Thirteen weeks ago, when Survivor 41 first aired, Jeff Probst warned us that this would be a season like no other. “Drop the 4, keep the 1,” Probst quipped, and he was absolutely right. As the finale played out this past Wednesday, it didn’t seem like we were coming to the end of another chapter in a very long book, it felt more like we were closing the first chapter of a brand new book. And who doesn’t love a new book?!? If this first chapter is indicative of the “new” Survivor, fans are going to be very happy (and lucky) to hopefully get another 40 chapters.
SORTING THROUGH THE WRECKAGE OF A “TRUTH BOMB”
After the last tribal council, where Deshawn tried to blow up Erika’s game, the final five are sent to a new beach where they have to “start over” one more time. No shelter, no food, very meager supplies. That night and into the following morning, the talk around camp is squarely based around Deshawn’s remarks. Erika doesn’t want to talk to Deshawn, Heather doesn’t want to talk to Erika.
The only person who seems to have benefited from the “truth bomb” is Ricard, who now has been given a small glimmer of hope that, if Deshawn doesn’t win immunity at the next challenge, the group might decide to send Deshawn home instead of him. Deshawn’s tribal blow-ups have served him well in the past, but this one was dumb in every sense of the word.
A SMALL BUT POWERFUL ADVANTAGE
Leading up to the next immunity challenge, the contestants receive knowledge of an advantage hidden at their new home. They unscramble a word puzzle (“Your advantage hangs where the trees love to dance”) and scatter across the island, looking for this unknown advantage. While Erika is the last to unscramble the word puzzle, she ultimately ends up finding the advantage and wisely keeps that information from Deshawn, so he spends more time and energy looking for something that isn’t there.
At the challenge, Jeff tells the contestants they must collect seven ropes to make a rope ladder, climb it, and then work a puzzle piece up another seven rung ladder to get up to where their final puzzle is waiting for them. Whoever completes the final puzzle first wins immunity. Erika reveals that she found the advantage, and Jeff informs her that four of her ropes and four rungs of the “puzzle ladder” will be completed for her. This proves to be very valuable as Erika is the first to get up to the final puzzle stage and has a few extra moments to work on the puzzle.
Those extra moments prove to be valuable as Ricard, who has been an absolute beast in these kinds of challenges, isn’t too far behind her. He is working through his puzzle at a faster clip than Erika is, but the advantage gave her just enough time to squeak out a victory. Along with immunity, Erika will also receive a steak dinner back at camp, and she invites Heather to enjoy the reward with her. This is a smart move on Erika’s part to rebuild her relationship with Heather.
VOTING WITH YOUR HEAD, NOT YOUR HEART
With both Ricard and Deshawn vulnerable tonight, Erika and Heather find themselves totally in the driver’s seat for this upcoming vote. Xander is presumably safe because he has an immunity idol and tonight is his last night to play it. Heather really does not respect Deshawn’s game and would rather go to the end with Ricard and lose than risk seeing Deshawn win this season.
As the girls weigh the pros and cons, Xander and Ricard have a very interesting conversation. Xander floats the idea of using his idol to save Ricard, who he also likes a lot more than Deshawn. From Xander’s perspective, he knows he’s not a real threat to receive votes tonight due to “idol fear” and thinks that using his idol to save Ricard would be a big move for his resume…assuming he could then defeat Ricard in the final 4. This is obviously music to Ricard’s ears as he now has potentially another lifeline in this game.
At tribal council, everybody is very raw with their emotions. It seems almost like a guaranteed send-off for Ricard, with the other four all echoing the same statement. They all think Ricard is a great guy, but they know they won’t be able to beat him in the end. Ricard talks about how much he has grown and the confidence this experience has given him. It looks like now his only chance is for Xander to make a very noble (see: stupid) move and use the idol to save Ricard. After the votes are cast, Xander gets up to play the idol, but wisely uses it on himself instead of Ricard. The votes come down 4-1 and the best player of the season has finally been eliminated.
WEATHERING THE FINAL STORM
As the final four celebrate their accomplishment, mother nature decides to literally rain on their parade. A massive rainstorm sweeps through Fiji, leaving our Survivors stranded with no shelter (new beach, remember?) and no real protection at all from an unrelenting storm. The lack of sleep will surely play a factor in the next day’s final challenge.
The next morning, the final challenge gets underway. It is a Survivor classic: the contestants must walk back and forth on a bowed walkway, as they stack six blocks one-by-one on a wobbly platform. They must keep the platform steady with a rope. Any quick movement or loosening of slack in the rope could cause the platform to topple over and force the contestants to start over.
