Hello all, welcome back to the Edit Bay! This weekly feature takes a dive into the edit of the latest Survivor episode, analyzing the key stories, main characters, and top winner contenders.
For those new to The Edit Bay, it is a condensed version of Edgic, highlighting some of the stand-out story beats from the most recent episode. It also includes my weekly Edgic ratings for each castaway at the end of the article.
TOP CONTENDERS
Survivor 45 is heading into the home stretch as only seven players remain, but the latest episode threw some doubt into the mix when it came to the top contenders. The episode was so significant that I’ve decided to move Katurah back into the contender list alongside Dee and Emily.
Let’s take a deeper look.
KATURAH
This was such an interesting episode for Katurah for many reasons. In the one sense, it was the conclusion to her season-long arc with Bruce. Finally, after weeks of wishing and hoping, she got her chance to vote her arch-nemesis out of the game.
Weirdly, Katurah wasn’t the driving force behind Bruce’s elimination. Sure, she played a part and got the credit for unveiling Bruce’s idol lie, which set the ball rolling against him. But Emily was the one leading the charge, with her manipulating Bruce not to play his idol being a central focus of the episode.
My first thought was that this was a bad look for Katurah’s edit. For her to go that many episodes obsessing over Bruce and then not be the main figurehead of his elimination? It felt off. But thinking it over, if this episode had centered on Katurah defeating Bruce, it would feel like the end of her story. It would be a decisive endpoint that would likely mean her time was coming up.
Instead, Katurah got partial credit for the Bruce boot while receiving some intriguing content elsewhere in the episode. Firstly, there was a big moment at the sanctuary where she received a letter from her estranged mother. This felt significant, adding some much-needed personal content to her edit along with a potential winner’s quote.
“My true whole life story is just literally all sad, and I don’t want to let myself fall into that pit of darkness,” she said in confessional. “I need to win this game, and I’m not gonna win this game if I’m thinking about all my sad stuff.”
This quote sort of mirrors her time on Survivor. She hasn’t had the best run of luck between her beef with Bruce, being left out of the loop, and ending up on the wrong side of the numbers. Yet, she has been trying not to fall into that pit and keep her head up.
The scene at the immunity challenge elaborated further on this theme. A fear of water took over her body, and she had to drop out. It came out of left field, but you could certainly tie it back to the loved one letter and the anxieties it brought up. Katurah got trapped in that pit, and it stopped her from winning, but after the challenge, she overcame those fears and swam to the boat.
“I cannot explain it. I would never step out of a challenge. It’s just… I would never do it,” she said. “Maybe I can just appreciate the joy of, like, a lot of people being like, “We’re just here with you. We’re with you the whole way.” It was really beautiful, and I… I deeply appreciate it.”
What’s interesting is that Katurah took this encouragement from her tribemates and offered the same support to Jake during his crisis of confidence back at camp. As Jake beat himself up for not being better at the game, Katurah reassured him and told him they would make things work and do this together.
The Katurah and Jake stuff is the most intriguing because they’ve been linked together since the first episode. It started with them at odds, with Katurah mocking Jake for revealing his profession as an attorney, all the while she was keeping her lawyer job a secret. She’s brought up Jake’s job several times throughout the season. So it’s kind of fascinating they might now be forced to work together.
Those personal scenes and the Jake connection made me put Katurah back in contention. It felt like the edit wanted the audience to sympathize with her throughout this episode. And that has been the case across the season; even in her beef with Bruce, the edit made sure to show that Bruce was annoying his tribemates.
Katurah is still lacking in overall strategic content, which has given me pause these past couple of weeks. But in the new era of Survivor, it’s not always the most strategically complex or even the most game-aware player that wins it all. It’s often a person with a consistent story, and Katurah has that in her season-long arc with Bruce, and her side-story with Jake and the lawyer stuff is now re-emerging post-Bruce.
