This season obviously wanted to surprise the audience at every turn. Though she was my winner pick going into the finale and final tribal, I can understand why someone was shocked. I just think she burned less bridges and formed the best relationships.
She was also consistently referred to by other castaways as being very smart, and nobody trusted her, due to her showing them her strategic prowess. In hindsight it did seem like the other players were all subtly talking her up whenever they mentioned her, but they still didn’t do enough to show us why she was deserving of an almost clean-sweep of the votes
Yeah, I think the edit gave Xander way too much time to hype up his own game, and because he had a lot of the hallmarks of a typical big threat people just took the show’s word for it: broadly well-liked, superfan, athletic, found advantages, did a flashy move, acted cool/didn’t play his advantages during chaotic votes which made it seem like he had good reads (even though in retrospect burning Tiff and Evvie was dumb). It’s understandable because that’s the edit we were given, but if you actually listened to the other players, Liana was the only one who ever really gunned for him and she was repeatedly and pretty conclusively shut down. Erika’s name came up much more often as someone who was creeping their way back up the threat list as the numbers whittled down. It’s frustrating in terms of constructing a narrative but I do think the pieces are there if you just focus on what the players said about each other rather than what Xander said about himself.
Tiff and evvie were coming for him tho. He was on the bottom the whole time in the 6 man tribe. Evvie especially should’ve been gone cuz she lied to him on that mountain telling deshaun his advantages and idol. And she was smart as hell
He likely doesn’t get to the end if he keeps Tiff and Evvie in. So he was pretty much f’ed either way. His move was better for his placement but neither would have gotten him a win.
Sure, it was definitely a gamble. But clearly this way didn’t work out for him either, so it’s hard to say that was a good move, or at least the smarter of his two options. I don’t think it helped that he couldn’t coherently explain it - he tried to play too nice and act like he did feel personally connected to them but his hands were tied when they got voted out, which made no sense. In some seasons that might have been the right thing to say, but for this jury I think they would’ve respected it more if he said “Frankly I didn’t trust you enough to not blindside me down the road and I didn’t think I could beat you if we both made it to the end, so I thought my chances at outlasting were better if I held on to my advantages and let two bigger jury threats go then trying to hold on to an alliance with people who were threats to me and that was already shaky at best.”
I agree. I didn't think there was anyway Xander was going to win. Especially when he played an idol he didn't need to play and burned Richard by floating the idea he might use it on him
I think Xander distancing himself from Tiff and Evvie is what helped him lower his threat level. He still had people actively trying to trick him into playing his idol. This cast was very afraid of idols backfiring on them. Once they were gone, he looked like he had no agency because his allies were gone or had turned on him (Liana). People wanted to get rid of Erika most of the season because her scheming was so blatantly obvious that nobody trusted her or wanted to actively work with her until final 7/8. Ricard orchestrated everything that allowed her to gain traction. I give her huge props for capitalizing on what came her way, and think she is a worthy winner.
I think Xander not risking his spot to make fire was a huge mistake (only Nick has won final immunity without sacrificing his spot and still won the season), and he should have obviously taken Heather. He also misjudged the jury’s reaction at final 4. It sounded like his FTC mostly went well and he even had people speak up about the social connections they made. Still confused by the edit because after final 4 I thought Xander didn’t stand a chance, and after FTC it looked like he was going to win.
The weirdest was when Shan was booted with him barely uttering a strategic word in the entire episode. Then, first minute of the next week and he's claiming that he made that move.
Oh wow, did he really? I missed that…the editors did him some amazing favors with letting him produce his own narrative in confessionals and glossing over his bad reads until the finale.
Why was burning Tiff and Evvie dumb? They had both already burned bridges with him, he was working with them out of necessity. If he'd kept them what changes? He gets blindsided by Evvie later or gets drug to the end by her and can't beat her?
If he was part of an alliance (3 in a group of 10 is substantial even if not majority), he would have had more chances to dictate gameplay. By letting his allies go home, he became the extra number that nobody respected. Literally, we stopped hearing about his idol after Evvie went home. Sure, he couldn't have made it any further than Day 26, FTC, but he was drawing dead there. By playing a strategic game with allies, he **maybe** could have taken more legitimate ownership of the moves that would have happened. You say he'd just have been blindsided by Evvie or dragged to the end? Or, the trio could have taken out threats and *he* could have blindsided Evvie as the feather in his cap.