Erika, Deshawn, and Xander get out at a pretty even pace. Erika and Deshawn move a little faster than Xander, but just like the turtle and the hare, Xander’s slow and methodical pace proves to be the more effective strategy. Erika and Deshawn drop their blocks several times while Xander never really falters, and he gets the final immunity victory to guarantee himself a spot in the final three.
A MILLION-DOLLAR DECISION
Back at camp, Xander must decide who he wants to take with him to the final three, and who will be competing in a fire-making contest for the final spot. Each of the contestants pleads their case for why Xander should take them.
Traditionally, the rule of thought is to take the “goat” to the final three and leave the other two “more dangerous” competitors to battle it out in a fire-making contest. In this season, the “goat” has to be Heather. She hasn’t won any challenges, and while her social game was good, and everybody likes her well enough, most of her strategic decisions could also be attributed to Erika, leaving Heather with a very thin resume.
For some reason, despite both Heather and Deshawn making it pretty well known that Erika is the biggest threat to Xander’s chances, he chooses to take Erika with him to the final three. His reasoning makes some sense: Erika has the strongest resume besides Xander, and if she wins a fire-making challenge to put herself into the final three, that’s one more thing for the jury to be impressed with. Instead, if Xander just “takes her along,” she can’t use that to persuade the jury to give her the million dollars.
Now, here’s where Xander went wrong. He wanted to take Erika because he assumed she must have gotten pretty good at fire-making after her two days on exile island. A natural assumption, and one that would strengthen his case for taking her along and denying her one more shot at glory. However, Erika is practicing fire-making back at camp and is clearly horrible at it. Xander sees this and starts re-evaluating his thought process. If Erika is really this bad at fire-making, he could take Heather along and hope that Deshawn would beat Erika in the challenge.
BEST. FIREMAKING. CHALLENGE. EVER!!!
At tribal council, Xander sticks with his first instinct, despite seeing evidence to the contrary, and chooses to take Erika with him to the final two. He makes reference to reading the reaction on the jury’s face after the “truth bomb” that Deshawn threw out at the last tribal council. He thought the jury agreed with Deshawn’s criticism of Erika’s game. The jury visibly disagrees with Xander’s perceptions, and he has clearly misread the body language of the jury.
This leaves Deshawn and Heather to duke it out in the fire-making challenge. The concept is simple: build a fire high enough and hot enough to burn through a rope that is suspended above their firebase. Deshawn is the first to get a flame going and starts to build a nice little foundation for himself while Heather still struggles to get a spark to catch. However, she soon gets a small fire going of her own and Deshawn starts to smother his fire completely and squash all the progress he has made. Meanwhile, Heather’s fire starts to rise higher and higher and starts to singe the rope a bit. However, it is not consistent enough to burn through the rope at a rapid pace.
This allows Deshawn to make a miracle comeback. He revives his fire and starts building it up quickly. Heather is trying to control her flame and get it to stay on one part of the rope, but the fire is too wild and doesn’t apply enough heat to one specific part of the rope. Deshawn’s fire grows high and straight, and he completes the epic comeback, with his rope snapping mere seconds before Heather’s does, and Deshawn earns his spot in the final three.
This was the seventh season that Survivor has used this “forced fire making” challenge, and it was by far the most exciting one that they ever have done. If you didn’t think two people making a little fire could make for dramatic television, go watch this challenge. You’ll be on the edge of your seat the whole time.
PLEADING YOUR CASE
After one last night on the beach and the traditional Final Three Feast, Deshawn, Erika, and Xander head into the final tribal council. First, each player gets the opportunity to talk about their strategy at each stage of the game.
Xander highlights how he relied on being seen as the “loyal team player” to make it to the merge. Then, once he was at the merge and on the wrong side of the numbers, he had to shed team loyalty and market himself as a lone soldier with an idol and extra vote that people could use. Finally, the major strategy in his end-stage game was how he used Ricard as a shield and the “bigger threat” that would keep the focus off of Xander until he could make it to the end without Ricard sitting next to him. It was a gamble, but it paid off. Naseer jumps in and also highlights Xanders selflessness throughout the game, like giving up a shot at immunity in exchange for rice for the tribe and giving up his spot for Erika who hadn’t had the chance to win a reward yet. Xander’s opening position is very strong.
Deshawn goes next and points out his need to rely on the social foundation of his game. “It doesn’t matter how many challenges you win or advantages you find,” the first half of his game was focused on strong relationships with each individual member in Luvu, so he’d have some support no matter what. He says the strong relationships were what carried him through the second portion of the game after he became a target. “I played a pivotal role in being the glue that kept votes together.” This draws the ire of the jury. Ricard counters that Deshawn would throw his allies under the bus all the time at camp. Deshawn does his best to explain himself, but his opening position is very weak.
