Maura Higgins left stunned as Rob Rausch reveals 'I am... a traitor' in The Traitors finale
maura higgins was left visibly stunned when Rob Rausch told her, "Maura, I am and I always have been... a traitor, " a moment that closed the season in Thursday night’s finale and helped Rausch walk away with the $220, 800 prize.
Finale moment: the round table confrontation
On Thursday night, at the round table in the season finale of The Traitors, two former Love Island contestants locked eyes as Rob Rausch dropped his confession and Maura Higgins, believing they might have won together, learned she had been deceived. She joked, "I'm sorry... I'm a faithful, " then watched the light visibly fall from her eyes when Rausch said, "Oh fuck, " and followed with, "Maura, I am and I always have been... a traitor. "
Rob Rausch’s win and the $220, 800 prize
Rausch finished the season as the last-standing Traitor and claimed the $220, 800 prize after a game that the Traitors control through murder and round-table banishment. He double-crossed Eric Nam, the Traitor he recruited and promised allyship to, and justified the move by saying, "Can you imagine if I let a Traitor that was there for three days beat me in the game and win the whole thing? Hell no, I'm not taking that chance. I'm getting out of here with the money. "
From Florence, Alabama, to the castle
Days before the finale aired on NBC, Rausch—27 years old and a snake wrangler—hosted a visitor on his 200-acre family property in Florence, Alabama. He spent hours feeding cows gathered en masse at the gate, mooing back at them and pointing out the only spotted cow, Darlin, "because she's a darlin', " while noting Darlin is the only cow that didn’t tip her horns forward and rush when he opened the gate.
How he came across on the farm
On the farm he wore a cowboy hat, a canvas jacket, light-wash jeans and worn-in cowboy boots; his trademark denim overalls that gained attention on Love Island USA season six were absent. "I used to wear overalls in the summer every day, but now I can't even wear them, " he said. He joked straight-faced that the cow field was "littered with landmines, " a prank the interviewer believed for a moment—an example, the writer noted, of the kind of convincing performance that carried him through the game.
Maura Higgins' reaction and what it revealed
Maura Higgins' stunned silence at the table — her mouth hanging open as she waited for a joke that never came — underlined how thoroughly Rausch had controlled play. The writer framed Maura as the trusting player who misread Rausch’s relaxed posture under his overalls on the finale night and became, in the writer's words, the punchline of his deception.
Context: the game's history and Rausch’s reality-TV background
The Traitors’ format gives the traitors extensive control: contestants can be removed by banishment at the round table or by murder, where traitors decide who goes. Amateur tallying on Reddit finds traitors have won 44 of 78 seasons that have aired. The writer called it rare for a traitor to dominate from start to finish without slipping up, saying only once—Harry Clark in the 2024 U. K. season—had they seen a comparable run. The author also noted familiarity with Rob from Love Island, recalling the contestant hiding under a water feature while sobbing; Rausch is described as tall, with a thick Alabama accent, often wearing overalls with nothing underneath, and working with snakes.
Back on the farm, the land Rausch showed off has been in his family for generations, with a wooden table he handcrafted and a vintage red Ford F150 his grandfather bought in 1993; bullet shells litter the outside of the trailer on his property where he and his sister run their clothing. Rausch said the win felt "very bittersweet": "I did it, I won the game, it's over…but at the same time, it was very bittersweet. It wasn't like, Hooray! It wasn't happy feelings straight away. I was like, Oh, gosh. " He added he remains "super tight" with both Nam and maura higgins.
The season finale aired on NBC Thursday night. The writer noted they have watched every English-language version available to them except the most recent U. K. season, which is not on Peacock yet.
