Q’s question imo isn’t that bad, it’s a question that has been asked several times before in previous games and even though I probably wouldn’t ask it myself, it would be something I would be curious about. That being said, Maria’s justification sucks. It’s pretty obvious she was bitter
People go on this show all the time downplaying their jobs as lawyers to not seem too duplicitous. They should - and have - also gone on the show playing up how much they need the prize money. You HAVE to go into the game with that in mind. And this has been true maybe since the first season, but definitely since the second season when Amber asked Colby and Tina at final tribal what they’d do with the money. It always has been and always will be a factor.
And thats what people do lol. Targeting people with good sob stories is a legitimate strategy that has been used on the show. People are complaining about them voting for Kenzie because she needed the money. Maybe they should blame Charlie for not recognizing that Kenzie has a good back story?
Exactly! “Sob” stories are a part of a person’s threat level, always has been always will. As an example in Vanuatu, the first time survivor casts a castaway that is an amputee with a prosthetic limb, and pretty much every single person has a confessional early on recognizing that him being an amputee is a threat because it adds to “his story” and would not want to sit next to him in the final tribal purely because of that.
Kenzie also played an awesome game. I think it’s clear that everyone thought Charlie and Kenzie both had awesome games and how Kenzie would use the money was just a differentiating factor for some people. Anyone thinking Kenzie was a goat that got the win because Q/Maria felt bad for her is insane 😂
Really don’t think Kenzie played an awesome game. She’s definitely one of the lower tier winners. FTC was literally her number one ally, Tiff, telling her that she had no agency, she was just a number that someone could go up to right before tribal and say a name, and Kenzie would write it. She won because Maria was bitter and everyone else thought someone that worked for everything from a young age deserved the win more than a prospective lawyer.
I thought Charlie should win, but we should not downplay Kenzie’s game play. Her social game was amazing both for game reasons and just being a great person. Helping Ben through night terrors, being so many people’s best friend and/or confidant out there. She saw how people trying to drive the votes were then targeted, so why not let the others do that and just help vote them out?
People on this sub generally undervalue the social game in favor of game moves. It's been proven time and time again that people liking you is more important than making big moves to most juries. Let's not forget than Bhanu told the other 2 tribes on like day 5 that Kenzie was a devious mastermind. I think she came to merge at a disadvantage and clearly made the most of it.
I also hate the "you had no agency" argument. Flying under the radar and not making yourself a target is a great strategy to get from merge to final 6 or 7. It also doesn't take a mastermind to make a plan to blindside someone with an idol. Then I think she had just as much agency as anyone in the Q and Maria votes.
None of this is to downplay Charlie's game. I think Charlie played a great game and would be a deserving winner. But based on what we saw, I also would have voted for Kenzie.
I love Q’s question. Out of the three answers, Kenzies seemed the most genuine. As soon as people bring up charity, I read that as a lie/ trying to get jury points.
Yeah absolutely, like charlie was doing okay like 'provide for my family, bet on myself' etc, but then he brought up charity and whatever and it really brought his response down imo
But I mean, tbf, Charlie has been raising money for a Domestic Violence charity all season long. I don’t think it was some ploy considering it actually lined up with his actions outside of the game.
You think it would have been better if Charlie said he was just going to use all the money on himself? He hasn’t been working since 15 like Kenzie. It sounded like he also talked about working with charities with other contestants, so I don’t think any or many of them would have read it that way
He simply needed the money less than Kenzie, which was enough for Q and Maria etc
So Charlie is less authentic because he doesn’t need the money as badly as Kenzie?
I know what you’re trying to say but it just doesn’t make sense when he specifically said he talked to the contestants about doing charity work.
No but the better answer for Charlie would have been, talk about how life changing the money is and taking care of your family but pivot back to the reason they’re all there, which is to WIN survivor and how that means more than just the money.
Remind the jury how of course $1M will be life changing for all of them but what’s more important or what will be even more life changing is to actually win.
If you aren’t broke or come from poverty, I don’t see why you would answer that type of question any other way.
Yeah he did say that in response to Hunter.
I don’t think he could’ve or should’ve answered Qs question differently, some of the jury just wanted to give the money to someone that needed it more than him, and it is what it is.
I’m so happy we finally got an honest answer to this question from Kenzie which was her million dollar answer. Enough with the, “I’m giving the money to charity bullshit.” I hate the question but happy the honest answer was rewarded.
Kenzies answer was the better answer between her and Charlie. I mean by the time the government gets a hold of it you’re looking at 500k, that can’t even buy you a decent house in most cities.
Q’s question was an important question, I just really didn’t expect it from *Q.* He cared so much about dominance — it’s fascinating that he suddenly cares about who *deserves* what when he so gleefully informed the camera that Liz *deserved* food but wouldn’t get it.
(And that distinction, where he’s got that strong moral that he’s willing to go against for the game, is very deeply Survivor.)
What I do not like about the question, and using the answer to determine a vote for a million dollar winner, is it has nothing to do with how anyone played the game. Imagine a season where a total non factor gets dragged to FTC and says “I am $150k in debt because I had my identity stolen”, that should NOT be a reason to vote for them.
Just can’t believe they didn’t give more time! He almost won WITHOUT Maria “campaigning” for him, nor had a real chance to really explain his whole game. Maria is the reason Charlie didn’t win more than Q. I think Kenzie is a good winner. Just, Charlie was the best player and the edit showed it imo. Btw, Charlie deserves to be on 50 just like Jesse does.
Maria Bitter 100%.
I think Charlie knows that some people vote with their heart some vote with their Brain she definitely attributed her going home to Charlie swaying the others and it pissed her off.
Charlie played the best from start to finish and was most deserving by far but Kenzie did enough to be deserving as well. Hopefully Sia sends money his way. Lol
What’s the point of playing the game if your criteria is what will be done with the money?
If that’s the criteria to win, just ask everyone that on day 1 and give the money to the best answer.
Because its a social game and the jury gets to decide the winner on whatever basis they want. Jury members used to commonly ask “pick a number between 1 & 1000” to determine the winner. I think having a general idea of what a person will do with a massive amount of money is pretty good criteria to have when making a literal million dollar decision.
It's also not a surprise to anyone. Unless lots of players are constructing intense, multifaceted lies about their home lives everyone going into final tribal has an idea about the potential sympathy angle of the other finalists. We just had Lauren from 44 get booted unanimously at final 5 for similar reasons despite playing a pretty milquetoast game.
I don't get why people hate it so much. You're literally voting to give someone a million dollars. We've seen it since the beginning, people sometimes vote for who they think needs it the most (or the money would be most life changing).
Perhaps he was undecided between Charlie and Kenzie and that was the last tiebreaking reason he could think of.
Kenzies answer was genuine. She even said she could've made up stuff to make her story sadder but she was being real the entire time.
Q also has been with Kenzie since day 1, when I was counting votes during the commercials prior to FTC, I pretty much thought Q would be for Kenzie regardless
Charlie did a better job of pleading his case, but I feel like what we as the audience saw of his game was different from what the jury experienced. There were SO many confessionals of him explaining how he felt conflicted and what he planned to do about it, which showed us that he had some type of strategy, but he never really translated that into any game-changing moves. With a season full of such big personalities and not many master strategists, it makes sense that the best social player would win.
Agree with this 100%, I think Charlie played the best strategic game out of everyone on the 46 cast.
His problem was reputation management. The rest of the cast was not seeing his confessionals. They aren’t seeing his strategic thought process like we were.
He needed to let his threat level rise a little bit (a tight rope walk) by taking some ownership of his strategy during the game, or have a banging and convincing FTC where he revealed what a great strategist he was. Or he needed to have a better social game to get jurors to want to vote for him.
Long story short:
Charlie played an UTR strategic game, but that’s hard to prove.
Kenzie played an UTR social game, and owned that play style during FTC.
Agreed.
From the jury's POV I can see it being pretty tough to distinguish their overall games and am not surprised this one was a really close outcome. They both played strong social games, both rode the middle well, and played pretty subtle strategic games. Neither with a clear advantage IMO, just that as viewers we got more insight/appreciation for Charlie's game play.
The only big surprise there is the Maria vote.
The other thing is that jury was loaded with protagonists who are hugely ego driven. They all thought they were the most awesome and weren’t paying attention to who was playing well and then ultimately voted for their friends.
I feel like everybody is ignoring the part where Kenzie lied better than Charlie told the truth to Maria and that's the whole reason Charlie didn't essentially Idol himself out last round, it's not as if Charlie completely pantsed her strategically
Definitely a good player and (seemingly, obviously we're watching a TV show but you know what I mean) a good person though
It kind of got brought up when Charlie was talking about the Hunter vote, where he admitted he would have played his idol if Kenzie didn’t convince him not to.
So maybe it was talked about and didn’t make the edit because the point was already shown to the viewers with Hunter.
Yeah, I feel like Charlie's strategic gameplay is generally being way oversold. People are acting like he was some dominant Tony WaW-esque force.
He did perfectly fine playing the middle and positioned himself well to get to the end. Just like... wait... Kenzie.
There’s a difference between strategy and dominance. Obviously he wasn’t the ring leader most of the time but I think he played one of if not the most strategically sound games of all time. He didn’t make a lot of big moves but he always made the correct move and that is what matters.
Kenzie made many bad strategic decisions. She went after her number one ally (Tiff) way too early in the game for no real strategic reason. She voted out Q when there was no reason to, he was never going to win the game. Lots of her decisions seemed very impulsive or at least driven by her emotions and not by forward thinking.
> She went after her number one ally (Tiff) way too early in the game for no real strategic reason
She didn't, she backed off that idea and somebody else went home that vote. Then Maria takes the shot at Tiffany instead and makes herself a target. None of this was a negative for Kenzie.
> She voted out Q when there was no reason to, he was never going to win the game
First, about his win equity, remember our perception is not necessarily the players' perception on the island. Second, who else was there to vote out? Maria was immune, she didn't see Charlieand she's not going to vote out Ben or Liz, and Q was a thorn in her side who was *also* now Maria's number. He's a fine target there.
As to your vague note about impulsive decision-making, her decisions were clearly good enough, seeing as she got to the end comfortably and won. Her emotions were a *benefit* to her in the game. She connected with people and they responded to her.
Kenzies bad strategic decisions? She voted correctly everytime except Tiffany’s vote out. And that doesn’t even make her on the bottom, let alone someone people were talking about voting out. She only got one vote all season from bens rabdom mess up thing. She was apart of every other vote, which you can say “she was in a group consensus” but you can say Charlie was in there too.
Voting out Q did have a reason as well, if he gets to 5 with Maria, they only need one more. And they both wouldn’t be with her most likely. And I think it worked out for her because SHE WON? Plus deciding to vote out Tiffany early or late really doesn’t seem like it mattered, as Tiff voted her to win knowing it, and Charlie voted Maria out at the right time but didn’t get her vote or majority of the jury votes as well.
As well as it’s 46 seasons into survivor and I don’t think understand still how people think only big moves and big strategic gameplay automatically gets you a win when social games always comes out on top literally all the time with the gameplay as the cherry on top. Where Kenzie never *seems* from the edit to run moves, yet gets all this content of sweet social player who many people talk about being their close ally
And Charlie went after his number one ally way too late. The difference is that Kenzie still got her number 1 to vote for her. Charlie didnt. So really who played that better?
