So this is the least hyped I’ve ever seen the fanbase heading into a finale. Five players we weren’t given much of a reason to care about, an obvious and unsatisfying winner on the horizon who wasn’t given their dues, and a “reunion” that’s been New Era-fied by Jeff despite us voting for the return of a classic tradition. Oh, this certainly is the season of joy and celebration, isn’t it? But maybe, just maybe, this finale won’t be that underwhelming if this final five can randomly bring a spark of heat.
Well, Tiffany is sure bringing some heat because the second she gets back to camp, she calls out “snake-ass Aubry” for lying to her all day and then hitting her up with fake sympathy. Joe calls it pure bitterness, reflecting on his own evolution from an emotional player to… whatever he is now. An underedited goat, I guess? Meanwhile, Aubry’s just letting Tiffany crash out if it means the guys won’t put her name down. If Tiff wants to work with her and make amends, she won’t rule it out, but that’s Tiffany’s call.
The next morning, Rizo, Jonathan, and Joe build a final three goat alliance. Tiffany has a lot of friends on the jury, and Aubry is an underdog old schooler against four New Era players. Either one of them will win against any of the guys, but whichever one goes depends on who wins immunity. After the biggest challenge of the season and a photo finish down to one puzzle piece, Jonathan wins immunity to earn a return trip to the final four, complete with an insane victory celebration that’s some cross between a breakdance and a breakdown.
So, Jonathan has immunity. He’s safe. Rizo has an idol. He’s safe. Joe is never winning this season. He’s safe. Tiffany has no necklace, no idol, and no Shot in the Dark. The only thing she can do is push Joe to vote for Aubry and hope her persuasion can make some magic happen. Her pitch? Aubry was robbed the first time she played and has actual friends on the jury who will vote for her regardless of game based on real-life factors, so why not just take out the biggest jury threat left and roll the dice with an all-New Era final four?
Joe doesn’t care, though. Tiffany is still a jury threat, and she’s more of a challenge threat than Aubry, who has way better relationships with the rest of the final five. So with Joe not sold, Tiffany goes to Jonathan and promises him she’ll take him to the final three if she wins the final immunity. Last time he was here, he lost fire and ate a fourth-place finish, and he’d hate to suffer a repeat fate. But predictably, there’s nothing Tiffany can really do here, and it’s a 4-1 vote after Tiffany lets the other four have it without any filter. She might’ve come into this season as a random pick, but she delivered even with limited screentime, so Tiffany 3.0, let’s go. I’m seated for it.
On Day 25, the stage is set for the final hurdle. Jonathan, Joe, and Rizo are determined to beat Aubry in the last challenge. Aubry needs that necklace, especially with a couple of solid firemakers still in the game. With only one challenge left and the format of the final elimination up in the air, the final four head out to face their final test: Simmotion, the most boring, overdone option of the three we had to choose from. And lo and behold, it’s a challenge that Aubry is randomly great at (because she bought a copy of it and practiced before the season), even against two people who’ve played and almost won this challenge before. All the guys have to stand there watching as she claims the final necklace of the season and ends all their dreams of winning that two million dollars.
And with Aubry immune and on her way to a free win, Jeff makes the news even worse for Rizo and Jonathan by revealing firemaking won the fan vote (we’re never getting rid of this mechanic, I fear), putting them both in the literal firing line to repeat history. But who will Aubry actually put in fire, hoping to take out? Rizo might steal some of her underdog thunder, seeing as he’s a two-time endgamer and can out-talk people at Tribal, and Jonathan’s the best firemaker they have, so that’s the match-up. There’s no suspense here. She knows it’s her best play, and she’s not even letting anyone sweat over it. It’s a firemaking loser showdown for the right to second place. Rizo sits down to practice and breaks down in tears as his past failure comes back to haunt him, meanwhile Jonathan effortlessly makes fire even in his confessionals just to flex. If Jonathan somehow loses this challenge, it’s because God himself decrees it.
Rizo’s only saving grace left is Joe feeling bad for Rizo and offering some advice, and once he gets a grasp on the technique, Jonathan actually starts sweating. Maybe there’s a chance Rizo can actually… Yeah, no. Rizo never stood a chance… which is totally spoiled when Jeff BRINGS HIM OUT FOR AN INTERVIEW AND CALLS HIM THE FINAL JUROR BEFORE THE CHALLENGE EVEN HAPPENS ON SCREEN. Absolutely iconic. One of the best reunion moments of all time, hands down. Made this insanely boring, drawn-out finale worth it, to be honest. Aaaand it probably killed any chance of a live finale in the future, so what a way to go out in style: messy and overproduced just like the rest of this season was.
With Rizo brutally flopping in fire and heading to the jury, we have the final three. Four-time player and Survivor legend Aubry, who was close to winning with an all-time great game on her first attempt… and her New Era two goats, Jonathan and Joe, who are here to play for that second-place money. And also, family members of this underdeveloped final three appear for the Day 26 breakfast, I guess, because what this finale really needed was even more padding before an obvious result. But regardless, the final three each have their own unique approach. Aubry played a sneaky floater game to dodge elimination time and time again and lasted as the final old schooler. Jonathan changed his style and played a well-rounded game, embracing all three pillars of Survivor. Joe… was there too, needing to be emotionally managed by everyone for any plan to work.