Is there a world where we could end up with an all-lawyer final three with Katurah, Jake, and Julie? That would be some crazy foreshadowing from the premiere. Still, it’s starting to feel possible, especially as Jake and Julie are also connected via Jake’s failed blindside on Mama J and her continued efforts to vote him out. And if that is the final three, Katurah would likely be the favorite to win.
DEE
On the other hand, Dee’s chances took a hit in last week’s episode. We keep hearing that Dee is this big threat to win, but it’s all second-person visibility. We’re not seeing this presented on Dee’s own merit in her own content. Again, she was barely in the episode, which has now been weeks in a row with scarily low visibility for a potential winner.
Sure, the edit always shows her getting her way, which happened again in this episode. She said the vote would be split against Bruce and Jake because they’re threats to the Reba 4. “If we hear names, we go after them,” she said, and, once again, that’s what happened. But there is a real lack of substance here.
While Dee called the shot, Emily was presented as the mover and shaker, and Katurah was the one who got the ball rolling against Bruce. And when it came to the Reba 4, Drew was the main person explaining why Bruce and Jake made sense as targets. Dee didn’t receive any explanations other than “they said our names,” which isn’t much to hang your hat on at this stage in the season.
What’s more damning, though, is the sanctuary scene. The loved one letters are a great way to give a player personal content, especially if the winner is involved. However, Dee’s letter scene was the briefest of the four and didn’t add anything to her story. Sure, Dee received a personal flashback scene in the past, so you can sort of defend it, but it’s still a strange approach if Dee is the season’s winner.
I theorized last week after the rice-stealing scene that perhaps the edit is setting up Dee as the big bad/big threat that needs to be overcome at the end. My gut leaned away from that at the time, instead seeing her as a Parvati-style villainous winner. But maybe it’s worth reconsidering?
Of course, there are still three episodes left, so Dee could suddenly go on a CP sprint and put herself right back into top contention. I wouldn’t rule out that possibility at all. But if Dee goes another week with this same UTR-style edit, it will be hard to justify keeping her in the top contender list.
EMILY
If the season is giving us an obvious, more straightforward winner edit, then Emily has to be the top choice. It would be super rare for a female winner to have this season-long run of CP edits and such high visibility, but it would also be a welcome change.
Emily was a central focus of this episode, receiving positive tone for her reward win and subsequent loved one letter confessional and leading the way for the Bruce blindside. While Katurah got things moving by exposing Bruce’s idol lie, it was Emily who led the charge, using her manipulation skills to fool Bruce into not playing his idol.
It’s hard to say whether this move was the right one in the long term. The edit certainly gave her credit for pulling it off, but there were subtle suggestions she was making a mistake. Early in the episode, she acknowledged that the Reba 4 needed breaking up and that her alliance with Austin and Drew might not be as solid as she thought.
But, by the end of the episode, Emily was once again voting alongside the Rebas to take out another former Belo. Now, there was some justification for this. As Emily said, it’s hard to make a move against Reba because the Belos refuse to work together. And we saw that with Katurah’s mission to take out Bruce, plus the distrust Jake had for Bruce later in the episode when he learned about the idol lie.
In a sense, Emily had her reasons for sticking with Reba. However, there was a chance to make a move against Julie, with Bruce, Katurah, and Jake seemingly on board. But, by this point, Emily was already dead-set on taking out Bruce, despite knowing how dangerous the Reba 4 are as an alliance.
So, is this move going to come back to haunt her? It’s possible. You could definitely read this episode as Emily’s last hurrah with her big personal scene at the reward and then pulling off her biggest move of the season. She might have just made herself the top target.
But it’s hard to deny her winner equity why she has so much great content, between the intro confessional, opening mat chat, the personal and strategic focus, and the character evolution.
THE REST
AUSTIN / DREW / JAKE
If it wasn’t already clear, I think we can safely rule out any of the guys from winning after this episode. That “boy’s night” segment, complete with farting and belching, was very funny but also completely buried them as players. Compare this to the women, who were discussing strategy and numbers over at the Sanctuary.
Sure, we’ve heard the “a woman is going to win this season” stuff before, and it hasn’t always panned out. But this season, it’s obvious the women have far superior edits to the remaining men.
