(Traitors thread) Did Stephen try to get rid of Rachel?

[TraitorsThread]

I know he stuck by Rachel at the end and shared the prize pot. However, towards the end he was spreading a lot of poison about Rachel and he was persuading other contestants that she could be a traitor. Rachel hadn’t been under that much suspicion before. Was this tactic done with the aim of hoping that the other contestants would banish Rachel and he might get to the end on his own and not have to share the prize?

Partly that, partly to distract from himself.

I think he did it to push any suspicion away from himself. Also, because she told him that he mustn't worry if he heard she was talking about him - he didn't trust her after that. At the end he had the game in his hands and could have thrown her under the bus in the final, because Jack was going to vote for her, and if he did too she would have been out.

Glad he shared the prize pot with Rachel. He did the honourable thing!

Over a 100 posts here:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5480917-if-you-had-been-stephen-traitors-spoilers?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

I know, but just wanted to ask why Stephen spread the poison about Rachel towards the end, as she nearly ended up getting banished. Claudia on Uncloaked said that Rachael and Stephen were like Bonnie and Clyde and that they were loyal to each other the whole way through. I felt that Stephen wasn’t entirely loyal to Rachel as his poison nearly got her banished.

The flip side though is that NOT talking about her is just as much a red flag for both of them and actually puts suspicions on both of them

Rachel was right they have to share suspicions about everyone or it looks odd.

He did get very paranoid in those last couple of episodes after she said about if he hears her talking about him etc.
And I agree, he did seem to start spreading the word about her more, not in a similar way to Rachel who would consider Stephen when discussed among others so as not to look suspiciously defensive of him but he would actively drop her name quite a bit.
But it’s all in the editing isn’t it, to make it more cliff hanger-y and as unpredictable as possible. It’s totally possible that Rachel was dropping his name as much as he was her but that it just hasn’t been shown.
Never trust the editing - we can’t really fairly assume anything, we are only shown what they want us to see.