminder, the highlight (lowlight?) of Rob’s run on that show was when he burst into tears in front of a girl who was confronting him about breaking up with her for a different girl. The first girl, Leah, left that conversation being like, Did I just undergo a lobotomy? Where am I? And so, yeah, in retrospect, I should have foreseen Rob’s ability to make other people go along with him. At the very end, when Maura tells him, “You’re never gonna get a girlfriend after this,” she’s 100 percent correc … but she’s also saying it about five seconds after she thought she was about to run off into the Scottish Highlands with him, happily ever after.
To return to that line above: Not only is Rob smart, but he is also hot. And ultimately, Season 4 of The Traitors was a testament to just how much you can get away with if you’re super-duper sexy. Rob and his big, beautiful eyes, his perfectly toned muscles, his totally badass snake tattoos, his shirts that sometimes showed off just a little nip—they had everyone duped. Rob has the kavorka. Rob is Jon Hamm in 30 Rock, getting out of parking tickets and putting Gatorade on salmon. He’s Jon Hamm in Mad Men, banging pretty ladies left and right despite being an absolute fucking mess.
All you can do at this point is tip your cap to this beautiful, now slightly richer snake bro.
Stray Closing Observations
- I cannot believe that, briefly, The Traitors turned into one of those helicopter dates from The Bachelor. Look at that. How on earth did I ever think Maura stood a chance?
- At the end of the final challenge, after it’s been pouring rain in seemingly freezing temperatures, Maura says, “I’d love a hot bath right now.” And then Rob responds, “I can get you something hot.” BUT WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?! IT SOUNDS LIKE IT MAKES SENSE, BUT IT REALLY DOESN’T! Certainly Rob wasn’t referring to his dick? Dicks aren’t notorious for emitting that much heat.
- Genuinely, I was pretty surprised that Eric was able to drive that pontoon boat during the challenge. It makes me think that I could definitely drive a pontoon boat.
- Also genuinely, Rob jumping out of a helicopter, grabbing a bag of money, and then swimming to shore in five minutes flat was extremely impressive. Again, this man is capable of anything. At some point you can’t fault others for looking at him like he’s a golden god.
- This moment when, before the Fire of Truth, Rob grabs Maura by the head and says, “We’re gonna win this game.” Saaaaaaaaaaavage. Stomach churning! Heartbreaking! I’m going to be thinking about this for a long time: how awesome Rob was, but how brutally ruthless he also was.