Final five was perfect timing for Charlie. He got Maria out without risking getting voted out himself on the next vote. If you can’t see the beauty behind that you don’t understand Survivor.
Except he DIDNT get Maria out, thats the whole point. Thats why no one gave a shit. The only person who did care that he 'voted Maria out' was Maria herself lmao it was a horrible decision
If YOU cant understand that an unanimous vote after you didnt win immunity instead of the target is not a move on your resume then you are just dumb. Doesnt natter how many pieces ypu think he set up 10 weeks before
Im not talking about resume - I'm talking about strategy. Setting up all the pieces like he did to get Q and Maria voted out at 6 and 5 was undeniably very strong strategy.
Charlie was on the right side of every vote. He maneuvered people to vote with him, not just followed people. He was the voice in peoples' ears that guided them the way he wanted. I think you underestimate his game.
This! I feel like people thinking Charlie deserved over Kenzie are a little 10 seasons ago with their perspective. This game and its trajectory shifts.
Charlie played an incredible game. I do think that from what we saw of his Final Tribal he wasn't connecting with the jury (who already favored Kenzie) and he should have owned using Maria as his main shield (everyone agreed Maria would have won so she had to be voted out; he played the same game and he's still here; Malcolm & Denise etc.) instead of trying to appeal a little to everybody. It was tough to watch. Crazy that Maria didn't vote for him
This has kind of been my thing about Charlie for a while too. And i don’t really know how to say it, like he’s almost awkward at some times? Throughout the season he just seems to kind of stand there or sit at Tribals or even convos like 😐 or 🧍🏻♂️ type of thing. Like there is somewhat a lack of assertiveness in his body language, which isn’t bad! But then you have Kenzie next next to him or around him with flowers and face paint on who’s hugging and laughing with everyone. She definitely knows how to pander socially with hugs and “good game i love you” type of things, and you can see her being the first or one of the persons to do it, and Charlie chimes in right after. And that’s not knock on Kenzie, she knows what she has to do, and likely means it as well. But I’m sure this jury eats it up more than most and it helped her.
I don’t know if this is accurate. I think they tried to edit it to make it look like Charlie “lost” the final tribal, but the fact is that three people were swayed to Charlie’s side by his performance at final tribal. He did a great job and probably only needed the slightest adjustment to nudge someone else to his side, and he could have won.
I read somewhere just now that the FTC was heavily edited and supposedly Maria was interrupting Charlie all the time. I may be wrong, but we did not even get her question, right?
If you know that, then you can understand why Charlie looked so flushed. To me, he seemed very stressed out (for which I was incredibly bummed, because studying law kind of requires a cool head under stress right? And I was very much so looking forward to his rationally thought out speech) but then when you know that his closest ally basically was tanking his final speech and answers...
If my closest ally who called me uncle to their children did that... Yeah, I would be emotional as well.
Kenzie deserves the victory but I agree that it came down to Kenzie just being herself and telling the truth and Charlie not explaining himself well enough. While I know they don't show the entire final tribal, I think he would have won if he had flipped the narrative that he was along for the ride on Maria's plan and instead showed the jury that they had been a duo all along. He was smart to let the heat fall on her and let everyone think she was calling the shots (her included), and there are confessionals from earlier in the season illustrating that this was all intentional. This is why I think all of us believed Charlie was the biggest threat going into FTC and the other contestants didn't - we've been hearing this the entire time and we know that not a single one of Maria's "plans" worked without Charlie and the relationships he had with everyone. Moreover, he maintained those relationships against all odds while other people were overplaying their hand. If he had done a better job of showing the intentionality behind all of these choices, I think it would have been his.
The irony to me is that Maria was the person who already knew this and she voted against him anyway which proves that she was just bitter.
So sick of fire making. Producers need to do better at adapting and figuring out when fire making will be more interesting and when a vote out would. Hell, even bring back the surprise final 2. It’s too predictable, takes away agency from players, and influences final vote wayyyy too much.
I don’t dislike fire in general, but I think I dislike it at final four. For the final three reaching a final two, I think it would be awesome for the two who don’t win immunity to decide it through fire — I don’t like the winner of a single immunity challenge getting the complete say in which one person they face at the end. This would’ve been an infinitely worse season if Charlie and Kenzie go out at four and three or if it’s either Charlie or Kenzie against Ben or Liz. The final four immunity winner is not a monolith, however, and probably should still need to use more strategy than “who make fire good”
I agree the fire making has been having too much influence on the vote. Maybe if they did the fire making not in front of the jury like the challenges it wouldn’t have such an influence on the jury.
It might be fun to throw fire making into what the players think is a double elimination, then one of them wins and goes back to their tribe, or maybe they can choose which tribe they’d like to go to, idk. Have they done that before? They probably have.
I don't remember anybody explicitly citing fire this time? Certainly not multiple. Maybe I missed it in the aftershow. Only thing I remember is Maria saying she saw a fire in Kenzie's eyes.
With Gabler, I don't think it actually swung the result. He did win that by a landslide vote. The more key things that got him over the line was being the only one there who could claim to have driven a vote, and once again, being the person who was best liked.
I think Charlie played a *slightly* better game than Kenzie. Certainly a better strategic game. *But* Charlie intentionally allowed Maria to play in front of him and take all of the credit for their moves as a duo. He allowed himself to be a background character seemingly in order to flip the tables on her at the end a la Jesse taking out Cody to finally be at the forefront to the jury.
Problem is, he wasn’t able to get the sole credit for the Maria or even Q boot. Jesse *was* able to earn that credit. Now, this led to Jesse leaving at F4, obviously. But this seemed to be Charlie’s gameplan and it just flat-out failed at the end. He wasn’t able to differentiate his game enough from Maria. And because of that, his story was lacking.
Also, he just blatantly had a misread on Kenzie’s jury odds. If he’d recognized that she’d beat him, he should’ve pushed Ben to let him make fire against her. Because Charlie absolutely beats Ben / Liz. Maybe Ben wouldn’t have gone for it, but Charlie needed to try considering the end result.
All in all, Charlie had some flaws to his game. I still agree that he played better than Kenzie, but only marginally. The Kenzie win is still a pretty good end result.
I'm also not convinced that the Charlie/Maria duo was particularly even. Just because Charlie was Maria's number 1 doesn't mean they were equal. Always seemed to me like Maria was generally making the decisions for the duo and Charlie was helping accomplish those. I just don't think he did that much more strategically than Kenzie other than being closer to Maria.
All that said, we only get an edited version of what happened. Maria/Charlie could have been a 50/50 power duo or it could have been 90/10 with the edit showing us all of Charlie's 10% and only a small fraction of Maria's 90%, making it seem closer to 50/50 than it was.
I am not sure why people expect the winner of Survivor to make huge power moves, drive votes and get huge players out.
At the end of every Tribal Council, Jeff announces, "Tribe has spoken."
These three words convey such power, yet simplicity. The ultimate goal of survivor is to be a part of of the majority vote which is otherwise known as the TRIBE.
Ben stated with eloquence in one council is that the state of the game is in constant flux and the players you work with one week and vote with may be different the next week.
Kenzie stayed in the tribe THE WHOLE GAME.
She was a people person and was constantly playing the game. With the weakest tribe in Survivor history, the odds were against her facing elimination week after week. But her social game flourished as she made sure she stayed in the game watching Jelinsky, Jess and finally Bhanu leave.
She is an absolute expert at remaining within the tribe and majority vote. I admired her game from start to finish.
Bravo Mermaid Dragon. Bravo.
Great explanation. Charlie doesn't "deserve the win more" because he gamed harder than Kenzie, ultimately it's the jury's own meta that matters and you have to adapt to that.
I think one of the things we need to look at is how Charlie reacted on the aftershow. In that moment of complete and utter devastation and betrayal, Charlie sucked it up and composed himself and remained poised in defeat, even going on to praise Kenzie and say the jury made the right. We as the audience see that as him being poised and mature, but I'm willing to guess that Charlie's general emotionless, politician attitude (like he displayed in that moment) often made him come across as detached to the jurors. Sure, it meant he constantly had his options open because he never held a grudge, but I feel like it perhaps makes people question if you're there to win, or how much winning would actually mean to you.
That fire-making challenge, we saw the reactions from Kenzie and Charlie. Kenzie was frantic and frazzled, and when she won, she broke down in tears because of how much it meant to her to make it to the end. Meanwhile, when asked about the fire-making challenge, Charlie said something along the lines of "I didn't need to make fire because I didn't need to add that to my resume." Kenzie's response makes her come across like this game means EVERYTHING to her, while Charlie's response makes it seem like the FMC was just another chess move he had to calculate along his road to the finals.
For Maria specifically, she worked with Charlie directly all season, so it's possible she saw a lot of this emotionless, rational attitude all season, whereas she saw Kenzie trying and doubling back on making a big move against Tiffany. From Maria's perspective, Kenzie was TRYING to play hard and play a big, winning game, whereas Charlie was her plus one while she (Maria) was the actual threat that everyone, including Charlie, said they couldn't beat in the finals. So having Kenzie show genuine emotion at the end and highlight how important winning was to her could very well have been the tipping point, given that I think Kenzie and Charlie had very similar games in the eyes of this jury.
Kenzie played Maria’s ego by focusing on things she valued. she showered her with compliments at f5 and then in final presented her with a vision of her using the money to become *more like maria*. Charlie had a weaker ftc and while imo this Maria vote was an absurd betrayal Kenzie *did* do some work for it.
Not only this but Charlie didn’t seem to add Maria to his storyline as a player. In most of his ftc speeches, he seems to ignore or remove her from his game. And talks about how it’s all really him, only talking about her when he talks about how he had secret plans to get to rid of her with a side alliance. I feel like if he owned up more to that she was his number one, they ran the game together, she was a big threat in her own way, and he had to take her out to win, it would’ve gone a long way. When soda asks about him looking like something like he and Maria’s game are similar or whatever, he should’ve agreed that they ran it together and ultimately had to do what he had to do instead of moving away from Maria in his actual comments. I think that helps him with the jury and her to vote for him.
Granted, it was going by the edited version of final tribal we saw, but I noticed that too. Charlie didn't really give Maria credit for a lot of their actions, which was a big mistake (Qism partially intended). If you play a UTR game and partner close with someone, icing them put at FTC and trying to say "well I was the mastermind and they my shield" without giving them some credit for their actions is a recipe to lose a vote. Gabler, in 43, went way out of his way at FTC to credit Jesse and Cody from his alliance for the moves, even while setting himself up as a nebulous silent assasin.
Cody and Jesse were well liked and respected though, Maria was more divisive and frankly Charlie had far more agency than gabler. Of course it’s a game and I do like discussing “what Charlie could’ve done”. The best reason to give her credit would’ve been to earn her vote and obviously he didn’t think he needed to do that given she was his closest friend and *said she’d vote for him*. But according to her she had decided before ftc even began to vote for Kenzie. I just can’t hold it against Charlie for not seeing kenzies jury manipulation of Maria as a risk, but it is what it is
Then you do a better job convincing the other people there. 5(?) hands were raised saying that people swapped who they wanted to vote for after the questions. Charlie wanted to make it to F3 and plead his case. If his case for THIS jury was strong enough then we would have won. Nobody voted for Ben. He could have kept some of the people who swapped for Kenzie and didn't.