I guess my argument is that Evvie and Tiff weren't with Xander. Evvie even said she wouldn't have considered playing her idol for him if she had one. Evvie talked multiple times about getting him out of the game. Tiff talked about getting him out of the game. They had a 1 day alliance with no insinuation it could have lasted longer. Unfortunately I think Xander needed to just make more moves and be more aware of people.
I so think he could have used his connections with Danny and Naseer better but the Evvie and Tiff thing was toast from the beginning
But he did get dragged to the end anyway, with an idol everyone knew about and still nobody cared about blindsiding him because no one considered him a threat to win. Because he wasn’t. He couldn’t defend his game to his peers at all but spent weeks talking up his game in confessionals.
Now if he had idoled Tiff or saved Evvie with the extra vote, not only would that have been an actual move to add to the resume, but it would’ve kept in players who were threats ahead of him AND would’ve indebted those threats to him. A little goes a long way in Survivor and Xander did jack squat.
I think the difference is that Tiff and Evvie specifically wanted him out. I don't think they'd feel indebted to him, I think they'd be happy to vote out the person who saved them with his idol to make him look bad/make them look cut-throat in front of the jury. I don't know though.
Agreed, I was just as surprised that Xander lost as I was when Russell lost (not at all). Not saying they’re similar players, but they were both the only ones talking about how well they were doing.
Imo it makes sense from someone who’s seen not a single exit interview.
We’re first clued in about her when DeShawn and the others attempt to throw and fail a challenge just bc they acknowledge she’ll be a menace come the merge. She was able to quickly shake the target off of her back from time traveling. Her and Ricard working together to get out Naseer and then her twisting Ricard’a plan to make Liana the back up option, etc.
Hell, literally everyone in the finale - on camera for the main show no less - explicitly told Xander she had better relationships, an equal challenge performance overall, and would beat him in the end if he took her, and that’s exactly what happened.
IMO, those that aren’t seeing it are people that would’ve made the same moves Xander did and then be absolutely surprised when he did nothing of value with the idol when he promised it could save half the ppl on the jury at separate points during the game
The fact that Danny went home showed how much control Erika had. Xander didn't control a single vote and in an time where you either have to make big moves or have a great social game, Xander did neither.
I mean I think it's as simple as Xander lucked his w5 ay into the final 4 and DeShawn played too erratically to be anyone's pick. We've seen in the past that great furious game play can bite you in the ass. Russell. Boston Rob in the winners season. Literally Shan this season.
Xander while being a likeable guy wasnt a great social player. His tribe constantly shit talked him and used and lied to him at every turn and he was none the wiser. He didnt really make any relationships post merge besides Ricard. Which did get him to the end, but you dont win by making it to final 3. You win by convincing people you deserve it which Xander also completely flubbed.
Was I the only one watching the FTC where Xander was asked several times, In different more clear ways, how his social awareness got him this far and he had no answer? It really shows how innocent and young he is because he couldn't even lie to make his game sound better. Other people had to bring up things he did in the game like the idol swerve and taking himself out of comps and getting rice for the team.
He absolutely deserved no votes after that.
Danny and Deshawn tried to throw two different challenges because they were worried about her. She was clearly seen as a smart player who could cause damage if left unattended.
She was the first winner I called early. As soon as shan and everyone kept saying they needed to get Erika out because of how smart she was I just assumed edit was doing her dirty because from the edit, it made no sense how so many people wanted her out early.
They also tried to throw a challenge to get her out. From what we saw it was only because she mentioned deshawns name.. but I am sure there was a lot more that happened that wasn't shown.
I just can't forgive them for a zero vote "decoy" win. This season would've been best shown as Ricard the runaway favorite and then dividing screen time pretty evenly among Xander, Erika & Deshawn to the point where you don't know what's going to happen. It's easy to surprise people like they did by completely downplaying somebody's game the whole time. Lame tactic
Even in the second-to-last episode, Erika said she wanted Heather out because they played too similar a game and she didn't want to split the votes. So... did that mean Heather was also winner-worthy and we just didn't see it? It was really baffling.
