It’s finally time for the Survivor finale, or as I’d like to call it, two hours of waiting to see how wide Rachel’s margin of victory will be. While the season hasn’t left much to the imagination going into this final episode, there’s always the slim chance obvious frontrunner Rachel won’t take the win.
Sam went from scheming top dog to honest underdog, reaching the finale as a sizable threat without needing necklaces and idols to save him. Sue had a great pre-merge, only to fade into the background as bigger players took center stage, but she’s been underestimated and played a fiercely loyal game. Teeny’s had a wild journey of self-discovery despite their constant strategic blunders, so they have a powerful story to tell the jury at the very least. And with just a fire-making challenge standing in their way, the game can still be won or lost with the opportunities the format provides, as shocking winners have proven in the past.
But first, we need to tackle the immunity challenge, and in a pleasant change of pace, it’s a serious gauntlet requiring multiple skills instead of Simmotion or anything involving stacking. Good. Keep changing it up. But in terms of not changing things up, Rachel, the puzzle queen, wins her fourth necklace, becoming the fifth woman to win four immunities in one season. She’s probably won the season, too, but Sam’s still fighting for the win himself. He passed her on the way to the puzzle, but he just couldn’t beat her when it counted, even as she made a silly mistake and had a piece backwards.
Rachel knows exactly what she’s going to do with her power. Sue’s been the only genuine ally she’s had the entire season, so she’s going to Day 26 without breaking a sweat as a reward for her loyalty. Teeny and Sam can handle the fire, and not just at Tribal because once Rachel tells them her plan, they’re already bickering. Sam’s playing mind games and being cheeky with everyone. Teeny’s annoyed and gets flustered again, and this means war. But when it comes to actually practicing for the challenge, Teeny learns the ropes quickly with Rachel’s help while Sam struggles.
Sam never really made fire before, barely touched the flint all season, and is going up against someone who knows what they’re doing. Rachel’s confident in Teeny, Teeny’s confident in themselves, and Sue’s happy to let Teeny take this one as she sits back in her free final three spot. But Sam’s not done yet. He’s been scrapping his way through the game since Sierra was voted out, and after reading the letter from his father, he embraces that second wind and heads back out to keep training, finally able to make a fire on his own without anyone coaching him along.
At Tribal, Rachel acknowledges she could step in and take out Sam herself, but she earned her spot at the end, and giving it up so she can win another challenge for bragging rights would be stupid. Thank you for saying what we’re all thinking, Rachel. If Sue or Teeny had won that challenge, sure, go for the Underwood. But Rachel doesn’t need it, and it’s officially Teeny and Sam heading into battle. Either way, it’s going to be a poetic finish for the loser. Teeny admits their rivalry with Sam has been unfair and one-sided, that they projected their own insecurities onto a guy who did nothing wrong. So, if they beat him, it’s a story of personal achievement. And if Sam wins, they’ll have more to say after the challenge.
Unfortunately for Teeny, despite building a raging inferno and sizzling that rope while Sam can’t even get a spark to catch, they’re once again blindsided, not by their allies, not by their enemies, but by the wind. Sam gets a fire going, and because the wind just happens to blow unfavorably on Teeny’s station, their fire flies away from the rope and pushes Sam’s upward long enough to give him the win. Sure, the challenge was a nail-biter, and I’d rather see close wins instead of absolute steamrolls where someone can’t even get a fire going, but this should absolutely NOT be a thing to determine who sits at the end anymore.
It wasn’t about pure skill tonight. It was decided by a lucky gust of wind at the right time. It wasn’t the first time wind screwed someone, of course, and it won’t be the last. Honestly, they were lucky that someone who seemed to be a goat got knocked out this way. If Rachel got owned by the wind instead or any big player the audience was rooting for, people would be waaaaay more upset than they probably will be over Teeny. So, instead of doing the boring thing and holding the fire challenge in a closed space like the voting booth (assuming Jeff and co. would even see this result as an issue in the first place), just get rid of it already.
We reached peak fire-making in Edge of Extinction and Winners at War. There’s nothing else to be done with the challenge outside of watching someone give up immunity and then fall on their face to eat a fourth-place boot when they didn’t have to. Hell, if we’re doing fourteen-episode seasons again for scheduling reasons… dare I say, go back to final twos? Anything would be better than forced fire at this point.
