Maura Higgins Stung as Rob Rausch Walks Away With $220,800 on The Traitors Season 4
The Season 4 finale of The Traitors concluded on Thursday, February 26, with Rob Rausch crowned the sole winner and taking the $220, 800 prize — a finish that left maura higgins reeling and sent several contestants into the reunion hot seat. The final episode and the subsequent reunion exposed betrayals, denied accusations of cheating and a string of dramatic confrontations.
Rob Rausch Wins $220, 800
Rob Rausch, a former Love Island contestant and a day-one Traitor, emerged from the finale as the winner and pocketed $220, 800. He played a long strategic game that included voting to banish fellow Traitors Lisa Rinna and Candiace Dillard Bassett earlier in the season, and — by the end — denying and defending his choices in front of the full cast. The host, Alan Cumming, reminded the final two of the rules: if both remaining players were Faithful they would split the prize, but if even one Traitor remained that player would claim the entire pot.
Maura Higgins at the Final Roundtable
maura higgins was among the last players standing in the finale, advancing through a sequence of votes and missions that included a daring helicopter jump into the water. At one late roundtable Higgins cast the decisive vote to banish Tara Lipinski, a move Lipinski called devastating. With Eric Nam, Higgins and Rausch left in contention, Nam was the lone vote to move forward while Rausch and Higgins voted for another elimination. The voting split led to the final two confrontation where Cumming laid out the winner-takes-all scenario. What makes this notable is how quickly alliances unraveled; Higgins, who had publicly insisted Rausch couldn’t be a Traitor, found herself blindsided when the season’s revelations unfolded onstage.
Eric Nam and the Final Banishing: Role Is Unclear in the Provided Context
The closing stages of the game involved Eric Nam in a pivotal, and ultimately contradictory, role. Contestants Rob Rausch and Eric Nam reached the end alongside maura higgins, and Rob and Maura turned on Eric and banished him before Rob revealed his own Traitor status. Elsewhere in the season coverage Eric Nam is described as a late-in-the-game recruit of the Traitors. The show’s record on whether Nam was a Traitor or a Faithful is unclear in the provided context. The finale also contained a promised final murder reveal, which was slated to be shown at the top of the episode in front of all contestants; separately, Mark Ballas is identified as the Traitors’ last victim earlier in the season.
Final Missions, Votes and the Flaming Roundtable
Before the final banishments the game staged one last true roundtable and a ceremonial flaming roundtable in which players threw red or green bags into the fire to signal whether they believed Traitors remained. After Johnny Weir was voted off — a decision that split up an Olympic duo — the remaining players participated in the flaming ritual and, in the sequence described, all four chose red. At the penultimate voting, Nam voted for Rausch while Higgins and Rausch voted for Nam, setting the stage for the final reveal and the winner’s payout.
Reunion Confrontations: Lisa Rinna, Candiace Dillard Bassett and Donna Kelce
The reunion special gathered the full cast for postgame reckoning. Candiace Dillard Bassett and Lisa Rinna confronted Rausch over accusations that he did not collaborate with them as Traitors during the season. Donna Kelce, the show’s “secret Traitor, ” addressed how her children reacted to her brief stint: they thought she “gave it my best shot” and judged her more treacherous than expected; she also said that Travis Kelce’s fiancée, Taylor Swift, and her family were watchers of the show. Rausch told the reunion he set the $220, 800 aside “for the future” and joked he would buy Higgins a Birkin bag; Higgins said she was focused on that promised Birkin amid the fallout.
Colton Underwood, Accusations of Cheating and Viewer Backlash
The reunion also addressed circulating theories that Rob Rausch and Colton Underwood had secretly cheated. Both men denied any rule-breaking. Rob pointed to strict rules and cameras everywhere as a constraint on private conversations. Colton said he believed he was working with a Faithful, that he and Rob had “bounced names off each other, ” and that he would never cheat. He clarified that an offer he made to Lisa Rinna to work together — despite knowing she was a Traitor — was driven by a desire to be recruited. Colton said he would have preferred keeping a Traitor in the game to see if they would flip and responded to intense viewer backlash about his past, calling his earlier ordeal “one of the darkest and most horrible moments” and saying he was not in a great place at the time. He also completed a tell-all interview shortly before the reunion.
The finale, the banishments and the reunion conversations left lingering disputes about loyalties, recruitment and who knew what when — details that cast members and viewers continue to debate publicly in the wake of Rob Rausch’s win.