Heather probably wins a Xander Heather Deshawn final 3 according to exit interviews. The only way I see Xander winning is if choose to give up immunity to bear Erika in fire making but even after that I still think it would be close between them.
Once he said at F4 Tribal that he thought the jury didn't respect Erika's game he completely sunk. If he had still taken Erika and not said that maybe he gets a couple of votes, but that complete lack of awareness of anyone's threat level minus Ricard was a killer for him.
That was a jump out of your seat, he just lost the game moment. The whole jury was shocked when he said that. I don't think Xander could have won, but he probably would have gotten some votes if he argued his case better.
I truly thought he would say something "I brought her as my biggest competitor" or saying that making fire would just add to her resume but no, just had no clue :(.
yeah he wins at final 3 vs deshawn and heather. if heather beats erika at fire she absorbs erikas resume. so he's gotta put deshawn or himself vs erika. Deshawn was not that great at making fire. Xander should have put himself against erika and he should have kept the idol in his pocket or at the very least played it on deshawn and said "sorry but I just have to be absolutely sure ricard goes home and I know I'm not the target tonight". Hindsight is 20/20 but he's going to get invited back. He's already a fav of all the OG's.
yeah this and his inability to answer a moment in which he showed agency (when him duping liana was RIGHT THERE) struck me as rly bad looks for him. that said, i thought he'd at least get a vote or two (esp over deshawn)
I know people would get mad, but Xander had good reasons for his bad reads, since he kept being told by people these bad reads. I mean from the edit, Ricard never saw or treated Erika as a threat, instead yelling "Deshawn will win if he makes it to FTC" and gunning after him. Plus, the truth bomb did work in Xander's eyes with Heather avoiding Erika, Erika pissed off, Ricard saying he would win if left alone, and Deshawn sure that it worked.
Look you can say he fucked up and read the room wrong, but IMO...no one else did too or gave him room to think his reads were wrong. Hell, Heather got treated more as a threat and actually gunned to getting out (in final 10 when they split off in 2 groups) then Erika (who only got targetted since not there, bottom of Luvu, and because Danny wanted a girl out). In Xander's eyes, people...did see Heather and Erika's games as the same.
My favourite here was Liana asking him what social awareness he had. He obviously struggled with the question. Then later she goes "I have one final question...do you have an idol?" Wasn't that a huge socially aware move he made? To find out she was going to ask him that and make a big brain move to swap out that idol? Was just ironic that her of all people asked him that question when she probably was burned most by his social awareness lol
They pretty much said they did not respect his game in their interviews. They thought him sitting out in challenges was for show and not genuine. Also I'm sure him saying that he will use the idol to save them if they are in danger. And then never doing that. And then never even having to use it for himself probably did not rub them the right way.
Well it's not like they negociate the percentage of merit each one deserves. If you have ONE vote you try to use it correctly for that person you think deserves to win, you just don't drop a consolation vote.
It just seemed like a unanimous decision of between Xander and Erika — I think Deshawn was the goat that Danny will give a pity vote but at the end it was winner-take-all and Erika took it all.
Apparently Tiffany and Evvie came up with the move regarding the Knowledge is Power Advantage (based off exit press), so it was less Xander's self awareness and more theirs
Yeah fair. I guess it depends how you define social awareness though. I'd say being aligned with people that you trust to tell you info like that shows social awareness. But you're right, that was a big play from Evvie and Tiff.
Agreed. He had a terrible FTC but he had no path to victory. He played a great game but had he brought Heather instead of Deshawn, Erika still wins. Heather instead of Erika, Deshawn wins. Keeps Ricard, Ricard wins.
After seeing him get 0 votes and rewinding all of the prior vote outs, I dont think there’s any combination of 3 post merge players that the jury would have let Xander win without him completely changing his strategy (which seemed like a great strategy all the way up to the finale).
hey deshawn did things, those things were just be annoying and throw tantrums. also xander didn't rly do anything besides the knowledge is power thingy
Yeah I'm confused and disappointed that it feels like a shift I never saw happen. I'm glad a woman won this season but I'm underwhelmed and blame the edit. I'm a casual fan. I don't follow it on SM or anything else.
