Rob Rausch, a handsome snake-wrangler from Alabama, was standing a few feet away from Maura Higgins, the former Love Islander, next to the Traitors’ roundtable. Showing little emotion, he finally revealed that he had double-crossed her to win more than $220,000.

“I was so fooled by you, you absolute *sshole, you pinky promised,” Higgins says in the Peacock finale. “You’re never going to have a girlfriend after this; you’re such a good liar.”

Higgins and the majority of the cast had been fooled all along.

“I wish I could sit here and say I knew he was a traitor, but I had no clue,” Higgins said at Deadline’s Contenders Television: The Nominees Studio. “He played the best game in that castle. I genuinely did believe he was a faithful, but you know what? It’s a game, and I was fine with it. I went through all the emotions very quickly, and then I was like, ‘You know what? Fair play.’ I genuinely was so convinced that me and him was winning the show together.”

Higgins was joined by Rausch and fellow Season 4 contestants Monét X Change, Tara Lipinski, Lisa Rinna, Rob Cesternino and Eric Nam for the Deadline conversation. Watch the discussion below, and scroll down for photos from the event.

Rausch was cold as ice. “I was actually surprised in the edit. I feel like they made me seem a little more nervous than I was,” he said.

Rausch, who also became famous on the U.S. version of Love Island, did make it up to Higgins, somewhat, by buying her a Hermès Birkin bag.

Rinna, a fellow traitor and the person who helped Rausch secure the bag, had similarly been crossed by him, twice. “I just didn’t see that coming, so I was really genuinely shocked by that because I thought he was a better boy than that, but he wasn’t,” she said. “Everyone wanted him to be Mr. America, and no one wanted to believe that he could possibly be a traitor.”

It was a dynamite finale for the Studio Lambert-produced show, which scored six Emmy nominations this year including for Outstanding Reality Competition Program, after winning that category the past two seasons.

In addition to those on the Deadline panel, the series starred Ian Terry, Porsha Williams, Donna Kelce, Caroline Stanbury, Tiffany Mitchell, Michael Rapaport, Ron Funches, Yamil ‘Yam Yam’ Arocho, Colton Underwood, Candiace Dillard Bassett, Dorinda Medley, Stephen Colletti, Kristen Kish, Natalie Anderson, Mark Ballas, Johnny Weir and Eric Nam.

Tara Lipinski and Maura Higgins

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

Rob Rausch

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

Lisa Rinna

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

Monét X Change

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

Eric Nam

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

Rob Cesternino

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

Nam, who became a traitor after being recruited halfway through the show, was also crossed by Rausch in the finale. “Rob was like ‘We’re going to win this together’ and I was like ‘Cool.’”

The singer-songwriter said it was difficult pivoting from being a faithful to becoming a traitor. “Emotionally, it was exhausting,” he said. “We had quickly become friends. I went to bed one night and three hours later, you have to go decide who to kill and that was such a stressful experience.”

One moment not shown on screen was when the whole group was going down the stairs: Nam shouted “Traitor,” and Rinna turned her head. She was subsequently banished in episode 7. But she was fine with that.

“I had no strategy whatsoever, but the plan that I had was I wanted to wear that Erik Charlotte Couture dress to the banquet, and I didn’t know when the banquet was because they tell you nothing. I was just holding out for that, and so once they got me after that, I was fine because in my mind I had won,” she said.

Monét X Change, a faithful murdered in episode 5, said that he had tried to send Higgins “messages from the grave” but she didn’t hear him.

Cesternino, a former Survivor star, was murdered in episode 3. He said that The Traitors is more “mentally taxing” than the CBS competition series.

Lipinski, an Olympic figure skater, made it to the end but couldn’t convince Higgins or Nam that Rausch was a traitor.

“He plays it so cool, at all times,” she said. “You’re constantly surveying everyone, and you just don’t pick up any type of energy of [whether] he even wants to be there. He just did a great job.”

Everyone grab your webshooters because it’s undoubtedly Spidey season. 

During a Saturday panel at D23 expo, a group of presenters that include Marvel studio’s president Kevin Feige, Spider-Man: Brand New Day actor Jacob Batalon and Disney+’s Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man showrunner Jeff Trammell hit the stage to celebrate 65 years of Spider-Man.

Though Peter doesn’t look a day older than his perpetual mid-teens to late 20s, the iconic webslinger has certainly earned his 401k pension and retirement plan these past six decades. 

Reflecting on Spider-Man’s ever growing popularity which has now expanded more than ever across the forms of an entire Spider-Verse, several highest grossing films, TV shows, video games and more comics, Feige and Batalon discussed the superhero’s legacy.

“There is so much story to tell, that even after 65 years, we’re just starting,” said Feige.

