Maura Higgins and a Secret Pact Helped Rob Rausch Walk Away With $220,800 on The Traitors Season 4
Maura Higgins cast a deciding vote in the finale of The Traitors season four, a move that helped Rob Rausch emerge as the sole winner of the $220, 800 prize. The result, revealed in the Feb. 26 finale, finished a run of strategic backstabs, a $40, 000 late addition to the pot and a dramatic final round of banishments.
Maura Higgins and the clandestine strategy
In the closing stages of the competition, Maura Higgins entered a quiet alliance with Rob Rausch to vote out Tara Lipinski and then Eric Nam, a tactic that required Higgins to betray fellow Faithful Lipinski. Higgins cast the vote that sent Lipinski home and later used her deciding vote to send Johnny Weir out of the game after a final challenge — an elimination that came after the cast added $40, 000 to the prize pot. Higgins told herself in confessional that Eric Nam felt suspicious — “There’s something not right here. Eric has to be the Traitor, ” she said — and ultimately sided with Rausch, leaving the Love Island alum and Rausch as the final two.
Rob Rausch claims $220, 800 after final reveal
Rob Rausch, a day-one Traitor and a 27-year-old who made his name on Love Island USA, was declared the winner on Feb. 26 and took home $220, 800. Host Alan Cumming presented the endgame rule: if both final players were Faithful they would split the pot, but if a Traitor remained he would take it all. Rausch said he felt a mix of emotions, admitting he had betrayed the person he had been closest to in the game and that he felt bad for Higgins, who called him a “snake” for lying to her throughout the season. He also questioned the wisdom of granting large sums to someone met weeks earlier, asking rhetorically, “Would you give $100, 000 to someone you met three weeks ago? I wouldn’t. ”
Final murder and the Mark Ballas elimination
At the top of the finale it was revealed that Rob Rausch and Eric Nam had chosen to murder Mark Ballas following the show’s Feb. 19 cliffhanger, making Ballas the Traitors’ last victim and reducing the field to five contestants for the grand finale. That decision directly shaped the final rounds, leaving Johnny Weir, Tara Lipinski, Eric Nam, Maura Higgins and Rob Rausch to contest the endgame.
Roundtable rituals: helicopter mission and the Fire of Truth
A last mission that featured a helicopter jumping into the water preceded the final roundtable sequence. After that mission, Nam, Weir, Higgins, Rausch and Lipinski convened for a roundtable where Weir was ultimately voted off, splitting up the Olympic duo of Weir and Lipinski. The remaining players participated in a Fire of Truth ceremony in which each person threw either a red or green bag into the flames to signal whether they believed Traitors remained; at one point four players chose red and the vote process continued until the final banishments.
Early Traitor lineup and a history of betrayals
Rausch began the season as one of the original Traitors alongside Lisa Rinna and Candiace Dillard Bassett, while Donna Kelce was introduced later as a secret Traitor. Over the course of the season Rausch voted to banish both Rinna and Dillard Bassett and later recruited Eric Nam days before the finale, only to turn on Nam in the closing moments. Eric Nam made a final plea in confessional for Maura to consider that Rob might be a Traitor, and later said he could not have lived with a different choice.
Rausch’s arc and postgame reflections
Throughout the season Rausch’s tactical play and acting were repeatedly noted as central to his success; he was described as a breakout star and the frontrunner heading into the finale. He admitted he had resisted joining the show at first—saying he had said no twice—and that he did not initially want to return to TV, but that he loves games and competing. In the finale he expressed remorse for having to backstab players he was close to in the game, including Maura Higgins and Eric Nam, and accepted the victory while acknowledging the human cost of his strategy.
What makes this notable is that a late-stage recruitment and a tightly kept pact shifted loyalties in the final hours, turning earlier friendships into decisive votes and delivering the entire prize to a single Traitor.
It is unclear in the provided context whether Higgins herself was revealed as a Traitor during the final reveal; the final onstage disclosure confirmed Rausch had been a Traitor the entire game.