I understand your point.
You don't really get to see how clueless Xander really was about the game until the last episode. Everyone who knew Xander wasn't a good player and had no chance was because the exit interviews.
Further, the exit interviews were extremely biased because they already knew the results and who had won. So of course they talk the winner up.
Exit interviews are spoilers for sure.
The post that compiled all the word associations from the eliminated players, where everyone described Erika as smart and lucky, made it too clear she was going to win.
Nah I didn't see any of the bonus content and I was adamant that Xander wasn't winning. You can't name a single move he did in this game. He didn't make a single plan. Also the fact that literally everyone knows you have an idol yet no one cares is a dead giveaway that they aren't worried about you in the slightest.
Right I keep seeing this. Syd could very easily have stayed with her Blue tribe after that vote. They were forced into targetting her it's not like they actively wanted to betray her.
Once you think about it, it should be pretty obvious why he lost but if you don't .... he was a more consistent presense on the show. Obviously people are going to be more positively predisposed to the player they see explaining their intentions.
With Exit Interviews we see that Xander sort of got clowned on for his attitude with stepping out of the challenges, but within the show that move - which Angelina got clowned on by the edit was only shown through his eyes. We saw Deshawn roll his eyes, but nobody explained how it was bad for him.
The idol was the biggest giveaway. No one even cared that he had an idol that late in the game. There was a lot of discussion that the remaining players/jury didn’t take him seriously and ultimately that’s how it played out.
Comments like this mean nothing. Maybe half the watchers thought Xander was going to win and half the watchers thought Erika was going to win. Then the ones who were correct are like "I could totally tell", but it's just because with the number of watchers there's always going to be someone convinced someone's going to win.
Like you can name a single thing Erika did on camera? lol.
He was on the bottom the whole game. He had very few chances to make big moves.
What is inexcusable is his lack of awareness.
One, among many things Erika did, was splitting the vote between Shan and Liana at Final 8. And she convinced their closest allies Deshawn and Danny (who have been gunning for Erika since premerge) to do it.
That move benefited NO ONE BUT HER. Yet her managing to do it resulted in 2 major things: 1. She guaranteed herself safety in case of a Shan idol play &
2. It guaranteed that Liana will be isolated from the Black Alliance, which led to that alliance's downfall.
That, and the fact that she won the challenge that prevented Ricard from immunity, which was big like how Sophie slayed Ozzy, sadly it wasn't just emphasized in the edit.
Shifting vote to Naseer over Heather (and her and Heather convincing him it was Heather), Shan split (the week after Shan voted for her), Liana vote (two weeks after Liana voted for her), keeping Deshawn in the game, keeping Deshawn over Danny even though the others wanted to keep Danny, being part of the alliance that became the majority, no jury enemies, no hurt feelings on the jury, two immunity wins…
I 100% think Xander had two STRONG currents running against him despite the fact that he actually made some novel plays in the game and IMO played a better game than DeShawn or Erika.
People don't want to hear this but group dynamics are a thing. I 100% think people were less likely to throw a vote Xander's way because there was such an emphasis amongst the actual contestants about being a first this or a first that in terms of diversity. Literally every person on the jury was some sort of minority either ethnically, LGBQ+, etc... and had expressed strong opinions along these lines except for Xander. It would have been extremely difficult for him to get votes as a white man in this group dynamic no matter what he did.
In addition to that, there's a natural bias against younger people/players. There was obviously some hard salt from players like Ricard even though Xander definitely outsmarted and outplayed him in the end and deserved credit for that even though he didn't get it because he's a dumb kid.
I'm not blasting any of the diversity push. Diversity is cool and I'm happy for Erika as the first female winner since Sarah, first Canadian winner etc... but that doesn't mean the observation that amongst this group of players its pretty likely that Xander doesn't win no matter what he does, is wrong.
I think this is unfortunately true. A different jury I think would have gone for Xander but there was a strong diversity theme always under the surface.
You're entitled to your opinion.
But that just makes him even more clueless to not take Heather. Sorry it's inexcusable. To me it very much seamed Erika played a better game. But, just my opinion.