After ribbing Feige about getting his “own show,” Batalon added, “Truly just, wherever the story takes us, we’re willing to follow. I feel like we all work with amazing people who make great things and just want to be a part of something you all love.”

Although Tom Holland wasn’t present, he graced attendees with a video message. “Playing Peter Parker is my dream, and getting to live that dream has been one of the greatest privileges of my career,” he said.

Surprises revealed today on the Premiere stage included the announcement of an interview between Spider-Man: Brand New Day‘s Tom Holland and Destin Daniel Cretton which will be featured in the upcoming milestone comic Amazing Spider-Man #1000. The several story issue, coming out in September, will follow Spider-Man as he faces his first new fear-inducing and formidable villain in decades named Ravage. It will also mark Noah Hawley’s debut comic 

Disney+’s Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Season 2, dropping January 2027, teased the introduction Eddie Brock, working for the Daily Bugle, as Doc Oc attacks a gala and kidnaps Harry Osborn after a brief fight with Spidey, who is exposed to Venom’s symbiote.

Lindsay Hubbard, one of the stars of Bravo’s Summer House, was doing an on-camera interview for a different reality show when shocking news broke that two of her Summer House castmates had gotten together.

At the end of March, Amanda Batula, who was still married to Kyle Cooke, and West Wilson, who had previously dated Batula’s close friend Ciara Miller, released a statement about their budding relationship.

Carl Radke, fellow Summer House star, told Deadline that he saw the pair’s statement when he landed in Los Angeles and realized that Hubbard was in the middle of shooting confessionals for Summer House spinoff In the City.

This required a quick pivot from producers, as they revealed during a conversation featuring Hubbard, fellow castmate Carl Radke, executive producer Jamie Jakimo and showrunner Trish Gold for Deadline’s Contenders Television: The Nominees Studio.

Watch the conversation below and scroll down for more photos from the event.

Jakimo, executive producer and SVP Programming at Summer House producer Truly Original, said, “When some news was put on the internet, we happened to have Lindsay in the studio with us. This is real. We follow what’s real, so we knew we had to camera up. We were on a green screen for a different show. This is happening now. Get the cameras. When something is newsworthy, noteworthy and affecting these cast members, we’re going to capture it.”

The only problem was that the show was already in post and the reunion was coming up.

“As producers, we’re learning things in real time, much like cast members,” Jakimo added. “We’ve become very nimble over the years where when we see things happening, when we get a call from somebody like Lindsay.”

The scandal dominated the internet and continues to do so, and helped Summer House land its first-ever Emmy nomination after 10 seasons. The show is competing against the likes of Love on the Spectrum, America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, RuPaul’s Drag Race: Untucked and Welcome to Wrexham in the Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program category.

Hubbard told Deadline that she was “overwhelmed with excitement” about the nomination and joked that it was “overdue.” “Being recognized after 10 seasons is incredible,” Radke added. “We really are real friends, which of course provides a lot of ups and downs.”

While the scandal involving Batula, Wilson and Miller may have got the headlines for Season 10, there were other storylines, including Hubbard and Radke becoming friends again after previously being together.

“I was just excited and glad that [Lindsay] and I could continue to kind of grow the friendship, get some closure from the past, kind of try to move on with respect and try to build a new chapter of a friendship. You saw pieces of that like the conversation her and I had at the Labor Day party,” Radke said. “Watching it back was really meaningful and touching. She’s been just cool with me.”

“We’re cooler than ever,” added Hubbard.

Carl Radke and Lindsay Hubbard

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

Lindsay Hubbard

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

L-R: Carl Radke; Jamie Jakimo and Trish Gold

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

L-R: Lindsay Hubbard, Jamie Jakimo, Trish Gold and Carl Radke

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

“We really tell these people’s stories,” added Gold. “It’s less about trying to make sure we get every little bit, but really rounding out everybody’s stories and being able to tell a complete story. How do we help move through this when relationships are fractured? One of the things that’s so pivotal is when Summer House is repairing relationships, because they are friends, and I think that’s unique to our show versus some of the other shows that are out there.”

The cast is currently filming Season 11 in a new house as well as a crossover with Below Deck Mediterranean. Wilson and Batula are no longer on the show, but Hubbard, Radke, Cooke, Miller, Jesse Solomon, Bailey Taylor, KJ Dillard and Mia Calabrese are.

“It feels good to be back. We’re like the little show that could. I feel like we have finally hit our stride. But now, it’s a new chapter,” said Radke. “It’s normal and natural for it to evolve with maybe some new faces or some people graduate or do whatever. It’s a totally new summer, but we have a new house.”

Hubbard said that the whole situation “took a lot out of us.” She said, “We spent a lot of time on it, emotionally, mentally, physically. We were all ready to put it behind us and just celebrate a fresh start and a new house with a fun summer.”

They’re all single now, as well, Hubbard stressed. “That makes for a fun summer.”