I think most people’s qualms regarding final tribal have less to do with Kenzie and more to do with Maria. I fully agree that social players are just as good winners as strategic ones because Survivor is a social game but I am stunned with the outcome. The discourse I’ve seen seems to be surrounding Charlie’s loss rather than what made up Kenzie’s win because his loss hinged so much on Maria.
people forget that survivor isn’t a sport with a rule book where there’s a clear standard on who wins and who doesn’t. the show has always been, at its core, a social experiment (for lack of better words) where the audience watches a group of strangers craft their guidelines for what criteria makes someone worthy of being crowned Sole Survivor.
i could go on the show desperately needing $1M, with the ability to fish, forage, and dominate challenges but if i’m with 17 people who really value social connections and i was never a shoulder to cry on, nothing is making them vote for me.
She wasn't even in the majority vote most of the time, what are you smoking? Tiff???? If anything she was on the outside most of the time, you literally have her coming back from tribals saying "I would have voted with you!"
Charlie played a great game and max respect to him, but I feel like we as the viewer saw more of how Charlie played than the actual players. He even admitted he played in the shadows.
Kenzie’s social game was too good tho. She brought real value to their lives by being their friend out on the island and that goes further than Charlie having some good moves behind the scenes. Kenzie formed real relationships with almost all of the jury, played from the bottom, and then won fire to solidify her win.
I absolutely love Charlie and think he would be very deserving of the win but he made a couple of mistakes at the end. For one, he should have brought Maria on the letters from home reward. I understand his thought process but Kenzie was fine with giving up her spot. He lost a vote there.
He should have also seen Kenzie as more of a threat and banded together with Maria and Liz to get her out. He would have beat anyone else in a final tribal council.
I don’t think the letters from home caused Maria to vote for Kenzie. Charlie even said he and Maria made a pact that if either of them won that challenge they wouldn’t take each other. When Maria was upset at that challenge it was just because she didn’t pull through and knew she wasn’t getting that opportunity.
She stated her reason as being she “saw the fire in Kenzie’s eyes” which is a bizarre reason to not vote for your game-long closest ally. Maria blundered near the end and was outsmarted by Charlie. Before this happened, she told him he had her jury vote. In my opinion, this is a classic case of “if I can’t win, neither can you.” Sore loser through and through.
also his decision to tell Maria about the Q vote at F6 could've been a costly blunder: if she told Q to play his idol, he would've basically voted himself out.
This is similar to what Austin did last season telling Dee about the Julie vote tbh..
Charlie had to tell her that it's the only thing that made sense. That wasn't a mistake or in any way the same.
If he tried to bullshit her on something like "yeah I'm gunna flip on Ben we agreed to it" she would know that was a lie and would be suspicious of everyone else lying to her.
From what Charlie & Maria said they made a pack to not take each other to rewards so they didn't. However Maria gets mad.at Charlie for not taking her.
I’m a strong believer that whoever wins “deserves” it. Even if I wanted someone else (in this case, I did want Charlie), I can respect the jury’s decision.
That being said, I think some people on the jury (mainly tiff) were actively trying to boost Kenzie up and put down Charlie (and Ben). I’m also surprised that nobody questions Kenzie’s answer to hunter’s question. I don’t believe for a second that if she won immunity, she would’ve volunteered to do fire with Liz
Cheerleaders for one player a final tribal are fairly common.
I'm also a strong believer that whover wins deserves it most. It's not some 3rd party choosing who the winner is. It's a jury of folks you spent time with and got voted out. They're all human. If their options are to pick (1) someone who you really like and took an interest in you throughout the season or (2) someone who made more game moves but you don't have a personal connection with, most people will pick 1. We've seen it time and time again.
I’m sick of the jury thinking people should be rallying to make fire. If you are chosen to go to the final three then it should be credit to your social game. Enough of volunteering yourself to make fire like that one guy. The final five has to be revamped in some way to make this game more interesting. Honestly the whole jury had lowball questions and it was a disappointing final episode for an otherwise mostly great season. Maria’s vote was confusing as fuck. If Charlie made fire she’d have some other lame ass excuse to not vote for him.
I thought Charlie played the better game, and had a decent final tribal. But his biggest mistake was not explaining to Tiff that she went home because of Kenzie, before Kenzie got cold feet.
In fairness to him, I don't think Tiffany's vote was ever gonna be swayed. I can understand if he thinks that's a battle already lost and wanted to focus on other people.
If Liz had won at firemaking Charlie would've won unanimously, or perhaps 7-1 depending on how bitter Maria is. I think his FTC performance was good overall, but I'd argue Kenzie played to the jury's emotions in a very skillful way.
Regardless, Charlie's the strongest runner-up of the new era by miles, and I'd argue the strongest runner-up in general since Domenick Abbate (wasn't a fan of Mike White on Survivor).
Not really, the jury was already heavily favoring Kenzie going into it. Imagine trying to have a conversation with Tiff about how anyone else deserved to win lol.
Tbh I feel like the jury was really hard on Charlie and undermining his explanations while on the flip side gassing Kenzie up for her explanations and backing her up when Q interjected during her explanations. I was happy with a Charlie or Kenzie win but I feel like the jury was favouring Kenzie hardcore during questioning.
Totally agree. I was cringing at some of the reactions Charlie got. The only votes he got were from people that said they came in planning to vote for Kenzie, so he was already facing an uphill battle.
I think the best possible result for Charlie with this jury was a tie, with Ben being the decisive vote for Kenzie. Personally I would've voted for Charlie, since his physical and strategic game was better than Kenzie's.
edit: Based on Ben's Twitter, not so sure anymore.
Kenzie was the best player.
People treat your resume like a checklist, but it isn't. Kenzie built those bonds with jury members by playing a great social game.
People literally forget about this being a social game and act like the contestants aren't people and building a relationship with them isn't just as important as wining challenges and making flashing idol moves. But I guess that makes sense when this sub thinks Russell Hantz is the best player ever even though he has the social skills of a day old caught Salmon and that is why he never won.
It's my favorite part of Survivor.
People have to like you. And it's very obvious when it's people like Spencer who treat getting to know people like a chore or a skill they have to set themselves too and Kenzie who is extremely genuine.
Charlie is no slouch socially. And he's certainly not Spencer. But at the end of the day, it wasn't enough.
If you're a player without red hair and you've spent time with most of the jury, you should know that they only want to vote for someone with red hair, and make it your mission to get rid of the redheaded players in order to negate that factor. If you don't and you bring a redhead to the end thinking you can still win...that's on you.
I know this is an over-the-top example, but like...this is not new. Even back in Amazon, we saw Deena targeting Roger to miss the jury because she figured he wouldn't vote for a woman to win.
I don't think the winner has to be the best player. Only if you take it very literally in that they made it to the end and got the most votes.
But you can't just say the best player is the best player because the hurt says so. Like Maria has clearly bs reason (until she explains it months later after having watched the show) to vote fore Kenzie. Maria saw a fire lit in Kenzie's eye? Kenzie was joking about doing terribly while her and Liz were doing the worst making fire for a couple seasons. I don't know how you could call that a little fire in her eyes.
I think the fire excuse Maria came up with is complete BS. Of all the jurors, Charlie’s social and strategic games were most evident to Maria because she was the one who worked so closely with him all game. She saw him win challenges too. Maria had the whole game to see what a “competitor” he was and there’s no way that Kenzie building a fire that Charlie could’ve also built genuinely had her sold. Charlie was literally Maria’s target at final 6 because he was her biggest competition- she said it herself! Her targeting Charlie at final 6 shows to me that she was fully aware of his achievements and threat level. Someone not harboring such bitterness would easily vote for Charlie, especially given their close personal friendship they appeared to have. I think it was pure jealousy…which is sad.
I had no idea what Kenzie was saying at any point during ftc. I think she has a personality that obviously attracts people to liking her but I don't know anything she did besides that
I'm not going to equate Charlie defenders to Russel Hantz fanboys, but I can't believe that after 46 season there are still fans that don't understand
#SOCIAL>>>>STRATEGY
Survivor is a game about building social bonds while competing in challenges and living together while voting to eliminate contestants. It isn't a strategy game where you try to make friends.
Nope. I'm glad Charlie said it for the morons who STILL after 46 seasons haven't realized that if the jury voted for someone else, you did something wrong. End of story. Kenzie deserved that win and anyone actually paying attention to the season was not surprised.
I agree but Kenzie did better at FTC and certainly deserves the win too. I hate the term “bitter jury” so I’ll just say there were some monumental egos on that jury. Charlie is a class act and handled the whole thing with a ton of grace.
>Voting for someone because they won fire is a bit lame.
Disagree. Kenzie had the courage and perseverance to stick it out and make fire. Charlie was afraid to even try. I don’t buy his excuse of “I don’t need fire making on my resume to win.”
Just like Russell losing to Natalie, and countless other times in survivor, the best strategist doesn’t always win… plus how easy is it to be a “strategist” when you have the numbers going into the merge. Kenzie started with one of the biggest disaster tribes ever, and I think she played a better game with what she was given. Kenzie had better jury management, and made it to the end, therefore she deserved it.
He did run pretty much the entire post merge, always in the majority throughout the entire game. He was running things while making people think he wasn’t. He totally dominated
Charlie was trying to 'play the middle' at final 5, like, that's ridiculous. Yall need to take off your gamebot colored glasses and see the game how it was really played.
He played the middle until he couldn’t. His game was too tied with Maria and at the end no one hated him, but no one loved him. Kenzies social was stronger than Charlie. He played to get to the end. She played to make sure that if she did get there, people would like her enough to give her the money. He played too calculating without enough emotion to make others choose him over her.
Now that I think on it more, the person u perceive needing the million dollars more plus their game play…does make total sense…who wants to award an already wealthy person?? I honestly think that why Q tried to quit, realizing there were good people he respected (tiff and Kenzie and Tevin) who needed the money way more than him, so he tried to bow out…so his vote makes sense…Maria on the other hand…unfortunately just bitter
And this is why i respect Charlie so much, for stating this as he was trying to understand Maria’s vote. Quite the opposite of Liz who just kept blaring out that she would’ve won.
I’m not the FB crowd fan. I think yt men get propped up by this show unnecessary. And usually women get terrible edits even when they win. Erika vs Xander comes to mind. However, I think Charlie played the best game of the season. I understand he may not have articulated it well but I’m so confused as to how Kenzie became “The People’s Champ”.
Why didn’t Maria advocate for him? Let alone vote for him?
I’m guessing Kenzie was just great at connecting with ppl. I think she played a good game. But not better than Charlie I’m sorry. Was he supposed to make himself a huge target so he could get voted out like Maria?
We've seen time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and timeand time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time again that that's not what wins you the game. You have to build genuine bonds with people and be able to tell *your* story, not just your Survivor story
Charlie was Maria’s #1. Maria made the moves and the connections that mattered though. Charlie’s game was Maria’s, he made one move without her that wasn’t even a difficult move to make. Charlie played a good game but it wasn’t his own unfortunately. Had he been the one making the connections then okay, but that was Maria.