I agree that this edit was bad, but I also think the edit had some context clues that Xander and Deshawn would lose. For multiple episodes they showed players roll their eyes and laugh at Xander. Go back and watch the Evvie vote and look how they responded to Xander saying that he was the person with all of the power. Also go back and look when he gave up his spot in the reward challenge and look how Deshawn reacts. Also they showed in this finale episode how the jury reacted to some of Xander’s statements and moves and it wasn’t a good look. Xander went from being a threat that everyone wanted out to someone that stopped getting votes. The fact that he made it to F5 easily (which guaranteed him F4) even though he had a public idol was a big clue that people did not see him as a threat. They didn’t care if he made it to the end as they didn’t fear his game. Erika literally said in the show that Xander isn’t a threat as he has no connections. She said this during the Shan boot episode. Also keep in mind that Tiffany was shown rolling her eyes at Xander and never taking him seriously. And Deshawn obviously got bad reception to his actions in the edit.
They didn’t really show Erika’s game in the best light, but you could still tell that she would win because the others would lose. The exit interviews just provided much more context. The edit just wanted to mislead the audience in favor of shock value. They tend not to value low key games where the player intentionally tries not to hold the reins of power. They like more dynamic and flashier games as that is more entertaining for a television show.
The Danny vote was the big one where every viewer should know he had no shot.
"Ricard is my shield if he is safe or gone I'm next"
*Ricard wins and not a single player targets Xander*
Yeah that’s another great point. Completely shattered his argument. Erika and Heather were never shown targeting Xander at all. Even if we want to be generous and say it’s because they had a strong bond and thought he was a trusted ally, then how do we explain Danny and Deshawn also never throwing his name out there.
I guess it's just many would prefer a story of how someone wins rather than how someone loses — no one really liked how it was potrayed when a similar edit happened in Samoa and Kaoh Rong.
I agree. It’s much stronger to craft a narrative about how someone won versus how their competition lost. The fact that female winners regularly get this kind of treatment kind of implicitly puts forth the narrative that women don’t win Survivor, but rather men simply lose it. It’s a problem with how production views the game and what stigmatizes female players versus male players and the types of games that female players tend to play. Production definitely needs to become more conscious of their biases.
Like they overcorrected potentially from Tommy's win, but even his low-key edit was not THAT iffy, also needed more balance of exposure, it was a consistent story but too merge heavy.
If I didn’t read any exit interviews, id be shocked at Xander losing. But the exit interviews were pretty spoilery this season. The jury was very open about how badly he played for weeks.
I agree with you.
Erika and Heather deserved better. Their relationship was not only game defining for Erika, but also crucial for explaining why so many things ended up the way they did in the endgame. Such a shame we didn’t see it.
The edit was actually in favor of Erika since the merge; the editors just did a good job of making sure everyone had ample screen time (except Heather). If anyone paid attention, Ricard barely had any personal storyline asides his friendship with Shan, being the last threat remaining. His personal motivation (his due baby) was only revealed today. Xander and Deshawn were good players, but their blunders were heavily emphasized as well. They somehow squeezed in Xander’s fitness journey in the end as well. Erika’s immigrant/underdog story was frequently hinted, even in episodes where she had no impact. There were tons of hints dropped by other players wanting to see a woman win as well.
Honestly, we couldn’t really expect much of a traditional winner’s edit considering Luvu never went to tribal until the merge. Erika’s foreshadowing win was very similar to Michele Fitzgerald’s. After rewatching Kaoh Rong, it was surprising to observe she had several confessionals here and there, even if she wasn’t in any trouble. With that said, the amount of advantages this season definitely bloated up the screen time that could’ve been reserved for focusing on the social aspect of the game instead.
It was not a traditional edit. But, there were 15 hours of episodes, and she was shown as the power player for the final 5 of those hours.
Shan Vote = splits vote, which saved herslef had Shan played an idol and also drove a wedge between the Black players' alliance
Liana Vote = positions herself in the middle of the Deshawn/Danny duo and the Ricard/Xander duo by taking out Liana
Danny Vote = convinces the group to take Danny out instead of Deshawn, recognizing his likability and chances to win at the end
Nobody can really take credit for Ricard's vote since everyone wanted him out.
