Sabotage. Betrayal. 'The Traitors' makes reality TV villainy fun again.

When Survivor veteran Rob Mariano turned the tables on RuPaul’s Drag Race’s Bob the Drag Queen during a tense confrontation in the fourth episode of The Traitors, it had been the biggest game move so far in Season 3 of the Peacock series. Mariano, widely known as “Boston Rob” to reality TV fans, had just blindsided Bob the Drag Queen after publicly accusing him at the Round Table of being a Traitor (which he was), setting in motion Bob’s dramatic banishment from the Scottish castle.

Unbeknownst to the other contestants, Mariano — who secretly is a Traitor himself — had sabotaged one of his own alliance members in favor of gaining control and influence over the game. The surprising betrayal immediately caused a ripple effect in the castle, catapulting Mariano to the top of The Traitors’ villainy list and earning him the nickname “the Godfather” from fellow cast member Danielle Reyes.

“That’s part of the fun of the show,” Ron Simon, head curator at the Paley Center for Media, told Yahoo Entertainment. “How bad can a person be?”

Designed as an elevated murder mystery with various twists to heighten stakes and increase paranoia, The Traitors splits players between Faithfuls and Traitors — a small group of saboteurs chosen by host Alan Cumming before the game begins — who compete to win up to $250,000. The reality series is built around the concept that being good at deception, duplicity and lying will get you far in the game or, at the very least, make for entertaining television.

It’s these protective guardrails baked into The Traitors’ game structure that invite contestants, many of whom are reality TV personalities from established franchises like The Real Housewives, Survivor, Big Brother and The Challenge, to be cutthroat in their gameplay.

For some players — especially those known to be pot stirrers from their original shows, such as Mariano and the maligned Vanderpump Rules star Tom Sandoval (remember #Scandoval?) — they can sometimes use that to their advantage without suffering real-world consequences.

“In real life, we have harsh social sanctions against people who lie. But once you turn it into a game where the moral evaluations around lying are taken off, then people see it as entertainment in the same way that people like to watch a magician act,” Chris Hart, professor of psychology at Texas Woman’s University, told Yahoo Entertainment.

“We realize it’s all a lie, but we’re entirely entertained by it. What might be viewed as a grievous offense in one context can be celebrated in another,” he added.

Andy Dehnart, editor at Reality Blurred, zeroed in on Sandoval as an example of a quintessential Traitors villain who has an opportunity — if he plays his cards right — to undergo a reputation resuscitation.

“[He] is the biggest villain they’ve [had] in terms of casting someone who’s been in the news and has a terrible public image,” he said, noting that the Bravo star has “a chance to sanitize” his image or “show us a new side of himself.”

So far this season, Sandoval’s 2023 cheating scandal — as well as his ego and lack of self-awareness — have followed him into The Traitors, proving to be liabilities in his attempt to shed his old persona. Within minutes of the game starting, Sandoval and Chrishell Stause, who is friends with his ex Ariana Madix, were already at odds due to their mutual connection.

“A show like The Traitors really benefits from the personalities, the editing, the establishment that another reality show has done. Tom Sandoval did a lot of damage outside of the reality show context [and] to his own reputation,” Dehnart said. “But what happened on Vanderpump Rules, he has a chance to step outside of that.”

As Simon explains, reality TV villains — self-proclaimed or not — are vital to the health of a competition show like The Traitors. “You need the tension,” he said, “and villains to stir up the psychology of everyone else in the competition.”

“Some of these dark thoughts that you might have in real life, these people are actually acting on it — although you understand that it’s a totally constructed show and they’re being encouraged to do it,” Simon noted. “It provides satisfaction to viewers because these are people who can get away with all types of misbehavior.”

The Traitors streams Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on Peacock.