But the wind knocks Teeny out and gives Sam a clutch win, making this a battle of long-term underdogs at the end as the jury debates who really deserves this million bucks. Sam held power at the beginning, but the post-merge humbled him and forced him to be scrappy to survive every vote without any guaranteed safety to his name. Meanwhile, Rachel got humbled when Anika was blindsided, but she realized her game needed to change and eventually made the right connections to reach the endgame where she could win out Mike Holloway style.
And then there’s Sue, who played a loyal game all season and might’ve been the most underestimated player of them all as she lied about her age and profession the entire time.
Despite the writing on the wall seeming obvious, Final Tribal is an actual battle with great arguments for and against the obvious contenders. Sue finally reveals her age on her birthday, says she kicked all their asses at 59 years old, and preaches the value of loyalty as she wants to be the oldest winner ever. And that’s about all she’s got to stay. No shade to Sue who didn’t play awfully, but she was so passive compared to Rachel and Sam in this post-merge, and this jury isn’t going to let her take much credit for going down with sinking ships and getting dragged to the end by the obvious winner. And it seems the editors won’t let her take credit either because she says about five lines the entire time.
Frontrunner Rachel faces a complimentary jury as she talks about ignoring the need for a legacy and just owning the game she played. It definitely wasn’t perfect. She got blindsided. Her voting record wasn’t the best. She played a Mike Holloway game when it was the last route she ever expected or wanted to take. But she had moments of brilliance that went beyond her errors. She played spy games at night and sussed out an incoming blindside at the final six. She sat back and staged her own funeral as the rest of the tribe glazed her game in front of the jury, not knowing she’d be totally safe that night.
In addition, she built final three deals and formed the underdog alliance out of her new connections to keep her safe with a community of her own. Her game was dominant, and not just because she lucked into advantages in fries and necklaces in challenges. She had tools to use and she used them perfectly alongside a solid social game that got people to respect her despite her weaknesses.
It’s a tough game to beat, but Sam’s giving it all he’s got. Like Rachel, he didn’t play a perfect game like he wanted to. He got blindsided after playing the mastermind role for a couple of votes. He didn’t have any power for most of the season. He had to scrape by round after round without agency. And a lot of his plans either didn’t matter or didn’t pan out. But as the underdog, he had to try anything and everything to stay alive. He didn’t get Rachel out, but he gassed her up to keep a target in front of himself, and it’s not like she got her way all the time either.
Plus, Sam had a great voting record and managed to find himself with the majority by being adaptable to the extreme, even to the point of leaking information to betray his would-be allies. He never needed a single advantage or immunity win to survive, and the idol he did have was used after it expired to pull off Operation: Italy. When he needed inspiration, he couldn’t rely on allies to keep him going, so he turned to his family and his younger self, not wanting to disappoint that kid who dreamed of winning his favorite show.
Both have solid performances with valid arguments and in this season of top dogs and underdogs, it’s a dog-eat-dog finale with neither letting each other get away with an unearned victory here. But when the votes are finally read, it’s not quite the close call you’d hope for. Rachel sweeps all the votes except for Kyle’s, which goes to Sam on account of him never giving up and owning his scrappy gameplay. But Rachel’s game spoke for itself. It was messy at times but ultimately dominant when it mattered.
For sure, Rachel got lucky, but the moments of intentional brilliance in there gave her so much more to talk about than just idols and challenges. Sam would’ve been a good winner, too, and his Final Tribal performance was pretty solid as he attacked Rachel where it hurt and defended her arguments against him about as well as one could. And I guess Sue was there too for the few seconds they showed her speaking. Oh well. At least she set some records and the bragging rights that come with them.
So, that’s Survivor 47. Definitely not a season that quite lived up to its earlier impressions, but it’s not one that dropped the ball either. A somewhat ho-hum early post-merge took the wind out of its sails after an insane pre-merge. Still, the last few rounds were full of exciting power shifts including one of the best episodes and defining moves of the New Era in Operation: Italy. Plus, a likable winner like Rachel, whose win feels earned and appropriate for this specific season, ties a neat little bow around this story.
Yeah, I wish there was a bit more personal drama after Rome left. I would’ve liked to see a less predictable editing job that didn’t make Rachel feel inevitable with over a month of the season left. Really could’ve done without the wind of all things determining one of the finalists too. But the ultimate results are satisfying, and hopefully, we can go four-for-four with great 90-minute seasons as Survivor 48 is just weeks away with a colorful cast of characters waiting to battle it out for another million dollars.
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