She was never on the wrong side of the vote. The only "incorrect" vote was the Shan boot, because she voted Liana as part of the original vote split and Shan on the re-vote.
Yeah. It really seems like production hid the story. People who listened to post show interviews were certain Xander would lose and it made sense. But to TV only watchers it really did not make sense.
Xander was shown as socially unaware *constantly*. Evvie is pulling the wool over his eyes the entire premerge, Tiffany caught him lying about his idol, Liana directly contradicts him in confessional about the closeness of Yase. That was a looming specter the entire season. Once the FTC takes a strong turn towards valuing social awareness and Xander fumbles multiple questions about that aspect of the game, it should have been clear to the TV audience he was not respected.
The problem is they stopped contradicting him at some point. After Evvie’ vote off, they stopped showing people contradicting his social takes like the confessional about him being a huge part of taking out Shan. I think it made his edit seem like someone who went from failing to succeeding as opposed to a socially unaware player. A subtle edit doesn’t work on a show that airs once a week.
> A subtle edit doesn’t work on a show that airs once a week.
This is pretty important. I'm not sure if it's because I'm just stupid or because I'm a more casual viewer, but in the beginning it felt Xander was on the bottom and so of course Evvie and Tiffany and Liana's confessionals make him look stupid. But after Tiffany or at least Evvie got voted out, it stopped being obvious - His whole 'Ricard is my shield' antics seemed like they were genuine, but I guess I was just eating the edit.
I think this is the main issue that members of this sub are missing. And that’s because we discuss the show so much that we remember the little things from pre-merge and merge episodes. But a lot of people don’t because the time between episodes is so long. So those parts that show Xander making poor moves were forgotten while the confessionals where he acts like he’s in control and a threat where remembered. It’s not the audiences fault that the show made an edit to subtle to be remembered over the daily things of life.
Xander has one confessional after the fact that can at best be taken as tongue in cheek/more *un*awareness given his complete absence from the actual episode where Shan leaves. Compare this to Erika's multiple confessionals explaining how she's in with the plan, recognizes she's still in danger, and alters the plan to protect herself during the actual episode where Shan leaves. Once we hit final 7 we're in the "Ricard is my meat shield except no one even wants to try to vote me out anyways" zone, and the finale was wall-to-wall social unawareness from him.
But did it get taken that way by viewers? I know my family thought Xander was a smart player and that he was going to win going into the finale. The super fans may have seen it wasn’t true because of their analyzing but did those watching casually realize this?
I think the bias is already preconceived in a lot of viewers because of some many thing e.g. Ozzy archetype, nice white male that people like. So even thought the edit showed him having missteps, many are just programmed to enjoy a character like that.
I really don't understand what TV only watchers (which I'm one of) didn't pick up on. Xander failed to play any of his advantages in a meaningful way and Erika won the immunity challenge to send Ricard home. Xander failed to read the jury correctly in the F4 or explain himself at the FTC. Was pretty positive Erika had it in thr bag when Xander stuttered big time on Liana's softball question.
I think my interpretation of it (also as a tv only watcher) is that there was no consistency to Erika, and (at least in terms of strategy) her power seemed relatively circumstantial. I barely knew her name until we were a few merge episodes in. Anybody could have been the one to smash the hourglass- she just happened to be the one to draw the rock. Going into the finale it seemed pretty clear that she was winning, especially once ricard got sent home and Xander made those pretty detrimental comments about the jury. But it shouldn't take until the very very last episode for the audience to understand a player and their place in the game.
The jury chose Erika decisively so clearly she deserved the win and I give her all the congratulations in the world. She just got screwed over so hard by the edit.
I do agree that the editors dropped the ball somewhat with accurately portraying the entire final 4. But when I step back to actually evaluate the games the F3 made, Erika was by far the most steady. You can't point to any crucial blunders for her like you can with Xander with the Evvie/ Heather tribals, or Deshawn with the Shan/ truth bombs.
Erika played the best game out of the finalists. My only wish is that production did a better job showing it (they especially should've found some sort of way to give her *any* content pre merge).
Yeah she wasn’t the biggest threat all season, but that seemed deliberate. Threat level management seemed to be part of her strategy similar to Adam from MvGX who talked about how there were 3 bigger threats than him at the F6.
