The Greatest Traitor Of All Time

On Thursday night, in the season finale of The Traitors, two former Love Island contestants locked eyes across the round table. In the face of Maura Higgins you could see a dangerous hope growing—as if, for the first time, she could imagine what winning would be like. Here she was, at the end of a long game of strategy and deceit and maybe... just maybe... she had played well enough. She glanced at Rob Rausch across from her, whose body under his overalls looked truly relaxed for the first time all season, and believed that they might have done it together. And he looked at her with glee in his eyes, knowing that she was so deeply, terribly wrong.

She mistook it for a shared joy in winning. "I'm sorry," she joked, pausing for emphasis. "I'm a faithful."

"Oh fuck," he said. And then he tells her that he's not, that he's lied to her for weeks, crept about, and twisted the play of the game around his little finger until the whole world they lived inside was controlled entirely by him. "Maura, I am and I always have been... a traitor."