Last is Erika, who explained that she had to change her strategy due to Luvu’s early winning streak. It didn’t allow her to build a voting alliance so, instead, people put all their value in the built relationships. Erika didn’t have as many strong relationships as the rest of the tribe. Then, her social game hits rock bottom as she’s chosen to go to exile island over Naseer, but that’s where she got the power to “turn back time” and change the course of her game. She saw the people who were on the bottom of alliances and worked with them to get bigger threats out of the game, instead of people taking the “easy vote” and eliminating her due to her lack of social bonds. Finally, when the end stage of the game came, Erika knew that no matter what combination of final six was there, she had enough allies to get to the final four and at least have a shot (fire making) of sitting in the final three. Erika’s answer was the most surprising and insightful. She had been seen as a weak player in this game, but if you go back and look at the work she had done after episode six, her argument holds true. Very powerful opening.
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
As opposed to a straight “question and answer” session from the jury, the last several seasons have changed to more of an open forum, roundtable format, and it has been a great improvement to the game. The first significant point that gets brought up in the roundtable is that Ricard feels Erika played a great social game, but enough people didn’t see it because she didn’t have tight bonds with everybody. Erika explains that she knew where she fit in the social hierarchy and built relationships with those she could, and then she used Heather’s social game to fill in the blanks.
Erika’s lack of ego meant she didn’t need to be in every discussion because Heather was in those conversations, and she would get the info back to Erika, and they could strategize from there. They were a known pair and they were still able to make it to the final four together, which is extremely rare. Erika continues to impress.
The next major moment comes when Liana asks Xander for an example where he used good social awareness to make a move in the game, and he struggles to get any kind of answer out. His stumbling and inability to cite his social awareness is a definite mark against him.
The hits keep coming Xander’s way, as Ricard points out that he and Xander were very close. Xander got rid of Ricard to better his own game, which was fine, but then he didn’t try to get out Erika who would have been the next biggest threat. Why would Xander do this to Ricard, someone he built a great relationship with, but not do it to someone he wasn’t close with?
Xander argues that his relationship with Ricard was real and it hurt to vote him out. He didn’t see Erika as that big of a threat to his game. He reiterated how he thought Deshawn’s judgment of Erika’s game went over well with the jury when, in reality, it did not. It was an oversight on his part. Even though, after that, Heather warned Xander that the biggest threat to take his game away from him was Erika, he ignored that as well. Xander finally brings up that he thought his game was stronger than Erika’s on its own, and he didn’t want to give Erika the opportunity to win fire-making and give her another thing to brag about. This answer satisfies the jury and Xander manages to get out of being buried by his lack of social awareness.
Another major point comes from Shan, who points out that Deshawn’s frequent blow-ups at tribal council made him difficult to trust, and his inability to keep the four-way alliance together made Shan and others feel like Deshawn emotionally hijacked their game for the sake of furthering his own. Deshawn sincerely apologizes if that is how it came across and is adamant that he would never use or capitalize on the movement for selfish reasons. It seems very believable.
(Author’s note: Deshawn seems like a genuinely good person who just had a problem with emotional immaturity. Sinister is not a word to describe Deshawn, and hopefully he understands that the people at home know his heart was in the right place.)
The last major point that comes up before the vote is Danny pointing out how Erika played a powerful game from a very unassuming position and intentionally allowed others to underestimate her. Erika agrees and adds that while she was not on top for most of the game, she was never on the bottom, and she was the only person sitting there who was on the right side of the voting numbers at every single tribal council. She didn’t need anybody to think she was leading anything, as long as her targets kept being eliminated, and that’s exactly what happened.
A SHOCKING LANDSLIDE
Heading into this final episode, the general consensus for “most likely to win” would be Ricard, followed closely by Xander. When the final three were Xander, Deshawn, and Erika, it seemed like Xander was a lock. However, his final decision to take Erika to the end proved a lack of awareness, and Erika’s ability to eloquently explain her game to the jury members who didn’t see it firsthand really elevated her game. When the votes came down, it was 7-1-0, with Erika receiving seven, Deshawn receiving one, and Xander receiving zero.
In a season filled with new advantages and shocking twists, it seems fitting that the game would end with one final shocking twist: little unassuming Erika would take down Deshawn and Xander in a landslide victory. While she didn’t have the most complete game or the biggest game, she had a very smart game. The jury was able to see it and value it more than victories, advantages, and big moves. If it were a different jury, the vote easily could have gone Xander’s way, but jury management is the most important part of sitting in the final three, and, clearly, Erika did the best job at that. Congratulations to her and all the contestants for giving us a wonderful and memorable Survivor 41.
