Welcome back to Inside Survivor’s 50 For 50, a semi-regular feature highlighting 50 former castaways who we think should be considered for a spot on Survivor 50. In a snake draft, the Inside Survivor team selected ten players each, with the only rule being they couldn’t have played more than twice.
PROFILE
Name: Karla Cruz Godoy
Age: 30
Season: Survivor 43, 2022
Finish: 5th place
HIGHLIGHTS
Karla began the game at the Coco tribe, where, due to her excellent social skills, she found herself in the middle of two alliances. While Coco enjoyed an early winning streak, Karla took advantage of this to improve her relations with the rest of her tribemates. She also made an idol out of the beads of everyone’s handbags, which she would keep a secret until late in the game. Once Coco lost, Karla was crucial in deciding which players would leave and helped orchestrate the blindsides of Lindsay Carmine and Geo Bustamante.
At the merge, Karla continued to use her social capital to make moves and remain at the top of the totem pole alongside Cassidy Clark and James Jones. Unfortunately for Karla, she was soon spotted as being too much of a strategic threat, and in retaliation, her ally, James, was promptly blindsided, and Karla barely found out about the move until the last second. Karla wasn’t deterred, though, and managed to win three individual immunity challenges even though she was injured.
Karla’s game ultimately unravelled when Jesse Lopez masterfully played Cody Assenmacher’s idol against him. This move prompted Karla to protect herself with her own idol at the final six, which then led to her being unprotected at the next round, and Karla was voted out of the game at the final five. To her credit, Karla took her elimination with pride, knowing it was due to her being perceived as too strong and dangerous of a player to remain in the game.
WHY SHE SHOULD BE CONSIDERED
Undoubtedly, multiple players in Survivor, especially in the New Era, have left their mark in the game, and Karla is one of them. From the get-go, Karla demonstrated how her passion and knowledge of the game would help her in her trajectory and her ability to manipulate the circumstances around her to her advantage, which she did in Coco and the merge phase.
Karla demonstrated her ability to manoeuvre herself in the midst of several groups. She used the information others brought to her in the best way to get further while also maintaining enough leverage so others would think twice before going against her. Quite notoriously, Karla also crafted a hidden immunity idol right in everyone’s faces without the others knowing what she was doing until she decided it was the right time to share her idol with others.
Had Karla gotten to the final tribal council, her chances of getting enough votes to win would’ve been highly likely, as her résumé spoke for itself. A second opportunity at the game would provide Karla with another chance to demonstrate how well-equipped she is at Survivor, and having learned from her mistakes (aka trusting Jesse), the odds are certainly in her favour of eventually becoming a Survivor winner.
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I really don’t want to see her back. Her drama with Cassidy and trying to persuade others not to vote for her to win left a bitter taste in my mouth. It’s not the good drama. At all.
I think there are better ones to choose from. 43 wasn’t a great season imo. Cody and Jesse were great characters and would only love to see them back on Survivor 50. Ellie had great potential.
I’ll go against the grain here and say that I would love to see Karla play again. She was a very fun, unique character, who still has a lot of potential, and the fact that she started as a likable favorite and ended up as more of a controversial, almost villainous character only adds to her complexity. Plus, the whole controversy surrounding Cassidy is IMO overblown – it’s clear that Karla didn’t hypnotize the entire jury not to vote for Cassidy, and her attitude towards Cassidy was transparent enough for Cassidy to deal with it.
Probst says he wants a celebration. If he casts Karla after all this offline drama he is full of BS and just wants to cast a non-white lesbian