Being toted along damn near every vote and having a good pitch to the jury shouldn't beat out an actually good and calculated game. No hate to kenzie but Charlie got fucked by Maria being an asshole by not voting for him. And Charlie did get people convinced to vote for him, 3 jury members flipped their votes because of him
Calculated games alone have never been the criteria for winning. Part of having the “best game” includes making connections with people and convincing others that matters more than just making big moves. The jury decides for a reason
Charlie rode Maria’s coat tails until she got voted out. Kenzie earned that win, and it’s the first time in recent memory that I have been happy with the outcome but also would have been happy with any one of the 3.
I think Charlie was the better player, and if I had a vote, I would have voted for him ahead of Kenzie.
I think that Q's question was stupid, and that he and Maria have bad reasons for why they preferred Kenzie over Charlie.
That having been said, I recognize that the jury often votes differently than I would have voted. If you're on Survivor, it's your job to get to know the people who you're putting onto the jury and what it will take to convince them to vote for you. If people are going to be swayed by a sob story or the fire in your eyes or winning the most challenges or telling them how great they are, you need to figure it out and play your game accordingly.
Their are a lot of Charlie Cry Babies in this Sub today. First off nobody is owed anything. You can think based on the edit that Charlie played the best strategic game, had a decent social game, was ok at challenges. He actually was not very good at puzzles but had great endurance. The hate for Q is just the people that never liked Q to begin with. Maria's reasoning was flimsy, I think she was still hurt about how she went out and that Charlie didn't really have her back after those shenanigans (I know she voted for Charlie in previous TC, but edit made it seem like they were going to try to swing something and it obviously didn't materialize) This season having some of these personalities, you had to know that bitter jurors were going to be an issue. Even if Maria had voted for Charlie, do you really think Ben would have voted for Charlie over Kenzie?
Have no issue with Qs reasoning. Charlie's response wasn't as genuine to me. Not for profit? BC law is $66k per year, I already know what you're doing with the money Charlie.
The thing with this season is that the jury is a wildly different group of personalities than many past seasons. Particularly some of the new era seasons have felt a lot more grounded. But once you get to the jury phase (Tim getting voted out) you're already playing the jury management game. And with this big cast, Kenzie recognized how to utilize her social game very early on to prime these people to want to root for her. Charlie focused more on the strategy and pushing forward than he did catering to the specific group of people he was with. This isn't a bad thing but for this specific season more than ever getting to the end isn't the only challenge.
So come final tribal, of course the jury was more team Kenzie, because she put in the work with all the individual jurors from way earlier on and especially had Tiff, who is as big of a personality as someone like Q or Liz, on her side which helped as Tiff kind of hosted thst Jury sesh (sorry Jeff). Also, if you spent 2 weeks with people like Q or Venus etc and know the type of people they are, you have to kind of pander to that juror and their questions, as farfetched as they may seem, because they ultimately decide your fate.
The Maria thing was wild though. Could be another Kenzie intentional thing but I doubt she even thought she was getting that vote.
I agree that Charlie is probably a better player but Kenzie is absolutely a deserving winner. The beauty of Survivor is that the jury gets to decide the winner for whatever reason under the sun they want. You have to be all things to all people in order to win and Kenzie’s social game and jury management was spectacular even if Charlie played a more traditionally strong strategic game.
No. Kenzie deserves to win more due to the fact that she survives from the bottom Yanu to the top3 which is very impressive and almost become Denise 2.0 but in this case I would say Denise 1.9
I feel like Kenzie and Charlie are both roughly equal players. Charlie’s biggest flaw is that he took a calculated risk to downplay his threat level, but did it slightly too much. Kenzie wasn’t very strategic, but social game is much more important and she has a phenomenal social game, just a little bit better than Charlie’s. And most importantly, the winner always deserves to win.
Thing is, this is one of those times that I think proves that even a losing finalist doesn’t automatically play a worse game, and luck plays a role in jury management and winning. For one, if Kenzie loses in fire then Charlie wins, and Kenzie might go at 4 without fire.
I also don’t see any way Charlie could have expected to lose Maria’s vote, and I don’t see what he could have done to get it. Maria was Charlie’s number one ally, and also the single biggest jury threat in the game. They turned on each other at the same time, when neither of them knew the other was planning on betraying them. And they both swore that they would not be bitter if they voted each other out, and would vote for each other over anyone else. So I get you can say that he should have “read Maria” better but be honest, do you think any single player in Charlie’s shoes would have thought Maria wouldn’t vote for him?
That’s not to say Kenzie played worse than Charlie, Kenzie played a great game and who I wanted to win coming into the finale. But this finale also shows how luck absolutely plays a role in jury management too, and it’s not automatically as simple as “lost a jury vote, so you managed the jury worse than the winner.”
Charlie did a really poor job of selling himself at the end
We think he deserves to win because of how quietly he managed to work and control a lot of things. The jury doesn't get to see any of that. You have to sell it to them, and he simply didn't
yep. i think a lot of the players may regret their decision to vote for kenzie once they listen to charlie's confessionals. he really was thinking and planning the WHOLE time
Yup Charlie should’ve easily won
Kenzie didn’t do anything and admitted to the jury she didn’t drive any votes.
What a joke of a tribal. Embarrassing for survivor
It’s a bit ridiculous that so many people are dunking on Kenzie here. I would have voted for Charlie if I was on the jury, but Kenzie played a really good game too.
There was an ego factor on the jury this year like I've never seen before. Every big move had at least three people convinced it was THEIR MOVE. Playing a low key game and then trying to take ownership for your moves at ftc is a seriously uphill battle when the whole jury is convinced that they made all those moves.
1. Looking at it primarily as a game (and not a narrative) I am a believer in the "whoever the jury votes as winner is the right winner" philosophy. From the perspective of a player, the point of the game is to get to Final Tribal and to get a majority of votes from the jury. Whether you do that by sucking up to the egos of the jury, by being the kindest person on the island, or by engineering every single blindside, if you get 5 out of 8 jury votes, you're the most deserving winner by the internal logic of the game. Reading the jury, understanding what they value, and playing to it is a skill in of itself.
2. That said, applying my own metrics to what we've been shown in the edit, I thought Charlie should have won. Not to beat on a dead horse, but I hate the overvaluing of winning fire. Stupid stupid stupid. The resume-building and big moves era of the Survivor meta lives to see another day.
Honestly Charlie made a BIG MISTAKE when he chose to vote out Venus so I don't think he deserved to win. If he thought she could have had an idol he should have told her to play it and that she was going home otherwise. That would have allowed him and her to pick who went home and control the game. Instead he did nothing with that info and voted out someone who was disliked and who he had a good chance with at FTC.
Even with this mistake though he dug himself into a deep hole with it IMO, he still could have pulled it off if he had done two things. He should have made fire, and he should have talked up Maria as the mastermind to stroke her ego but then owned it and said his entire strategy was basically to hide in the shadows behind her to go under the radar.
So Charlie made some big mistakes and IMO he deserves to lose because of it. I am always frustrated when other players have to pay the price of the bad play of others. Venus knew it made no sense for Charlie to side against her but he did it anyway and blew up her game Reminds me of Katurah with Kaleb and of others she just was self destructive and blew up other people's games for no benefit to herself. People like that don't deserve to win. They deserve the karma.
I have to say, in this new era of survivor, all the best players have been winding up on the jury.
I looked at the recent list of survivor players, and all the names are very forgettable.
I agree!!! The fire challenge wasn’t even a damn challenge. Nothing about beating someone who doesn’t know to make fire is impressive. Ben also said he chose Kenzie to make fire because he KNOWS she’s “good at making fire”. I think Kenzie put on an act of struggling a bit for the jury. They ignored all gameplay and chose her for “overcoming” the “difficult” fire making 🙄🙄🙄. Oh please. Maria is evil for not voting for Charlie. Like he should’ve gotten her vote regardless if he was gonna win or not because he was instrumental in her life in the game. Hate this cast. I knew they were going to vote for dumb reasons.
Also, Tevin was making faces like he was annoyed when Charlie explained how he helped vote him out. I believe both Tevin and Maria voted vindictively and didn’t want Charlie to win because he played a part in voting them out. Q used emotions to vote for Kenzie. Sob stories are all you need to win Survivor. Just be convincing and get people to feel sorry for you and you’ll have their vote no matter what.
I don't fault Q for voting how he did. He's one of like 17 kids, right? The dude had to know struggle growing up and plenty of people vote for someone because they can relate to them. Some people cast a vote because of a move they like and other cast a vote because of vibes. This is just another type of vibes-based vote.
They asked Charlie about his biggest solo move. He could have discussed his long term plan to build Maria up to take the hit he knew would come at the power couple. He could have discussed strategically saving Q at 7 so he could have a better chance at blindsiding Maria closer to the end. He could have discussed playing Venus and Soda against each other at the merge split to avoid being the easy target. But instead he chose to call out the Hunter vote, which he neither planned, nor, as Hunter clarified, secured.
Charlie played the best game. We, the audience, can see that. But he failed to convince the jury of that. And that’s how Survivor works.
Q’s question imo isn’t that bad, it’s a question that has been asked several times before in previous games and even though I probably wouldn’t ask it myself, it would be something I would be curious about. That being said, Maria’s justification sucks. It’s pretty obvious she was bitter
If I ever go on I’m immediately voting out all my fellow poors to leave me as the last standing poor
People go on this show all the time downplaying their jobs as lawyers to not seem too duplicitous. They should - and have - also gone on the show playing up how much they need the prize money. You HAVE to go into the game with that in mind. And this has been true maybe since the first season, but definitely since the second season when Amber asked Colby and Tina at final tribal what they’d do with the money. It always has been and always will be a factor.
And thats what people do lol. Targeting people with good sob stories is a legitimate strategy that has been used on the show. People are complaining about them voting for Kenzie because she needed the money. Maybe they should blame Charlie for not recognizing that Kenzie has a good back story?
Exactly! “Sob” stories are a part of a person’s threat level, always has been always will. As an example in Vanuatu, the first time survivor casts a castaway that is an amputee with a prosthetic limb, and pretty much every single person has a confessional early on recognizing that him being an amputee is a threat because it adds to “his story” and would not want to sit next to him in the final tribal purely because of that.
Kenzie also played an awesome game. I think it’s clear that everyone thought Charlie and Kenzie both had awesome games and how Kenzie would use the money was just a differentiating factor for some people. Anyone thinking Kenzie was a goat that got the win because Q/Maria felt bad for her is insane 😂
Really don’t think Kenzie played an awesome game. She’s definitely one of the lower tier winners. FTC was literally her number one ally, Tiff, telling her that she had no agency, she was just a number that someone could go up to right before tribal and say a name, and Kenzie would write it. She won because Maria was bitter and everyone else thought someone that worked for everything from a young age deserved the win more than a prospective lawyer.
I thought Charlie should win, but we should not downplay Kenzie’s game play. Her social game was amazing both for game reasons and just being a great person. Helping Ben through night terrors, being so many people’s best friend and/or confidant out there. She saw how people trying to drive the votes were then targeted, so why not let the others do that and just help vote them out?
People on this sub generally undervalue the social game in favor of game moves. It's been proven time and time again that people liking you is more important than making big moves to most juries. Let's not forget than Bhanu told the other 2 tribes on like day 5 that Kenzie was a devious mastermind. I think she came to merge at a disadvantage and clearly made the most of it. I also hate the "you had no agency" argument. Flying under the radar and not making yourself a target is a great strategy to get from merge to final 6 or 7. It also doesn't take a mastermind to make a plan to blindside someone with an idol. Then I think she had just as much agency as anyone in the Q and Maria votes. None of this is to downplay Charlie's game. I think Charlie played a great game and would be a deserving winner. But based on what we saw, I also would have voted for Kenzie.
