The winner will make the fans very angry

(warning: This post contains spoilers for Traitors Season 2, Episode 11.)

Coming in this week of TraitorsThe only saboteur we have left, Below deck alum Kate Chastain, wasn't feeling great. As she complained to host Alan Cumming, our last eliminated mercenary, Real Housewives Star Phaedra Parks brought her “into the plans for Zero Tower” and then abandoned her to clean up the mess. To make matters worse, Kate's personal dig into Phaedra at last week's roundtable left some people feeling a little suspicious. Can she actually make it to the end and convince everyone to keep her around, or will this game finally go to the faithful?

This season has been intense, to say the least. Unlike the first season Traitors In the US, this season everyone was reality stars, instantly dividing the castle into factions. There were celebrities like Phaedra, Kate, Shah of the sunset star Mercedes “MJ” Javid, former Real Housewife Sheree Whitfield, and then there was everyone else. Chris “CT” Tamburello and Trishelle Cannatella have a long and complicated history dating back to their time the challenge, and according to Kate herself, there was an important friendship that viewers at home never got to see. Although Thursday's finale already looked tough, this behind-the-scenes reality makes the season's final moment even tougher.

This season's mix of celebrities has both helped and hindered the game: their outsized personalities have certainly generated some fun drama, but at the same time, this has been a very different challenge than it was when there were a few regular players in the mix. . As we reached the finale, there was no trust like we saw last season, meaning both the Round Table and Fire of Truth were more strategic than ever. As always, alliances were tested, and some collapsed under the pressure.

Kate's first order of business was to decide who to kill, and unlike her exiled partner in crime, she actually made the more strategic choice. She believed that by eliminating her ally, Bravo Cherry, she could remove some doubts. On her way out, Cherry starts playing the game instead of pretending to be on vacation, and correctly deduces that Kate is the one who killed her. I know they say it's always better late than never, but in this case…

Kate's plan was clever, but unfortunately, many of the players were still after her when they gathered at the breakfast table. Sandra, CT, and Trishelle were all willing to vote Kate out. But the deceitful little girl still has a few tricks up her sleeve—a complicity in the deception that made me wish she'd been a traitor to begin with.

God bless MJ, but she rarely had the right instincts when it came to traitors. She cast the deciding vote against loyal former Bachelor Peter Weber a few weeks ago, and this week, she insisted that Kate has “loyal energy” and that… Survivor legend Sandra Diaz Twain was the traitor. (To borrow a favorite phrase from Trishelle, “honey…“) And so, Kate thought all she had to do was get another vote for Sandra at the round table – and survive one final, grueling challenge.

This week's mission was simple in concept, but the producers clearly made it extremely difficult to execute. Players had to make their way over some Scottish cliffs to Alan Cumming's sailboat, where they would hoist the sail to claim their prize. Along the way, they can also make diversions to collect additional flags, each of which will earn them more money. Naturally, everyone wanted the money, and CT worked hard for every dollar.

Everyone stuck seaweed into lobster traps and then dug up more The Seaweeds are on the ground to earn their extra prize money, but it's the fat “Castle Father” who runs All the way back to start To find the combination to the lock. Then, after the group descended a cliff, CT and Sandra put the team on their backs one last time and swam into a cave against the current to collect a flag worth $10,000. (Honestly, give them the prize money for this act of bravery alone!) When the group reached the sailboat, they only had four minutes to raise the flag. Fortunately, they got it in time, taking home the full $50,000 to bring the final combined prize pool to $208,100 out of a possible $250,000.

Everyone may have been interested in teamwork during the mission, but from the moment they left, they went back to planning. Kate ended up in a truck alone with CT on the way back and wasted no time before trying to frame Sandra. He asked her straight out if she was a traitor, and she dodged it like an expert, throwing him off enough to threaten his plan to team up with Tricelli and Sandra to vote her out. But it wasn't until CT on Kate to Sandra that the shit really started hitting the fan.

When Sandra confronted Kate about publishing her name, Kate expertly cast light back on the CT scan, implying that it was for him Who was shopping for Sandra to get her exiled. This prompted Sandra to suggest that she, Kate, and MJ vote for CT – an idea that Kate immediately returned to CT, shaking his confidence even more. I repeat: this woman good In this!

Somehow, Kate's plot manages to get her to the end. Everyone voted for Sandra, including Trishelle, who just wanted to vote with the group.

However, for all of Kate's machinations, it was pretty clear from the moment everyone gathered for the fire of truth that Kate was a goner. Everyone burned red as soon as Cumming threw their bags into the fire, which meant that they wanted to be banished again. The group unanimously chooses Kate, who doesn't seem too upset about going home. Then came the real knockout blow: MJ may have been ready to end the game, but CT and Trishelle were not.

Going into this final episode, it was clear that CT and Trishelle were each other's ride or die. But in Fire of Truth, Trishelle – in a classic Trishelle-infuriating moment – briefly chose the wrong person and tried to vote out CT. Fortunately for her, the first vote was deadlocked: CT voted for MJ as planned, and MJ, visibly shocked and angry when she realized her number had gone up, voted for Trishelle.

CT was understandably upset that Trishelle had gone for it, but as she explained, his vote for Sandra at the final roundtable (and avoiding John Bercow from being eliminated weeks earlier in her place) shook her faith. When it came time for the tiebreaker, everyone stuck to the plan: CT and Trishelle voted out MJ, and she left heartbroken.

“I hope this makes you guys feel good,” MJ muttered on her way out, in a voice that suggested she didn't at all hope they'd feel good. “It wasn't supposed to end this way,” she told producers. “This is the plot twist of a lifetime. I hope they regret it.”

Before we could even pour one for MJ and her Famous jeansIt was time to celebrate – and CT and Trishelle were ecstatic. In a true 'father of the castle' moment, he lifted her onto the table to sit on the pile of gold, leaned over her and shoved the gold into her pockets before she jumped up and let it roll onto the shiny spoil himself. They each went home with $104,050, and when asked about their fallen friend MJ, none of them could even pretend to feel guilty.

“I wasn't willing to risk it for anyone,” CT said. “I'm sorry.” (But, no, it's not like that at all.) Meanwhile, Tricelli said, “I feel terrible. I mean I love MJ, but we said we were going to keep going – just the two of us – until the end. “It's been a bumpy road to get here, but here we are.”

From what we saw on screen, this moment isn't too shocking. MJ has mostly stuck around the Bravo Girls, while CT and Trishelle have been teaming up since the beginning. However, I can't help but remember something Kate herself said to me during our interview last month: Although we didn't see much of it on screen, CT and MJ seemed to also He had a strong friendship this season.

During that torch-lighting debacle a few weeks later, Kate said, “Trichelle wasn't the only person who was badly hurt” when CT chose John. “MJ and CT had a whole conversation, because MJ and CT have a very strong friendship that doesn't come up very often.” In retrospect, that might have been a hint about the outcome of this game.

“CT is very good at social games,” Kate said at the time. “So Phaedra felt like she had an emotional connection with him. MJ felt like he was like a brother. Trishelle thought they had an emotional connection. So, CT is very good at not only missions, but also at making friends and building relationships.”

With any luck, some of this will be brought up during the exhibition season meet on Thursday night. Last season was kind of a flop, but with so many big TV personalities in the mix, something tells me this one could get hot.