Warning: This article contains spoilers from The Traitors series 4 final.
The Traitors could not have crowned more deserving winners than Rachel and Stephen – but their victory was hard-fought and mercilessly won.
Together, they broke records. Rachel is the first female traitor to win, and Stephen is the first LGBTQ+ traitor to win. Better still, it’s the first time two traitors have stuck together to win.
Even when Stephen had every chance to throw Rachel under the bus and swipe the entire £95,750 prize money, he stayed true to his word, and they both left the castle almost £50,000 richer.
But you don’t win The Traitors as a traitor without spilling blood – and that they did. Both Rachel and Stephen had to sacrifice their closest allies to seal their victory, which made for some very difficult conversations once filming finished.
Rachel weathered two of the most ferocious storms The Traitors has ever seen; first, when fellow traitor Fiona threw a random grenade out of nowhere to accuse her of lying, and then when crime writer Harriet came for her, all guns blazing at the breakfast table.
The latter felt personal, and made for uncomfortable – albeit excellent – viewing.
After their monumental win, Rachel told Metro: ‘Myself and Harriet had a whole weekend together in Ireland.
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‘That was lovely because we had a lovely friendship in the show, and then I was blindsided. I didn’t think she was on to me, I didn’t suspect her background, and so that all was very tense after she left.
‘We reached out to each other, and we were like, “You know, we actually do like each other in real life, so we sat and picked apart the confessional, we talked about it all. And so that was probably the one I was worried, “Oh, what’s it going to be like?” But she’s amazing.”’
Stephen had his own bridges to build after the show, too. After bringing two of his closest friends, Jack and Jade, to the final, they were both equally devastated when, out of nowhere, he banished them after building their total trust.
He explained: ‘Jack and Jade were who I was probably the closest with in there, and [who I] had to probably be the most ruthless with in that final episode – it was rough.
‘Afterwards, we did have conversations where they were just saying, “We just felt let down.”
‘Those are absolutely valid feelings, but I did have Jack and his fiancée over at my house, and I made them homemade pasta from scratch.
Are you pleased that Rachel and Stephen won?
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‘But at the end of the day, they all understand it’s a game. We had to do what we had to do, and I think that’s the thing that I most feel most privileged for is that I’m able to play with people who are mature enough to realise that.’
Both Rachel and Stephen admit they couldn’t have won the game without each other. They essentially shattered the expectation of the game, which pits every player against each other eventually to remain defiantly one.
However, they both came dangerously close to having to turn on each other at various stages of the process. Stephen admitted he had a ‘wobble’, while Rachel insists she never doubted her ally for a second.
But who would they have recruited had the other been banished?
Rachel says: ‘I would have recruited Matty. I just loved him in the game. I thought he was brilliant. I loved how his mind worked – he was so inquisitive, and he was quite strategic, but we got along really well.’
For those exact reasons that Rachel would have recruited Matty, who showed his cards by secretly asking to be recruited by the traitors midway through the game, Stephen explained why he would never have chosen him.
‘I wouldn’t have taken someone like Matthew in because of how strategic he is, I would have been worried that he would have thrown me to the wolves,’ says Stephen.
‘Jack, bless his heart, is one of the most lovely, trusting boys I’ve ever me,t which is why he got into the situation he got into, but I would only have brought someone into the turret that I felt confident was going to stick with me all the way.’
Separately, Jack admitted he was concerned Stephen faked a friendship just to win the money – but Stephen had the receipts. Jack said: ‘Your biggest concern is if you’ve been friends with someone that’s a traitor, that the relationship you form is genuine.
‘Stephen, bless his heart, had actually written a diary entry about our friendship and how well we got on, which he shared with me very kindly, and it showed how much I meant to him.’
The Traitors wrapped up filming last summer. Rachel and Stephen have been sitting on the secret that they’re champions all this time without being able to tell a soul, relying only on each other and their respective partners. Their unique bond is only more unbreakable since they left the castle.
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‘I just love the fact that the first moment I met Rachel, she told me that she was a foot model, and obviously, just that stupid joke from the get-go, for her to break the ice in that manner, I just thought, “Okay, we’re gonna have some good craic me and her.”
‘Honestly, since we finished because being a traitor in the game is quite an isolating experience and to have the ending that we had, we have just really enjoyed the fact that we have this little team, so since we finished filming, we’ve just been in constant contact – whether she likes it or not.’
‘We couldn’t have done it without each other,’ says Rachel.‘As Steven said, it is isolating, so whenever we made the pact, I thought, “I have a team, and a team that I believe in. I didn’t want to win it on my own, and I didn’t think I’d need him so much. The game balanced out where he leaned on me very heavily in the first half, and I leaned on him so heavily in the second half.’
So much so, Stephen calls himself ‘dead weight’ in the beginning, but his eureka moment came when Fiona needlessly threw herself to the wolves, and he had to murder one of his own.
‘I felt like then I had a job to do, to be a bit more composed and a bit more measured while the head was on Rachel. For me, that is why this result feels so beautiful because we both really looked out for each other and shared the responsibility at different points throughout the game.’
As for what’s next, they both have suitably well-intentioned plans to spend their respective prize money.
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Rachel says: ‘My first plan is just going to be sitting with my family and asking them, “What can we do?” I told my mum this morning, and it was the nicest thing, so the first thing will be to treat her and the kids.’
Stephen adds: ‘I couldn’t have gone through this without my own support network. My partner and my parents have just been such a rock because our lives have been so strange for the last 12 months, almost, going through all emotions. And I would love to just give them a little holiday, a wee break and relax, because I’ve put them through the wringer.’
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