Jake is essentially a puppy dog, or “Charlie Brown,” as Drew called him. His story is that he can’t gain ground no matter what he does. He always falls flat on his face and ends up as the decoy vote. His edit screams final tribal loser.
Drew is the strategic narrator with hints of cockiness. His severe lack of personal content at this stage in the game suggests he isn’t winning or is more of an obstacle to overcome.
Austin has always appeared secondary to Drew in terms of strategy and has been shown to be unwilling to make the big move, especially against his potential showmance Dee. He has some positivity to his edit, but the majority of his content is tied to advantages or the elements.
JULIE
These recent episodes have been teasing a Julie flip, with her battling her conscience over whether to make a move against her alliance or stick with them to the end. This episode saw her struggling with the deceptive nature of the game and balancing that with the “Mama J” persona.
I could definitely see Julie attempting to make a move, and that could be what propels her to a theoretical all-attorney final three with Jake and Katurah. And if she does turn on Reba, that could be what costs her jury votes in the end. Or the move could completely backfire, and she ends up sitting on the jury herself.
EDGIC CHART
| Name | EP 1 | EP 2 | EP 3 | EP 4 | EP 5 | EP 6 | EP 7 | EP 8 | EP 9 | EP 10 | EP 11 | EP 12 | EP 13 | EP 14 |
 Austin |
MOR3 | MOR2 | MOR4 | MOR2 | CP4 | OTT3 | UTR2 | UTR2 | CP4 | UTR2 | ||||
 Dee |
UTR1 | OTT2 | CP4 | MOR4 | CPP3 | MOR2 | MORP | UTR2 | MORM3 | UTR1 | ||||
 Drew |
CP2 | CP4 | CP4 | MOR2 | MORM4 | MOR3 | MOR2 | CP4 | CP4 | MORN3 | ||||
 Emily |
CPN5 | CPM5 | CPM5 | CPP4 | CP4 | CP4 | CP2 | CP3 | CP3 | CPP4 | ||||
 Jake |
MOR3 | UTR2 | MORP3 | CP2 | OTTP2 | MOR3 | CP4 | CPN4 | CP3 | OTTM4 | ||||
 Julie |
MOR1 | CP2 | UTR2 | MOR3 | UTR2 | UTR2 | UTR1 | MOR2 | MOR3 | MORP3 | ||||
 Katurah |
CP3 | MOR2 | UTR2 | OTT3 | MORN3 | MOR2 | CP4 | MOR4 | MOR2 | OTTP3 | ||||
 Bruce |
MORM3 | CPM3 | UTRN1 | OTTM3 | OTTN2 | CPN5 | OTTN4 | OTTM3 | OTTP3 | CPN4 | ||||
 Kendra |
OTT3 | UTR1 | MOR3 | INV | OTT3 | MOR2 | MOR3 | OTTP3 | MOR3 | |||||
 Kellie |
MOR3 | MOR2 | MOR2 | MOR2 | MOR3 | MOR3 | CP4 | MOR3 | ||||||
 Kaleb |
MOR3 | CPP3 | CPM5 | CPP5 | CP2 | CPM5 | CP4 | |||||||
 Sifu |
OTTN3 | UTR1 | UTR1 | MOR3 | MORN3 | OTT2 | UTRP2 | |||||||
 J. Maya |
UTR1 | UTR1 | UTR1 | CP3 | MOR3 | MOR3 | ||||||||
 Brando |
UTR2 | MORP2 | UTR1 | UTR1 | CPN4 | |||||||||
 Sean |
UTR2 | UTR2 | UTR2 | CPM5 | ||||||||||
 Sabiyah |
MORP4 | CP5 | CP5 | |||||||||||
 Brandon |
OTTM5 | OTTM5 | ||||||||||||
 Hannah |
OTTM5 |
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This was article was music to my ears. I’ve been worried about a Dee win for a while and seeing you say her edit has problems I’m relieved.
Why are you nvuse dee.
I’m not a fan of hers. She seems like a highschool mean girl.