Facing a hostile jury, Joe’s pitch is that he put himself and his family ahead of anything else and embraced a more cutthroat playstyle. When it comes to the Ozzy vote, Joe concedes that even though he played a role in the blindside, it was Aubry’s social work that got him to take the shot. Despite his claims of evolution and adaptation, Cirie calls him out for the “Joe-tations” everyone had to do to babysit him before every single vote. He also made some other huge mistakes, such as bickering with Rick, telling the wrong people information, being too passive and letting himself get dragged, etc. For Joe, his story is about a guy who changed his playstyle to make it to the final three twice, having his name only written down once in two seasons… but this jury isn’t buying it.
Jonathan says he evolved his game and played with multiple perspectives, trying to connect with each juror in different ways rather than just being a one-dimensional challenge beast. He kept secrets, hiding his plan to blindside Ozzy and hiding behind others until the time to strike came. On top of that, he played an old-school style game as a New Era player, mixing both eras in one. He could fish and make fire, but he also played strategically and thought several moves ahead.
But when it comes to adaptation, it’s hard to make the case, since Jonathan stayed the course and ultimately let one of those fearsome middle players sit with him at the end, who adapted better. But he did make a key move to take out powerful winner Dee, leading the charge and staging a fight to keep her on the bottom. Jonathan’s story is about the assumed meathead challenge beast who came back and evolved into a well-rounded player with massive improvements to his social and strategic games.
Aubry says she’s learned that the fear of hurting others can limit her potential as a player. Unlike Jonathan, she didn’t keep secrets and played an open, information-driven game to stay alive. When Ozzy spilled his whole game, Aubry went to spread that info and get him out, and among everyone who was involved in that plan, Aubry believes she played the key role there by getting Joe onboard. She was fluid and flexible, becoming a New Era player despite her old-school origins. When Christian’s nerd alliance began to catch heat, Aubry jumped ship and worked across the aisle with Jonathan.
In terms of mistakes, she lacked visible agency for a lot of the season, even if that was an intentional choice to be passive. But she did make a key move: she wasted her idol and left herself vulnerable, allowing more relationships to flourish, which brought her within striking distance of the end. Her story is that of the nervous girl who floundered socially and lost in dramatic fashion, proved she could be consistent on the return, had a massive fall from grace, then returned as a reinvented player and fully realized version of herself who got the job done.
And with the jury’s votes cast and read live almost a year later, the winner of Survivor 50… is Aubry Bracco, finally taking a win 10 years after her controversial Kaoh Rong loss, earning two million dollars and a new car in the biggest prize in Survivor history. It’s a comeback story for the ages, but not one the show decided to tell for some reason I will never understand. It was pure gold: Aubry returns after an embarrassing flameout and redeems herself, playing a game inspired by the winners she’s lost to in the past.
They really only touch on it in the last twenty minutes, so instead of that being the season’s big story, we got the story of Cirie running the game like a mob boss until she’s unceremoniously voted out along with every other plot thread. Then Aubry gets an underwhelming and obvious legacy win the show almost seems embarrassed to put on screen. Surely Aubry was talking game all season and building connections that allowed her to float so well, so why didn’t we see almost any of that?
Instead of this being Aubry’s big redemption, she’s now struck with the Michele curse of having her win questioned for the rest of time because her game was largely unseen, and all her weird dodo moments were highlighted along the way. Because as much as the average super fan won’t like hearing it, and as much as it might just be editing pushing a narrative production wants us to believe… this felt like a Jonathan robbery story. He played a good game across the board, while Aubry seemingly wins because she’s the only old schooler left and didn’t embarrass herself at Final Tribal. Nobody wants to say the random challenge guy from Survivor 42 wins the 50th season and represents 25 years of history. But it’s easy to vote for a genuine legend to take that win, even with an underwhelming game driven by luck, as twists took out the rest of the contenders one by one around her.
Overall, Survivor 50 was not worth two years of hype. The cast was underwhelming at first glance, given the options we had, but surprisingly delivered until the onslaught of twists prevented them from actually playing. The edit refused to actually show how the winner won and left us with a final five of random side characters who hardly spoke with each other on screen. Even the live reunion we voted for wasn’t even a reunion at all, so the whole season just feels like one missed opportunity after another on production’s part.
And now we’re jumping into the NEW New Era called the “Open Era” where anything from the past 50 seasons could be in play, from crazy swaps to busted advantages to maybe even comeback mechanics. So they didn’t learn their lessons from how mechanically broken this season was and have probably just guaranteed even more luck-based winners they can’t tell a whole story around.
But maybe 51 can be a breath of fresh air if they actually think about the twists they include. We’re already getting a two tribe season out of it for the first time in years, so that’s good! But if we have to deal with Edge of Extinction, the Hourglass, the Blood Moon, or whatever fresh hell Jeff thinks makes for his own best personal entertainment… Man, this is going to be rough. Rebrand be damned, this is probably just the New Era on steroids… but at least the seasons will be somewhat different now instead of the same format twice a year. I hope.
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