Edgic is a weekly feature analyzing each player’s edit, mapping characters to their story-arc. Note that our focus is not solely to determine the winner, as is typical of other Edgic sites. For more information on how Edgic works and rating definitions read our Introduction to Edgic article.
You can read all our Edgic posts for last season here.
Color Key
| 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 |
 Angela |
INV | INV | CP4 | UTR2 | INV | CPM4 | UTR1 | UTR1 | CPP4 | MOR3 | UTR1 | |||
 Chelsea |
INV | INV | INV | MOR3 | UTR2 | UTRP2 | MOR4 | UTR1 | UTR2 | UTR1 | UTR2 | |||
 Domenick |
CPM5 | CPM5 | CPN4 | CP5 | UTR1 | CP4 | CP5 | CPN5 | MOR3 | CP4 | CP5 | |||
 Donathan |
CPP5 | OTTP4 | UTR2 | MOR2 | OTTP4 | UTR2 | MORP4 | UTR1 | MOR3 | MOR3 | CP4 | |||
 Kellyn |
MOR2 | INV | MOR2 | CPP5 | MOR3 | CP4 | CP4 | MOR3 | MOR2 | CPN4 | OTTN4 | |||
 Laurel |
UTR2 | UTR2 | UTR1 | CPP3 | UTR2 | CP3 | INV | UTR2 | CP4 | CP4 | MOR3 | |||
 Sebastian |
MOR3 | INV | UTR2 | MOR3 | OTT3 | OTT3 | INV | UTR1 | UTR1 | OTT2 | UTR2 | |||
 Wendell |
CP3 | INV | MOR4 | MOR3 | UTR1 | MORP3 | CPP4 | CP4 | CP5 | UTR1 | MOR3 | |||
 Michael |
CP3 | MOR3 | MOR3 | CP5 | CPP5 | MOR4 | CP4 | MOR2 | CP4 | MOR4 | CP3 | |||
 Jenna |
UTR2 | MOR3 | MOR2 | UTR1 | CP4 | UTR2 | INV | MOR2 | MOR2 | UTR2 | MORN3 | |||
 Desiree |
UTR1 | INV | UTR1 | UTR2 | MOR3 | MORM4 | OTT3 | MOR2 | UTR1 | CPN5 | ||||
 Libby |
INV | UTR1 | CPP5 | INV | INV | UTRN1 | MOR3 | MOR3 | CP4 | |||||
 Chris |
MORN3 | MOR3 | CPM5 | MORN3 | OTTM5 | OTTN3 | UTR2 | OTTN5 | ||||||
 Bradley |
INV | INV | UTRN2 | OTTN4 | CP4 | MORN3 | OTTN5 | |||||||
 James |
UTR2 | MORN3 | CP4 | UTR1 | UTR2 | CPP5 | ||||||||
 Stephanie |
CP4 | CP5 | CP4 | OTTP3 | OTTP5 | |||||||||
 Brendan |
MOR3 | CP3 | MOR3 | MOR3 | ||||||||||
 Morgan |
UTRP1 | MOR3 | CP5 | |||||||||||
 Jacob |
OTTN5 | OTTN5 | ||||||||||||
 Gonzalez |
MORN3 |
THE CHARACTERS
Under The Radar
Basically nothing from Angela in this episode. She just scraped an UTR1 rating because Sebastian namechecked her as part of his numbers going into Tribal Council. Other than that, Angela was a complete afterthought. A number and nothing more – similar to last week when Desiree referred to her as a number. Angela has had a few CP episodes here and there, but the lack of consistency to her edit is the most damaging. As I’ve said before, this isn’t her story; she is just along for the ride. Though the fact she’s had a couple of CP ratings across the season could point to her making the finale over her lesser edited alliance mates.
What else is there to say about Chelsea‘s edit at this point? She won her second immunity challenge in a row and still didn’t get a confessional. In fact, she hasn’t had a confessional the entire post-merge game. And she’s only had three confessionals total the entire season. We did hear a small bit of game talk from her at camp before Tribal Council, she checked in with Sebastian and Kellyn, and she was part of the conversation with Jenna. But zero personal insight. It’s been 11 episodes and we still know nothing about who Chelsea is as a person. Like Angela, she is just a Naviti number, though she’s been shown to have a better strategic grasp than Angela.
I did consider giving Chelsea light P-tone due to the praise she received back at camp after her challenge win, but decided it wasn’t quite enough. Although, I suspect when it comes time for Chelsea to leave, her challenge prowess will be what is given as the excuse to eliminate her because the edit hasn’t given us anything else.