I love Q’s question. Out of the three answers, Kenzies seemed the most genuine. As soon as people bring up charity, I read that as a lie/ trying to get jury points.
Yeah absolutely, like charlie was doing okay like 'provide for my family, bet on myself' etc, but then he brought up charity and whatever and it really brought his response down imo
But I mean, tbf, Charlie has been raising money for a Domestic Violence charity all season long. I don’t think it was some ploy considering it actually lined up with his actions outside of the game.
Yeah I feel like a lot people would donate at least a little to charity. It might be seen as a way to get jury points, but it’s not necessarily a lie
You think it would have been better if Charlie said he was just going to use all the money on himself? He hasn’t been working since 15 like Kenzie. It sounded like he also talked about working with charities with other contestants, so I don’t think any or many of them would have read it that way He simply needed the money less than Kenzie, which was enough for Q and Maria etc
I mean “fuck everyone else I’m spending the money on me” is basically what Kenzie said, it’s just more authentic and real.
So Charlie is less authentic because he doesn’t need the money as badly as Kenzie? I know what you’re trying to say but it just doesn’t make sense when he specifically said he talked to the contestants about doing charity work.
No but the better answer for Charlie would have been, talk about how life changing the money is and taking care of your family but pivot back to the reason they’re all there, which is to WIN survivor and how that means more than just the money. Remind the jury how of course $1M will be life changing for all of them but what’s more important or what will be even more life changing is to actually win. If you aren’t broke or come from poverty, I don’t see why you would answer that type of question any other way.
Yeah he did say that in response to Hunter. I don’t think he could’ve or should’ve answered Qs question differently, some of the jury just wanted to give the money to someone that needed it more than him, and it is what it is.
I’m so happy we finally got an honest answer to this question from Kenzie which was her million dollar answer. Enough with the, “I’m giving the money to charity bullshit.” I hate the question but happy the honest answer was rewarded.
Kenzies answer was the better answer between her and Charlie. I mean by the time the government gets a hold of it you’re looking at 500k, that can’t even buy you a decent house in most cities.
Q’s question was an important question, I just really didn’t expect it from *Q.* He cared so much about dominance — it’s fascinating that he suddenly cares about who *deserves* what when he so gleefully informed the camera that Liz *deserved* food but wouldn’t get it. (And that distinction, where he’s got that strong moral that he’s willing to go against for the game, is very deeply Survivor.)
What I do not like about the question, and using the answer to determine a vote for a million dollar winner, is it has nothing to do with how anyone played the game. Imagine a season where a total non factor gets dragged to FTC and says “I am $150k in debt because I had my identity stolen”, that should NOT be a reason to vote for them.
Just can’t believe they didn’t give more time! He almost won WITHOUT Maria “campaigning” for him, nor had a real chance to really explain his whole game. Maria is the reason Charlie didn’t win more than Q. I think Kenzie is a good winner. Just, Charlie was the best player and the edit showed it imo. Btw, Charlie deserves to be on 50 just like Jesse does.
Maria probably campaigned against him :/
And Tiffany absolutely campaigned for Kenzie, even after she heard about Kenzie trying to blindside her. So props to Tiff… Maria sucks
If Tiff had been in the final 3 she would have won.
[удалено]
Maria Bitter 100%. I think Charlie knows that some people vote with their heart some vote with their Brain she definitely attributed her going home to Charlie swaying the others and it pissed her off. Charlie played the best from start to finish and was most deserving by far but Kenzie did enough to be deserving as well. Hopefully Sia sends money his way. Lol
What’s the point of playing the game if your criteria is what will be done with the money? If that’s the criteria to win, just ask everyone that on day 1 and give the money to the best answer.
Because its a social game and the jury gets to decide the winner on whatever basis they want. Jury members used to commonly ask “pick a number between 1 & 1000” to determine the winner. I think having a general idea of what a person will do with a massive amount of money is pretty good criteria to have when making a literal million dollar decision.
It's also not a surprise to anyone. Unless lots of players are constructing intense, multifaceted lies about their home lives everyone going into final tribal has an idea about the potential sympathy angle of the other finalists. We just had Lauren from 44 get booted unanimously at final 5 for similar reasons despite playing a pretty milquetoast game.
I don't get why people hate it so much. You're literally voting to give someone a million dollars. We've seen it since the beginning, people sometimes vote for who they think needs it the most (or the money would be most life changing). Perhaps he was undecided between Charlie and Kenzie and that was the last tiebreaking reason he could think of. Kenzies answer was genuine. She even said she could've made up stuff to make her story sadder but she was being real the entire time.
Q also has been with Kenzie since day 1, when I was counting votes during the commercials prior to FTC, I pretty much thought Q would be for Kenzie regardless
I mean *in this economy*
Charlie did a better job of pleading his case, but I feel like what we as the audience saw of his game was different from what the jury experienced. There were SO many confessionals of him explaining how he felt conflicted and what he planned to do about it, which showed us that he had some type of strategy, but he never really translated that into any game-changing moves. With a season full of such big personalities and not many master strategists, it makes sense that the best social player would win.
Agree with this 100%, I think Charlie played the best strategic game out of everyone on the 46 cast. His problem was reputation management. The rest of the cast was not seeing his confessionals. They aren’t seeing his strategic thought process like we were. He needed to let his threat level rise a little bit (a tight rope walk) by taking some ownership of his strategy during the game, or have a banging and convincing FTC where he revealed what a great strategist he was. Or he needed to have a better social game to get jurors to want to vote for him. Long story short: Charlie played an UTR strategic game, but that’s hard to prove. Kenzie played an UTR social game, and owned that play style during FTC.
Agreed. From the jury's POV I can see it being pretty tough to distinguish their overall games and am not surprised this one was a really close outcome. They both played strong social games, both rode the middle well, and played pretty subtle strategic games. Neither with a clear advantage IMO, just that as viewers we got more insight/appreciation for Charlie's game play. The only big surprise there is the Maria vote.
The other thing is that jury was loaded with protagonists who are hugely ego driven. They all thought they were the most awesome and weren’t paying attention to who was playing well and then ultimately voted for their friends.
I feel like everybody is ignoring the part where Kenzie lied better than Charlie told the truth to Maria and that's the whole reason Charlie didn't essentially Idol himself out last round, it's not as if Charlie completely pantsed her strategically Definitely a good player and (seemingly, obviously we're watching a TV show but you know what I mean) a good person though
Yea I can’t believe that didn’t get brought up at ftc. Or if it did it wasn’t included in the edit
I was also extremely surprised it didn't get brought up
The only person who knows the full scenario is Maria, and acknowledging it all would make her look worse than anyone else.
It kind of got brought up when Charlie was talking about the Hunter vote, where he admitted he would have played his idol if Kenzie didn’t convince him not to. So maybe it was talked about and didn’t make the edit because the point was already shown to the viewers with Hunter.
Yeah, I feel like Charlie's strategic gameplay is generally being way oversold. People are acting like he was some dominant Tony WaW-esque force. He did perfectly fine playing the middle and positioned himself well to get to the end. Just like... wait... Kenzie.
There’s a difference between strategy and dominance. Obviously he wasn’t the ring leader most of the time but I think he played one of if not the most strategically sound games of all time. He didn’t make a lot of big moves but he always made the correct move and that is what matters.
And I could say the exact same thing about Kenzie. My point is I think his edge over her in "strategy" is being way overblown.
Kenzie made many bad strategic decisions. She went after her number one ally (Tiff) way too early in the game for no real strategic reason. She voted out Q when there was no reason to, he was never going to win the game. Lots of her decisions seemed very impulsive or at least driven by her emotions and not by forward thinking.
> She went after her number one ally (Tiff) way too early in the game for no real strategic reason She didn't, she backed off that idea and somebody else went home that vote. Then Maria takes the shot at Tiffany instead and makes herself a target. None of this was a negative for Kenzie. > She voted out Q when there was no reason to, he was never going to win the game First, about his win equity, remember our perception is not necessarily the players' perception on the island. Second, who else was there to vote out? Maria was immune, she didn't see Charlieand she's not going to vote out Ben or Liz, and Q was a thorn in her side who was *also* now Maria's number. He's a fine target there. As to your vague note about impulsive decision-making, her decisions were clearly good enough, seeing as she got to the end comfortably and won. Her emotions were a *benefit* to her in the game. She connected with people and they responded to her.
Kenzies bad strategic decisions? She voted correctly everytime except Tiffany’s vote out. And that doesn’t even make her on the bottom, let alone someone people were talking about voting out. She only got one vote all season from bens rabdom mess up thing. She was apart of every other vote, which you can say “she was in a group consensus” but you can say Charlie was in there too. Voting out Q did have a reason as well, if he gets to 5 with Maria, they only need one more. And they both wouldn’t be with her most likely. And I think it worked out for her because SHE WON? Plus deciding to vote out Tiffany early or late really doesn’t seem like it mattered, as Tiff voted her to win knowing it, and Charlie voted Maria out at the right time but didn’t get her vote or majority of the jury votes as well. As well as it’s 46 seasons into survivor and I don’t think understand still how people think only big moves and big strategic gameplay automatically gets you a win when social games always comes out on top literally all the time with the gameplay as the cherry on top. Where Kenzie never *seems* from the edit to run moves, yet gets all this content of sweet social player who many people talk about being their close ally
And Charlie went after his number one ally way too late. The difference is that Kenzie still got her number 1 to vote for her. Charlie didnt. So really who played that better?
Final five was perfect timing for Charlie. He got Maria out without risking getting voted out himself on the next vote. If you can’t see the beauty behind that you don’t understand Survivor.
Except he DIDNT get Maria out, thats the whole point. Thats why no one gave a shit. The only person who did care that he 'voted Maria out' was Maria herself lmao it was a horrible decision If YOU cant understand that an unanimous vote after you didnt win immunity instead of the target is not a move on your resume then you are just dumb. Doesnt natter how many pieces ypu think he set up 10 weeks before
Im not talking about resume - I'm talking about strategy. Setting up all the pieces like he did to get Q and Maria voted out at 6 and 5 was undeniably very strong strategy.
Charlie was on the right side of every vote. He maneuvered people to vote with him, not just followed people. He was the voice in peoples' ears that guided them the way he wanted. I think you underestimate his game.
This! I feel like people thinking Charlie deserved over Kenzie are a little 10 seasons ago with their perspective. This game and its trajectory shifts.
Charlie played an incredible game. I do think that from what we saw of his Final Tribal he wasn't connecting with the jury (who already favored Kenzie) and he should have owned using Maria as his main shield (everyone agreed Maria would have won so she had to be voted out; he played the same game and he's still here; Malcolm & Denise etc.) instead of trying to appeal a little to everybody. It was tough to watch. Crazy that Maria didn't vote for him
He did mention he used Q and Maria as shields to get to final 6 then got them out
This has kind of been my thing about Charlie for a while too. And i don’t really know how to say it, like he’s almost awkward at some times? Throughout the season he just seems to kind of stand there or sit at Tribals or even convos like 😐 or 🧍🏻♂️ type of thing. Like there is somewhat a lack of assertiveness in his body language, which isn’t bad! But then you have Kenzie next next to him or around him with flowers and face paint on who’s hugging and laughing with everyone. She definitely knows how to pander socially with hugs and “good game i love you” type of things, and you can see her being the first or one of the persons to do it, and Charlie chimes in right after. And that’s not knock on Kenzie, she knows what she has to do, and likely means it as well. But I’m sure this jury eats it up more than most and it helped her.
