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.
OVERVIEW
Apologies for the delay in getting to the final Edit Bay of the season, but here we are! I’ll keep thing short in wrapping up the Survivor 46 narrative and then share the final Edgic ratings for the final five, along with their overall season ratings.
The finale played out pretty much as predicted, with Kenzie’s social game triumphing over Charlie and Ben. One thing that wasn’t expected was the way things ended for Charlie and Maria. While their eventual break-up was foreshadowed in previous episodes, I didn’t see that ultimately ending up with Maria not voting for Charlie at the FTC.
Outside of that, though, everything else fell into place. As I said in the Episode 12 write-up regarding Maria, “Her edit seems set up as the big threat to take down before the Final Tribal Council.” That’s precisely what happened as the other castaways teamed up to make sure she didn’t win immunity and subsequently sent her packing.
For Liz, I wrote, “I could see her as the first boot of the finale or the fire-making loser (there have been a couple of foreshadowing moments in this regard),” and the latter proved to be true. Those moments of Liz struggling with fire were a strong hint of how her story would end.
Ben’s arc was a little less clear; I could have been him as the fire-making loser or a FTC loser. It turned out to be the latter, and he was essentially a seat filler while Kenzie and Charlie battled it out. All the early foreshadowing of Ben causing trouble for Charlie and Maria and potentially linking up with Kenzie didn’t amount to much. In fact, Ben stuck by Charlie over Kenzie after he won the final immunity challenge.
Looking back now, Ben’s edit felt like the journey arc. He never had a lot of strategic content; it was all personality-focused. And the final few episodes focused in on his battle with anxiety and night terrors. The way he handled those issues and didn’t let them stop him from succeeding in winning immunity and reaching FTC was his victory.
However, it all came down to Kenzie or Charlie, the two frontrunners for the majority of the post-merge. They had by far the best edits, with consistent strategy content, focus on relationships and alliances, strong premieres, and, by the end of the season, both had personal scenes. The fact it was a close vote between the pair made sense, given what we’d seen over the course of the season.
Kenzie’s edit was actually kind of quiet in the finale, but the groundwork for why she would win had already been laid. We’d heard countless times how sociable and likable she was and how she’d be a threat in the end. On the flip side, while we’d also heard positives about Charlie, we’d also seen a backlash to his partnership with Maria and not taking a more assertive role.
Neither Kenzie nor Charlie had huge moves to their name, so it was always going to come down to sociability and likability. Both were shown to have strong social games, but Kenzie’s stood out a little more and probably felt more consistent from beginning to end.
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 |
 Kenzie |
CP4 | CPM5 | MORM4 | MORM4 | OTTP4 | MOR3 | CPP4 | MOR2 | CP4 | MOR3 | CP4 | MORP3 | MORP3 | |
 Charlie |
CP3 | CPP4 | UTR2 | MOR3 | CP4 | MOR3 | CP4 | CP4 | MOR3 | UTR2 | CP5 | CPP4 | CP4 | |
 Ben |
OTTP3 | OTTP3 | MOR4 | UTR2 | MORP4 | UTR1 | OTTP3 | UTRP1 | MOR2 | UTR2 | UTR1 | OTTP2 | OTT4 | |
 Liz |
UTRN2 | OTTN2 | MOR3 | UTR2 | UTR1 | UTR1 | UTR2 | CP3 | MORP2 | OTTM5 | OTT2 | OTTP3 | OTT3 | |
 Maria |
MORP3 | MOR2 | INV | MORP3 | MOR3 | MOR2 | MOR3 | UTR2 | MOR2 | CP4 | OTTN3 | CPM4 | MORP2 | |
 Q |
MOR3 | CP4 | CPM5 | CP4 | CPP3 | CP5 | OTTN4 | OTTM5 | OTTN4 | CPM4 | MORN2 | MORN3 | ||
 Venus |
MORN3 | CPM4 | MOR3 | UTR1 | MORN2 | CPN4 | CPN4 | OTTN4 | MORN3 | UTR1 | CPN4 | |||
 Tiffany |
MOR4 | MORP5 | MOR4 | MOR4 | MORP3 | MOR3 | MOR3 | CPN3 | OTTN4 | MOR3 | ||||
 Hunter |
CP2 | UTR1 | CPP2 | UTR1 | CP5 | MOR4 | MOR2 | MOR2 | CPM3 | |||||
 Tevin |
CP4 | MOR2 | UTR1 | CPP3 | UTR1 | MOR3 | CP3 | MORN3 | ||||||
 Soda |
MOR3 | MORN3 | INV | MORM3 | UTR1 | UTR2 | MOR3 | |||||||
 Tim |
MOR2 | UTR1 | INV | UTR1 | MOR3 | CPN4 | MORN2 | |||||||
 Moriah |
MORP2 | UTR1 | UTR1 | OTT3 | MOR3 | CP4 | ||||||||
 Jem |
MOR2 | UTR1 | MOR3 | CP4 | CPN5 | |||||||||
 Bhanu |
MORP4 | OTTN4 | OTTM5 | OTTM5 | ||||||||||
 Randen |
UTRN1 | CP3 | OTTP3 | |||||||||||
 Jess |
OTTM4 | OTTM4 | ||||||||||||
 Jelinsky |
OTTN5 |
Written by
Kenzie’s story was loaded with emotionality and dripping with context. Most importantly her mistakes were always given depth and understanding to where we knew why she made moves even if they didn’t pan out. I was initially worried about Kenzie trying to blindside Tiffany. There were heavy vibes about that blindside making Kenzie a big threat. However, when that blindside fell through only to for Maria to take control, I knew it was ultimately about setting Maria up as the big threat.
I had a feeling Kenzie would be the winner for a while, but initially hesitant because of getting burned by Emily. Kenzie had a lot in common with previous New Era winners namely Yam Yam (fitting since they are both hair stylists ), but so did Emily. I thought there could have been a possibility of another edgic blindside for me. Fortunately, for my edgic prediction, Charlie was getting subtly undermined. When he talked about whether he would be seen as a Maria puppet during the F7, I knew he was losing.
Definitely going to be more aware during 47, I feel like the edit team on the odd seasons play more tricks to misdirect the audience.