Out of the three Navitis on the “purple tribe,” Sebastian had the most content, but that’s not saying much. He was the one that threw out Jenna’s name and then he had the confessional saying the plan was to vote Jenna but make her believe it was Donathan. That was it, short and simple. It didn’t feel like enough to warrant a MOR in my opinion. There was one kind of “goofy” Sebastian moment early in the episode when he suggested making “fruity rice,” but that was it. The positive here is that Sebastian’s plan worked. The negatives are obvious – lack of airtime, minimal personal content, no personal narrative, very little SPV. Again, the main function of his edit is a “Naviti number.”
Middle of the Road
I said last week that the future was grim for Jenna and that proved to be the case this week. As with many of this season’s cast, there just wasn’t any care put into her edit. The show didn’t want us to care about Jenna, hence the lack of personal content and disappearing for weeks at a time. She had a few strategy scenes along the way, including her final episode, but it was quite often the bare minimum. She got some strategic focus here, which makes sense given that she was the boot, and we heard her plans. She wanted Donathan to feel comfortable so that he wouldn’t play his idol, and we then saw her putting that plan into motion. I didn’t think it was quite complex enough to deserve a CP, but it was solid MOR material.
It never felt like Donathan was going to leave over Jenna, though. His edit is so much better on every level that it wouldn’t have made sense for him to go home here. That became even more obvious when Jenna received N-tone, with the edit going out of its way to make her look stupid. We heard her call Donathan an “idiot” for wanting to play the idol on her, expecting that he’d be going home when in reality, we knew the votes were coming Jenna’s way, and she was oblivious. Overall, I’ve rated Jenna MOR for the season, which might even be generous – I could understand UTR. But we did hear some strategy from her along the way and she did get to explain herself in confessionals more time to time.
Another mixed bag of an episode for Wendell. Once again he kind of took a backseat to Domenick. In fact, the stage for a Dom vs. Wendell showdown was set up in this episode. Early on, we heard Wendell and Domenick chatting about having each other’s back and not screwing one another. Wendell assured Domenick that he was tight and had nothing to worry about. It then cut to a Wendell confessional were he confirmed his bond with Domenick, as well as reminded us of his alliance with Laurel and Donathan (something which he repeated throughout the episode). On the flip side, when we cut to a Dom confessional, he said that he would be willing to cut his bond with Wendell if it meant winning the money for his family. Does that mean Dom has his eyes on the prize and Wendell doesn’t?
To continue that theme, after their conversation, Wendell said he was going “to lay for a minute,” meanwhile Dom went and found another (fake) idol. Wendell sleeping on the job while Dom continues to work? Dom continued to one-up Wendell in the challenge. The two had some friendly banter as the last two standing, with Wendell saying that no way was Dom going to beat him. But that’s exactly what happened. Dom won. Is that foreshadowing of how this season will play out? Even back at camp, before tribal, Wendell was shown to be open to the possibility that Michael had an idol, whereas Dom was adamant that he didn’t have one, which was correct.
The season looks like it will come down to Wendell or Dom, and right now, Dom is in the driver’s seat. But there are still three episodes remaining; things can easily flip back in that time. Also, the positive here is that Wendell did ultimately get his way, he said he wanted to take out the two people on his hitlist (Jenna and Michael) in one night, and that is what happened.
Laurel dropped in complexity this week, but she still had a significant role in the pre-tribal scrambling. Once again, her alliance with Dom/Wendell/Donathan was hammered home. This alliance has been the primary focus for weeks now and it surely will be right until the end. She’d previously told us she felt she could trust Wendell more than the other Navitis, and that proved right here when he gave her a heads up about Kellyn targeting her. We saw Laurel trying to form a counter plan and aim votes at Kellyn, and Wendell did say he would be willing to take out Kellyn whenever.
However, despite Laurel saying that Dom and Wendell should protect her by voting for Kellyn, they didn’t. They stuck to their guns and voted for Michael, which turned out to be the right move, but it does show they were willing to risk Laurel going home on an idol play. At the start of the episode, Laurel said she felt really good with her alliance because she protected Kellyn, Wendell, and Dom. But that favor was not returned. It shows that Dom and Wendell are closer to each other than Laurel. I think Laurel has had a solid edit, especially post-merge, and it should take her to the finale, but as I’ve said before, she is tailing behind Dom and Wendell and she’d need something special to surpass them at this point.