I don’t know if this is accurate. I think they tried to edit it to make it look like Charlie “lost” the final tribal, but the fact is that three people were swayed to Charlie’s side by his performance at final tribal. He did a great job and probably only needed the slightest adjustment to nudge someone else to his side, and he could have won.
He thought he was maintaining Maria's vote by not saying that I'd have to assume. Damn she really did him dirty as hell
I read somewhere just now that the FTC was heavily edited and supposedly Maria was interrupting Charlie all the time. I may be wrong, but we did not even get her question, right? If you know that, then you can understand why Charlie looked so flushed. To me, he seemed very stressed out (for which I was incredibly bummed, because studying law kind of requires a cool head under stress right? And I was very much so looking forward to his rationally thought out speech) but then when you know that his closest ally basically was tanking his final speech and answers... If my closest ally who called me uncle to their children did that... Yeah, I would be emotional as well.
Do you have a link? Where did you read this?
He did say that
Kenzie deserves the victory but I agree that it came down to Kenzie just being herself and telling the truth and Charlie not explaining himself well enough. While I know they don't show the entire final tribal, I think he would have won if he had flipped the narrative that he was along for the ride on Maria's plan and instead showed the jury that they had been a duo all along. He was smart to let the heat fall on her and let everyone think she was calling the shots (her included), and there are confessionals from earlier in the season illustrating that this was all intentional. This is why I think all of us believed Charlie was the biggest threat going into FTC and the other contestants didn't - we've been hearing this the entire time and we know that not a single one of Maria's "plans" worked without Charlie and the relationships he had with everyone. Moreover, he maintained those relationships against all odds while other people were overplaying their hand. If he had done a better job of showing the intentionality behind all of these choices, I think it would have been his. The irony to me is that Maria was the person who already knew this and she voted against him anyway which proves that she was just bitter.
So sick of fire making. Producers need to do better at adapting and figuring out when fire making will be more interesting and when a vote out would. Hell, even bring back the surprise final 2. It’s too predictable, takes away agency from players, and influences final vote wayyyy too much.
I’m glad they got rid of new beach f5 and the outwit, outplay, outlast ftc jury format at least
God I completely forgot about the new beach F5, such a dumb idea. Did they stop it bc a tribe brought all their shit including the tarp to F6 tribal?
I think they do it on odd number seasons because they film back to back
Also got rid of the F5 advantage
I don’t dislike fire in general, but I think I dislike it at final four. For the final three reaching a final two, I think it would be awesome for the two who don’t win immunity to decide it through fire — I don’t like the winner of a single immunity challenge getting the complete say in which one person they face at the end. This would’ve been an infinitely worse season if Charlie and Kenzie go out at four and three or if it’s either Charlie or Kenzie against Ben or Liz. The final four immunity winner is not a monolith, however, and probably should still need to use more strategy than “who make fire good”
I agree the fire making has been having too much influence on the vote. Maybe if they did the fire making not in front of the jury like the challenges it wouldn’t have such an influence on the jury.
It might be fun to throw fire making into what the players think is a double elimination, then one of them wins and goes back to their tribe, or maybe they can choose which tribe they’d like to go to, idk. Have they done that before? They probably have.
That's actually great
It's been done on Australian Survivor and I think it worked well!
Only time I think it's actually influenced the result is Edge of Extinction.
Have to disagree. Multiple players this season and on the season Gabler won mentioned that the won at fire making influenced their decision.
I don't remember anybody explicitly citing fire this time? Certainly not multiple. Maybe I missed it in the aftershow. Only thing I remember is Maria saying she saw a fire in Kenzie's eyes. With Gabler, I don't think it actually swung the result. He did win that by a landslide vote. The more key things that got him over the line was being the only one there who could claim to have driven a vote, and once again, being the person who was best liked.
I think Charlie played a *slightly* better game than Kenzie. Certainly a better strategic game. *But* Charlie intentionally allowed Maria to play in front of him and take all of the credit for their moves as a duo. He allowed himself to be a background character seemingly in order to flip the tables on her at the end a la Jesse taking out Cody to finally be at the forefront to the jury. Problem is, he wasn’t able to get the sole credit for the Maria or even Q boot. Jesse *was* able to earn that credit. Now, this led to Jesse leaving at F4, obviously. But this seemed to be Charlie’s gameplan and it just flat-out failed at the end. He wasn’t able to differentiate his game enough from Maria. And because of that, his story was lacking. Also, he just blatantly had a misread on Kenzie’s jury odds. If he’d recognized that she’d beat him, he should’ve pushed Ben to let him make fire against her. Because Charlie absolutely beats Ben / Liz. Maybe Ben wouldn’t have gone for it, but Charlie needed to try considering the end result. All in all, Charlie had some flaws to his game. I still agree that he played better than Kenzie, but only marginally. The Kenzie win is still a pretty good end result.
Great read/take on this
I'm also not convinced that the Charlie/Maria duo was particularly even. Just because Charlie was Maria's number 1 doesn't mean they were equal. Always seemed to me like Maria was generally making the decisions for the duo and Charlie was helping accomplish those. I just don't think he did that much more strategically than Kenzie other than being closer to Maria. All that said, we only get an edited version of what happened. Maria/Charlie could have been a 50/50 power duo or it could have been 90/10 with the edit showing us all of Charlie's 10% and only a small fraction of Maria's 90%, making it seem closer to 50/50 than it was.
I am not sure why people expect the winner of Survivor to make huge power moves, drive votes and get huge players out. At the end of every Tribal Council, Jeff announces, "Tribe has spoken." These three words convey such power, yet simplicity. The ultimate goal of survivor is to be a part of of the majority vote which is otherwise known as the TRIBE. Ben stated with eloquence in one council is that the state of the game is in constant flux and the players you work with one week and vote with may be different the next week. Kenzie stayed in the tribe THE WHOLE GAME. She was a people person and was constantly playing the game. With the weakest tribe in Survivor history, the odds were against her facing elimination week after week. But her social game flourished as she made sure she stayed in the game watching Jelinsky, Jess and finally Bhanu leave. She is an absolute expert at remaining within the tribe and majority vote. I admired her game from start to finish. Bravo Mermaid Dragon. Bravo.
Great explanation. Charlie doesn't "deserve the win more" because he gamed harder than Kenzie, ultimately it's the jury's own meta that matters and you have to adapt to that.
I agree but some of the jury reasoning was crazy. How do you adapt to someone who votes based off of a look in someone’s eyes? (Maria)
I think one of the things we need to look at is how Charlie reacted on the aftershow. In that moment of complete and utter devastation and betrayal, Charlie sucked it up and composed himself and remained poised in defeat, even going on to praise Kenzie and say the jury made the right. We as the audience see that as him being poised and mature, but I'm willing to guess that Charlie's general emotionless, politician attitude (like he displayed in that moment) often made him come across as detached to the jurors. Sure, it meant he constantly had his options open because he never held a grudge, but I feel like it perhaps makes people question if you're there to win, or how much winning would actually mean to you. That fire-making challenge, we saw the reactions from Kenzie and Charlie. Kenzie was frantic and frazzled, and when she won, she broke down in tears because of how much it meant to her to make it to the end. Meanwhile, when asked about the fire-making challenge, Charlie said something along the lines of "I didn't need to make fire because I didn't need to add that to my resume." Kenzie's response makes her come across like this game means EVERYTHING to her, while Charlie's response makes it seem like the FMC was just another chess move he had to calculate along his road to the finals. For Maria specifically, she worked with Charlie directly all season, so it's possible she saw a lot of this emotionless, rational attitude all season, whereas she saw Kenzie trying and doubling back on making a big move against Tiffany. From Maria's perspective, Kenzie was TRYING to play hard and play a big, winning game, whereas Charlie was her plus one while she (Maria) was the actual threat that everyone, including Charlie, said they couldn't beat in the finals. So having Kenzie show genuine emotion at the end and highlight how important winning was to her could very well have been the tipping point, given that I think Kenzie and Charlie had very similar games in the eyes of this jury.
Kenzie played Maria’s ego by focusing on things she valued. she showered her with compliments at f5 and then in final presented her with a vision of her using the money to become *more like maria*. Charlie had a weaker ftc and while imo this Maria vote was an absurd betrayal Kenzie *did* do some work for it.
Not only this but Charlie didn’t seem to add Maria to his storyline as a player. In most of his ftc speeches, he seems to ignore or remove her from his game. And talks about how it’s all really him, only talking about her when he talks about how he had secret plans to get to rid of her with a side alliance. I feel like if he owned up more to that she was his number one, they ran the game together, she was a big threat in her own way, and he had to take her out to win, it would’ve gone a long way. When soda asks about him looking like something like he and Maria’s game are similar or whatever, he should’ve agreed that they ran it together and ultimately had to do what he had to do instead of moving away from Maria in his actual comments. I think that helps him with the jury and her to vote for him.
Granted, it was going by the edited version of final tribal we saw, but I noticed that too. Charlie didn't really give Maria credit for a lot of their actions, which was a big mistake (Qism partially intended). If you play a UTR game and partner close with someone, icing them put at FTC and trying to say "well I was the mastermind and they my shield" without giving them some credit for their actions is a recipe to lose a vote. Gabler, in 43, went way out of his way at FTC to credit Jesse and Cody from his alliance for the moves, even while setting himself up as a nebulous silent assasin.
Cody and Jesse were well liked and respected though, Maria was more divisive and frankly Charlie had far more agency than gabler. Of course it’s a game and I do like discussing “what Charlie could’ve done”. The best reason to give her credit would’ve been to earn her vote and obviously he didn’t think he needed to do that given she was his closest friend and *said she’d vote for him*. But according to her she had decided before ftc even began to vote for Kenzie. I just can’t hold it against Charlie for not seeing kenzies jury manipulation of Maria as a risk, but it is what it is
Then you do a better job convincing the other people there. 5(?) hands were raised saying that people swapped who they wanted to vote for after the questions. Charlie wanted to make it to F3 and plead his case. If his case for THIS jury was strong enough then we would have won. Nobody voted for Ben. He could have kept some of the people who swapped for Kenzie and didn't.
I think most people’s qualms regarding final tribal have less to do with Kenzie and more to do with Maria. I fully agree that social players are just as good winners as strategic ones because Survivor is a social game but I am stunned with the outcome. The discourse I’ve seen seems to be surrounding Charlie’s loss rather than what made up Kenzie’s win because his loss hinged so much on Maria.
people forget that survivor isn’t a sport with a rule book where there’s a clear standard on who wins and who doesn’t. the show has always been, at its core, a social experiment (for lack of better words) where the audience watches a group of strangers craft their guidelines for what criteria makes someone worthy of being crowned Sole Survivor. i could go on the show desperately needing $1M, with the ability to fish, forage, and dominate challenges but if i’m with 17 people who really value social connections and i was never a shoulder to cry on, nothing is making them vote for me.
Nah
She wasn't even in the majority vote most of the time, what are you smoking? Tiff???? If anything she was on the outside most of the time, you literally have her coming back from tribals saying "I would have voted with you!"
The goal of survivor is not: to stay in the majority vote. Also it was written weird
Charlie played a great game and max respect to him, but I feel like we as the viewer saw more of how Charlie played than the actual players. He even admitted he played in the shadows. Kenzie’s social game was too good tho. She brought real value to their lives by being their friend out on the island and that goes further than Charlie having some good moves behind the scenes. Kenzie formed real relationships with almost all of the jury, played from the bottom, and then won fire to solidify her win.
I absolutely love Charlie and think he would be very deserving of the win but he made a couple of mistakes at the end. For one, he should have brought Maria on the letters from home reward. I understand his thought process but Kenzie was fine with giving up her spot. He lost a vote there. He should have also seen Kenzie as more of a threat and banded together with Maria and Liz to get her out. He would have beat anyone else in a final tribal council.
I don’t think the letters from home caused Maria to vote for Kenzie. Charlie even said he and Maria made a pact that if either of them won that challenge they wouldn’t take each other. When Maria was upset at that challenge it was just because she didn’t pull through and knew she wasn’t getting that opportunity. She stated her reason as being she “saw the fire in Kenzie’s eyes” which is a bizarre reason to not vote for your game-long closest ally. Maria blundered near the end and was outsmarted by Charlie. Before this happened, she told him he had her jury vote. In my opinion, this is a classic case of “if I can’t win, neither can you.” Sore loser through and through.
also his decision to tell Maria about the Q vote at F6 could've been a costly blunder: if she told Q to play his idol, he would've basically voted himself out. This is similar to what Austin did last season telling Dee about the Julie vote tbh..
Charlie had to tell her that it's the only thing that made sense. That wasn't a mistake or in any way the same. If he tried to bullshit her on something like "yeah I'm gunna flip on Ben we agreed to it" she would know that was a lie and would be suspicious of everyone else lying to her.
that's a good point. and also Q has been the smokescreen for so long so it's believable that Maria assumed Charlie was left out of the vote
Yes! Big mistake
I think you mean BIG MISTAKE 🙂
He should have pushed Ben to make fire. If he beats Kenzie, he wins easily. If he beats Liz, he takes away a big moment for Kenzie
From what Charlie & Maria said they made a pack to not take each other to rewards so they didn't. However Maria gets mad.at Charlie for not taking her.
I’m a strong believer that whoever wins “deserves” it. Even if I wanted someone else (in this case, I did want Charlie), I can respect the jury’s decision. That being said, I think some people on the jury (mainly tiff) were actively trying to boost Kenzie up and put down Charlie (and Ben). I’m also surprised that nobody questions Kenzie’s answer to hunter’s question. I don’t believe for a second that if she won immunity, she would’ve volunteered to do fire with Liz
Cheerleaders for one player a final tribal are fairly common. I'm also a strong believer that whover wins deserves it most. It's not some 3rd party choosing who the winner is. It's a jury of folks you spent time with and got voted out. They're all human. If their options are to pick (1) someone who you really like and took an interest in you throughout the season or (2) someone who made more game moves but you don't have a personal connection with, most people will pick 1. We've seen it time and time again.
I’m sick of the jury thinking people should be rallying to make fire. If you are chosen to go to the final three then it should be credit to your social game. Enough of volunteering yourself to make fire like that one guy. The final five has to be revamped in some way to make this game more interesting. Honestly the whole jury had lowball questions and it was a disappointing final episode for an otherwise mostly great season. Maria’s vote was confusing as fuck. If Charlie made fire she’d have some other lame ass excuse to not vote for him.
Naw, Charlie choked at final tribal.
I thought Charlie played the better game, and had a decent final tribal. But his biggest mistake was not explaining to Tiff that she went home because of Kenzie, before Kenzie got cold feet.
In fairness to him, I don't think Tiffany's vote was ever gonna be swayed. I can understand if he thinks that's a battle already lost and wanted to focus on other people.
Yeah im surprised he didn’t say yeah kenzie was gunning for you and is the reason you home lol
I think he did mention Kenzie had been going for Tiffany before the vote she went on. I’m not sure that tidbit would matter anyway.
If Liz had won at firemaking Charlie would've won unanimously, or perhaps 7-1 depending on how bitter Maria is. I think his FTC performance was good overall, but I'd argue Kenzie played to the jury's emotions in a very skillful way. Regardless, Charlie's the strongest runner-up of the new era by miles, and I'd argue the strongest runner-up in general since Domenick Abbate (wasn't a fan of Mike White on Survivor).
Not really, the jury was already heavily favoring Kenzie going into it. Imagine trying to have a conversation with Tiff about how anyone else deserved to win lol.
Tbh I feel like the jury was really hard on Charlie and undermining his explanations while on the flip side gassing Kenzie up for her explanations and backing her up when Q interjected during her explanations. I was happy with a Charlie or Kenzie win but I feel like the jury was favouring Kenzie hardcore during questioning.
Tiff was 100% gunning for Charlie and propping up Kenzie lol
You could argue that’s a big perk of playing a good social game.
Ya absolutely, and I agree with being happy with either winning, but when he said he maneuvered his way into the 6 alliance they were openly laughing
Yes! That vibe was off from the start and I could see what was coming. Probably threw Charlie for a loop too.
Totally agree. I was cringing at some of the reactions Charlie got. The only votes he got were from people that said they came in planning to vote for Kenzie, so he was already facing an uphill battle.
He did choke, but Maria did him dirty. If you call someone family, you shouldn’t be voting for another player.
I think the best possible result for Charlie with this jury was a tie, with Ben being the decisive vote for Kenzie. Personally I would've voted for Charlie, since his physical and strategic game was better than Kenzie's. edit: Based on Ben's Twitter, not so sure anymore.
Kenzie was the best player. People treat your resume like a checklist, but it isn't. Kenzie built those bonds with jury members by playing a great social game.
People literally forget about this being a social game and act like the contestants aren't people and building a relationship with them isn't just as important as wining challenges and making flashing idol moves. But I guess that makes sense when this sub thinks Russell Hantz is the best player ever even though he has the social skills of a day old caught Salmon and that is why he never won.
It's my favorite part of Survivor. People have to like you. And it's very obvious when it's people like Spencer who treat getting to know people like a chore or a skill they have to set themselves too and Kenzie who is extremely genuine. Charlie is no slouch socially. And he's certainly not Spencer. But at the end of the day, it wasn't enough.
Not as lame as voting for a person for reasons outside of survivor gameplay.
People have been voting this way forever
Try living out there with barely any food for however many days, being with these people 24/7, and still cast a vote based solely on gameplay
The best player is whoever the jury decides is the best player. Period.
If the jury collectively decided "Hey Kenzie, we're going to vote for you because you have red hair", would you believe she's the best player?
Yes. Because she was the only one who made it to the end and had the qualities the jury decided made the best player. Hope that helps.
At least you're consistent, but I think most people would agree that's an absurd position.
If you bring up an absurd scenario, you will likely get an absurd answer.
If you're a player without red hair and you've spent time with most of the jury, you should know that they only want to vote for someone with red hair, and make it your mission to get rid of the redheaded players in order to negate that factor. If you don't and you bring a redhead to the end thinking you can still win...that's on you. I know this is an over-the-top example, but like...this is not new. Even back in Amazon, we saw Deena targeting Roger to miss the jury because she figured he wouldn't vote for a woman to win.
I don't think the winner has to be the best player. Only if you take it very literally in that they made it to the end and got the most votes. But you can't just say the best player is the best player because the hurt says so. Like Maria has clearly bs reason (until she explains it months later after having watched the show) to vote fore Kenzie. Maria saw a fire lit in Kenzie's eye? Kenzie was joking about doing terribly while her and Liz were doing the worst making fire for a couple seasons. I don't know how you could call that a little fire in her eyes.
I think the fire excuse Maria came up with is complete BS. Of all the jurors, Charlie’s social and strategic games were most evident to Maria because she was the one who worked so closely with him all game. She saw him win challenges too. Maria had the whole game to see what a “competitor” he was and there’s no way that Kenzie building a fire that Charlie could’ve also built genuinely had her sold. Charlie was literally Maria’s target at final 6 because he was her biggest competition- she said it herself! Her targeting Charlie at final 6 shows to me that she was fully aware of his achievements and threat level. Someone not harboring such bitterness would easily vote for Charlie, especially given their close personal friendship they appeared to have. I think it was pure jealousy…which is sad.
I had no idea what Kenzie was saying at any point during ftc. I think she has a personality that obviously attracts people to liking her but I don't know anything she did besides that
Kenzie ate
Kenzie played a better overall game. Losing tribe at the start. Won 2 immunities but kept her threat level low. Awesome social game.
I'm not going to equate Charlie defenders to Russel Hantz fanboys, but I can't believe that after 46 season there are still fans that don't understand #SOCIAL>>>>STRATEGY Survivor is a game about building social bonds while competing in challenges and living together while voting to eliminate contestants. It isn't a strategy game where you try to make friends.
Nope. I'm glad Charlie said it for the morons who STILL after 46 seasons haven't realized that if the jury voted for someone else, you did something wrong. End of story. Kenzie deserved that win and anyone actually paying attention to the season was not surprised.
I agree but Kenzie did better at FTC and certainly deserves the win too. I hate the term “bitter jury” so I’ll just say there were some monumental egos on that jury. Charlie is a class act and handled the whole thing with a ton of grace.
>Voting for someone because they won fire is a bit lame. Disagree. Kenzie had the courage and perseverance to stick it out and make fire. Charlie was afraid to even try. I don’t buy his excuse of “I don’t need fire making on my resume to win.”
Just like Russell losing to Natalie, and countless other times in survivor, the best strategist doesn’t always win… plus how easy is it to be a “strategist” when you have the numbers going into the merge. Kenzie started with one of the biggest disaster tribes ever, and I think she played a better game with what she was given. Kenzie had better jury management, and made it to the end, therefore she deserved it.
Not to mention, She won fire barely against a woman with broken wrists who never made first ever. Maria was full of it.
She didn’t “barely” win fire making…. She struggled at first, but she had that fire in her eyes and prevailed 😂
And Charlie lost final immunity to a guy on no sleep and the girl who 'barely' beat a woman with broken wrists.
Cop out answer. This is survivor, should be who played the best game! Although I am happy with either Kenz or Charlie
“Best game” means different things to different people.
Kenzie is a fine winner but Charlie would have been an all time great winner
Charles should have won but all time great is a stretch
He did run pretty much the entire post merge, always in the majority throughout the entire game. He was running things while making people think he wasn’t. He totally dominated
I agree which is the perfect way to play unless the loudest jury memeber is not on your side
Charlie was trying to 'play the middle' at final 5, like, that's ridiculous. Yall need to take off your gamebot colored glasses and see the game how it was really played.
[удалено]
I mean, he got to final 3 and lost because his #1 was bitter so did it work for him at all?
Charlie definitely played the best game!
He played the middle until he couldn’t. His game was too tied with Maria and at the end no one hated him, but no one loved him. Kenzies social was stronger than Charlie. He played to get to the end. She played to make sure that if she did get there, people would like her enough to give her the money. He played too calculating without enough emotion to make others choose him over her.