Over The Top
Another terrible edit for Kellyn coming off the back of her Episode 10 edit which showed her to be way off-base in her read of the game. I’d argue this episode was even worse because it veered into OTT territory. She was portrayed as a paranoid wreck, totally eating up Michael’s lie about the idol and running around camp like a crazy person trying to switch the vote. She was referred to as “paranoid,” “super emotional” and “losing it.” Even though Kellyn did explain why she was using her extra vote on Laurel, it was all based on incorrect information. I think her edit was summed up by the look on her face after the vote; she knew she’d made a huge mistake and that her read on the game is completely off.
The other negative is what she said at the start of the episode, about how sticking “Naviti strong” will be what gets her to the end of the game. Kellyn is completely unaware that two of her closest allies, Dom and Wendell, are in an alliance with two OG Malolos. And Dom and Wendell have shown more loyalty to those Malolos than they have Kellyn. In this episode, we heard Wendell say that “Kellyn can go whenever as far as I’m concerned.” If Kellyn continues down this path, it isn’t going to end well. She needs to split away (“divorce”) from Dom and Wendell soon.
Complex Personalities
Michael‘s Survivor journey ended pretty much how I expected it to end. He fought until the very end. That was his story from very early on in the season. The perpetual underdog that finds a way to survive despite his constant string of bad luck. It never seemed like a winning edit to me, it always felt more like the rootable fan-fave edit, and that is one that often loses out in the end. In this episode, Michael was again given the short-straw, as he ended up outnumbered on the temporary tribes. But he never gave up. He approached Donathan to ask to borrow his idol, and while that request was denied, he still came up with a lie about having an idol and managed to convince Kellyn that it was true. That sent paranoia around camp and almost worked.
At tribal council, Michael continued to hold his ground, maintaining the lie and explaining why he should stick around. It didn’t work in the end, but Michael left on a high, giving it everything he had. Overall, I’ve rated Michael as CPP for the season. While he only had obvious P-tone in one episode this season, I think the overall feel of his season edit is positive, viewers were meant to root for him, and he’ll be remembered as a capable 18-year-old that proved he could hang, but just couldn’t catch a break.
I said Donathan needed a CP edit this week and he got it. We finally got a proper check-in with him and where his head is at in the game. He reminded us that Laurel is his closest ally and that he also wanted to “reverse the curse” for Malolo. He explained his thinking going into the vote, how he was considering using his idol to save Jenna, but he also was aware there were other factors to consider, and said that he would rely on his gut at tribal – a common theme of the season. It’s hard to tell if we’re meant to view Donathan’s idol play as a bad move or a good move. He didn’t end up wasting it on Jenna, which was smart, but he did ultimately waste it on himself because he didn’t need to use it at all.
Could Donathan still pull off the win? It’s not impossible but looks unlikely at the minute. I think he would need to make a move against Dom and Wendell, and there has been foreshadowing in his edit for that to happen, he has always been the one pushing Laurel to make a move. It could be that it’s too late at this point, though.
Another strong episode for Domenick. He was all over the episode from beginning to end. He got the first confessional back at camp after tribal. He had the aforementioned scene with Wendell where they promised to stick together, intercut with a Dom confessional, where he mentioned his family (great winner sign) and potentially cutting Wendell if need be. He then went and found another advantage while Wendell went to lay down. And he later beat Wendell in the immunity challenge after some back and forth trash talk. Everything Dom did and said was the right thing.
Later in the episode, Dom was the only one adamant that Michael didn’t have an idol. “My vote’s going on Michael because I don’t believe he has anything.” It was absolutely the correct read. He said Michael needed to go and that’s what happened. Edgically speaking, Dom is in the prime position to win right now. The only real worry that I can think of is his early visibility – he was extremely visible in those first few episodes, even when he didn’t attend tribal council, and it would be rare for a winner to be that high-vis that early. Other than that, Dom looks to be on the right path and heading for a showdown with Wendell.
That’s it for this week’s Edgic!
Written by
Dom has cooldown episodes 5 and 9, so i think his visibility for male winner is just perfect, I can’t see anyone on his path for winning the season, pretty easy for reading season with awful edits for most of the contestans, there is no other visible alliance other than Dom’s alliance, I don’t know why, but the editors don’t even try to give us some tension. Pretty boring season overall.
On the chart, it should say MORN3 for Jenna but it just says MORN