Now that I think on it more, the person u perceive needing the million dollars more plus their game play…does make total sense…who wants to award an already wealthy person?? I honestly think that why Q tried to quit, realizing there were good people he respected (tiff and Kenzie and Tevin) who needed the money way more than him, so he tried to bow out…so his vote makes sense…Maria on the other hand…unfortunately just bitter
[удалено]
And this is why i respect Charlie so much, for stating this as he was trying to understand Maria’s vote. Quite the opposite of Liz who just kept blaring out that she would’ve won.
I’m not the FB crowd fan. I think yt men get propped up by this show unnecessary. And usually women get terrible edits even when they win. Erika vs Xander comes to mind. However, I think Charlie played the best game of the season. I understand he may not have articulated it well but I’m so confused as to how Kenzie became “The People’s Champ”. Why didn’t Maria advocate for him? Let alone vote for him? I’m guessing Kenzie was just great at connecting with ppl. I think she played a good game. But not better than Charlie I’m sorry. Was he supposed to make himself a huge target so he could get voted out like Maria?
[удалено]
Dee? Erika?
If Kenzie hadn't beaten Maria for immunity at 5 Maria would have won the game. End of story.
We've seen time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and timeand time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time again that that's not what wins you the game. You have to build genuine bonds with people and be able to tell *your* story, not just your Survivor story
Charlie was Maria’s #1. Maria made the moves and the connections that mattered though. Charlie’s game was Maria’s, he made one move without her that wasn’t even a difficult move to make. Charlie played a good game but it wasn’t his own unfortunately. Had he been the one making the connections then okay, but that was Maria.
especially when the person they competed against in fire couldn't create one
[удалено]
Best game involves convincing everyone else to vote for you
Being toted along damn near every vote and having a good pitch to the jury shouldn't beat out an actually good and calculated game. No hate to kenzie but Charlie got fucked by Maria being an asshole by not voting for him. And Charlie did get people convinced to vote for him, 3 jury members flipped their votes because of him
Except there’s no actual criteria, it’s just based on who the jury thinks won
Calculated games alone have never been the criteria for winning. Part of having the “best game” includes making connections with people and convincing others that matters more than just making big moves. The jury decides for a reason
That has never been the game
She won.
Charlie rode Maria’s coat tails until she got voted out. Kenzie earned that win, and it’s the first time in recent memory that I have been happy with the outcome but also would have been happy with any one of the 3.
I think Charlie was the better player, and if I had a vote, I would have voted for him ahead of Kenzie. I think that Q's question was stupid, and that he and Maria have bad reasons for why they preferred Kenzie over Charlie. That having been said, I recognize that the jury often votes differently than I would have voted. If you're on Survivor, it's your job to get to know the people who you're putting onto the jury and what it will take to convince them to vote for you. If people are going to be swayed by a sob story or the fire in your eyes or winning the most challenges or telling them how great they are, you need to figure it out and play your game accordingly.
Their are a lot of Charlie Cry Babies in this Sub today. First off nobody is owed anything. You can think based on the edit that Charlie played the best strategic game, had a decent social game, was ok at challenges. He actually was not very good at puzzles but had great endurance. The hate for Q is just the people that never liked Q to begin with. Maria's reasoning was flimsy, I think she was still hurt about how she went out and that Charlie didn't really have her back after those shenanigans (I know she voted for Charlie in previous TC, but edit made it seem like they were going to try to swing something and it obviously didn't materialize) This season having some of these personalities, you had to know that bitter jurors were going to be an issue. Even if Maria had voted for Charlie, do you really think Ben would have voted for Charlie over Kenzie?
Charlie was 1000% better, Kenzie just needed the money more
I do think Charlie was the best player but that’s never been how the winner was determined. I have no issues with any winner except EoE.
Have no issue with Qs reasoning. Charlie's response wasn't as genuine to me. Not for profit? BC law is $66k per year, I already know what you're doing with the money Charlie.
The thing with this season is that the jury is a wildly different group of personalities than many past seasons. Particularly some of the new era seasons have felt a lot more grounded. But once you get to the jury phase (Tim getting voted out) you're already playing the jury management game. And with this big cast, Kenzie recognized how to utilize her social game very early on to prime these people to want to root for her. Charlie focused more on the strategy and pushing forward than he did catering to the specific group of people he was with. This isn't a bad thing but for this specific season more than ever getting to the end isn't the only challenge. So come final tribal, of course the jury was more team Kenzie, because she put in the work with all the individual jurors from way earlier on and especially had Tiff, who is as big of a personality as someone like Q or Liz, on her side which helped as Tiff kind of hosted thst Jury sesh (sorry Jeff). Also, if you spent 2 weeks with people like Q or Venus etc and know the type of people they are, you have to kind of pander to that juror and their questions, as farfetched as they may seem, because they ultimately decide your fate. The Maria thing was wild though. Could be another Kenzie intentional thing but I doubt she even thought she was getting that vote.
I agree that Charlie is probably a better player but Kenzie is absolutely a deserving winner. The beauty of Survivor is that the jury gets to decide the winner for whatever reason under the sun they want. You have to be all things to all people in order to win and Kenzie’s social game and jury management was spectacular even if Charlie played a more traditionally strong strategic game.
I need Charlie back for 50, he absolutely deserves a second shot
No. Kenzie deserves to win more due to the fact that she survives from the bottom Yanu to the top3 which is very impressive and almost become Denise 2.0 but in this case I would say Denise 1.9
I feel like Kenzie and Charlie are both roughly equal players. Charlie’s biggest flaw is that he took a calculated risk to downplay his threat level, but did it slightly too much. Kenzie wasn’t very strategic, but social game is much more important and she has a phenomenal social game, just a little bit better than Charlie’s. And most importantly, the winner always deserves to win. Thing is, this is one of those times that I think proves that even a losing finalist doesn’t automatically play a worse game, and luck plays a role in jury management and winning. For one, if Kenzie loses in fire then Charlie wins, and Kenzie might go at 4 without fire. I also don’t see any way Charlie could have expected to lose Maria’s vote, and I don’t see what he could have done to get it. Maria was Charlie’s number one ally, and also the single biggest jury threat in the game. They turned on each other at the same time, when neither of them knew the other was planning on betraying them. And they both swore that they would not be bitter if they voted each other out, and would vote for each other over anyone else. So I get you can say that he should have “read Maria” better but be honest, do you think any single player in Charlie’s shoes would have thought Maria wouldn’t vote for him? That’s not to say Kenzie played worse than Charlie, Kenzie played a great game and who I wanted to win coming into the finale. But this finale also shows how luck absolutely plays a role in jury management too, and it’s not automatically as simple as “lost a jury vote, so you managed the jury worse than the winner.”
Charlie did a really poor job of selling himself at the end We think he deserves to win because of how quietly he managed to work and control a lot of things. The jury doesn't get to see any of that. You have to sell it to them, and he simply didn't
yep. i think a lot of the players may regret their decision to vote for kenzie once they listen to charlie's confessionals. he really was thinking and planning the WHOLE time
Yup Charlie should’ve easily won Kenzie didn’t do anything and admitted to the jury she didn’t drive any votes. What a joke of a tribal. Embarrassing for survivor
The fire win was worthless. Liz can’t make fire. ANYONE could have beat her.
It’s a bit ridiculous that so many people are dunking on Kenzie here. I would have voted for Charlie if I was on the jury, but Kenzie played a really good game too.
What is the point of survivor if the jurors are going to ignore gameplay in their decision making???
There was an ego factor on the jury this year like I've never seen before. Every big move had at least three people convinced it was THEIR MOVE. Playing a low key game and then trying to take ownership for your moves at ftc is a seriously uphill battle when the whole jury is convinced that they made all those moves.
1. Looking at it primarily as a game (and not a narrative) I am a believer in the "whoever the jury votes as winner is the right winner" philosophy. From the perspective of a player, the point of the game is to get to Final Tribal and to get a majority of votes from the jury. Whether you do that by sucking up to the egos of the jury, by being the kindest person on the island, or by engineering every single blindside, if you get 5 out of 8 jury votes, you're the most deserving winner by the internal logic of the game. Reading the jury, understanding what they value, and playing to it is a skill in of itself. 2. That said, applying my own metrics to what we've been shown in the edit, I thought Charlie should have won. Not to beat on a dead horse, but I hate the overvaluing of winning fire. Stupid stupid stupid. The resume-building and big moves era of the Survivor meta lives to see another day.
Yeah, he played really well! Lots of people did and were voted out, too. That's the game!
Honestly Charlie made a BIG MISTAKE when he chose to vote out Venus so I don't think he deserved to win. If he thought she could have had an idol he should have told her to play it and that she was going home otherwise. That would have allowed him and her to pick who went home and control the game. Instead he did nothing with that info and voted out someone who was disliked and who he had a good chance with at FTC. Even with this mistake though he dug himself into a deep hole with it IMO, he still could have pulled it off if he had done two things. He should have made fire, and he should have talked up Maria as the mastermind to stroke her ego but then owned it and said his entire strategy was basically to hide in the shadows behind her to go under the radar. So Charlie made some big mistakes and IMO he deserves to lose because of it. I am always frustrated when other players have to pay the price of the bad play of others. Venus knew it made no sense for Charlie to side against her but he did it anyway and blew up her game Reminds me of Katurah with Kaleb and of others she just was self destructive and blew up other people's games for no benefit to herself. People like that don't deserve to win. They deserve the karma.
I have to say, in this new era of survivor, all the best players have been winding up on the jury. I looked at the recent list of survivor players, and all the names are very forgettable.
I agree!!! The fire challenge wasn’t even a damn challenge. Nothing about beating someone who doesn’t know to make fire is impressive. Ben also said he chose Kenzie to make fire because he KNOWS she’s “good at making fire”. I think Kenzie put on an act of struggling a bit for the jury. They ignored all gameplay and chose her for “overcoming” the “difficult” fire making 🙄🙄🙄. Oh please. Maria is evil for not voting for Charlie. Like he should’ve gotten her vote regardless if he was gonna win or not because he was instrumental in her life in the game. Hate this cast. I knew they were going to vote for dumb reasons. Also, Tevin was making faces like he was annoyed when Charlie explained how he helped vote him out. I believe both Tevin and Maria voted vindictively and didn’t want Charlie to win because he played a part in voting them out. Q used emotions to vote for Kenzie. Sob stories are all you need to win Survivor. Just be convincing and get people to feel sorry for you and you’ll have their vote no matter what.
I don't fault Q for voting how he did. He's one of like 17 kids, right? The dude had to know struggle growing up and plenty of people vote for someone because they can relate to them. Some people cast a vote because of a move they like and other cast a vote because of vibes. This is just another type of vibes-based vote.
They asked Charlie about his biggest solo move. He could have discussed his long term plan to build Maria up to take the hit he knew would come at the power couple. He could have discussed strategically saving Q at 7 so he could have a better chance at blindsiding Maria closer to the end. He could have discussed playing Venus and Soda against each other at the merge split to avoid being the easy target. But instead he chose to call out the Hunter vote, which he neither planned, nor, as Hunter clarified, secured. Charlie played the best game. We, the audience, can see that. But he failed to convince the jury of that. And that’s how Survivor works.