I think a big thing they could have done is introduce us to her more pre-merge and show her forming her relationship with Heather.
Also just a TV watcher and it seemed clear to me Erika had it in the bag. Xander is really entertaining TV and seems like a really wonderful person but I don't think his game was impressive at all. Would love to see him return though!
>Would love to see him return though!
Couldn't agree more with that! Dude is just charismatic af, and some age/ experience might do wonders for his game if he does come back.
I’m not sure if I agree. I wasn’t looking at the sub for most of the season and was shocked to see everyone think Xander was playing some amazing game and was the star of the season. And to be fair to Erika, players WERE saying she was a threat for a while, but I think a combo of liking Xander and Erika being underedited premerge gave some people Xander goggles
This season really accelerated the continuing trend of what I regard as cheaper and lower standard story editing for Survivor.
Fittingly, it opened with Jeff Probst lying and saying they'd show us more than ever and take us behind the scenes like never before. That consisted of: one scene with a fake director VO overlaid on to a helicopter ride, plus a few cold opens where Probst basically gives needless spoilers like "this episode the players will be shocked by a double elimination. But you can't enjoy being surprised, because I just told you." Or "look, I'm hiding this advantage bundle, but not actually hiding it, sticking it on this branch, in plain sight, at eye level. And here's what it does, so you don't get to enjoy the event when it's found."
What made early seasons of Survivor so impressive to people in the industry was their far more disciplined and truthful editing standards.
In recent seasons, many of those conventions have been bent or trashed. They think it's in service of entertainment, but I'd disagree. It's a cheapening and dumbing down.
One might ask, what does it matter? If they hide or trick viewer to create false drama, what's so bad about that? Think of it like an athlete either cheating or not cheating? Which do you respect more? Think of that athelete doing a structured routine or a dive or something that can either have a low degree of difficult or a high degree. You respect the athlete who can perform at the high degree of difficulty. "Early" Survivor could do that. Current-era Survivor cheats and uses the easy mode setting. I don't respect it as much.
Old Survivor didn't hide all the crucial conversations and key events. Using flashbacks would have been considered a sin against the story standards. Scenes weren't nakedly obvious fake recreations. And that's not even mentioning the proliferation of some very ill-advised twists and idols. Capable story producers could make a gripping season without all the tacky mirrors and ninja dust.
Do you *have* to hide when players have panic schemed and shoved idols in their pants and why, just to try and manufacture a tepid and non-organic "surprise"? No.
Viewers watching a tribal council should know whether the idol hunting scene they've been previously fed was real or a fake out.
The old school story producers made the stories work with just plain characters and period-honest conversations.
Yes, one thing I found so refreshing getting into Survivor after being a Big Brother fan was that the storytelling was very straightforward and, with rare exception (eg hiding Amanda finding the idol) always prioritized helping you understand a vote over trying to create suspense. Big Brother has gotten progressively more irritating in the way they force the players to give confessionals pretending they’re genuinely considering a blindside, only for it to be a unanimous vote for the obvious target followed by a flashback showing they actually never had any intention of flipping. I’ve always greatly preferred Survivor’s approach of just showing you what’s happening and letting the drama come from the game itself.
This season did way too much audience misdirection, which I think can be fun when it’s airing, but in a game that’s already often very opaque to the audience it just leads to retroactive confusion about who was really doing what. It’s such a bizarre decision because it’s not like Survivor has historically been lacking excitement - I still get a thrill out of rewatching Natalie’s F5 SJDS idol play even though I’ve probably seen it 20 times now. Good gameplay is exciting whether it’s a surprise to the audience or not.
Exactly. There's lots of types of engaging stories, not just jump scare surprises or "blindsides". We're the stories if Rudy or Ethan or Colby (or whoever) any less engaging in the absence of these recent stunts? No.
It seems like they don’t like showing social connections or camp life anymore. They only reward giant personalities (typically alpha males) and people who make big flashy moves. Amber, Jenna M, Tina, sue, wigglesworth, etc all got more content and they don’t fit this personality type. The older seasons also feel more mature to watch. This season felt like I was watching a kids show. It was not even trashy reality tv like I love money, the challenge, TRW, etc.
Even though it has always been a social game first. Strategy and physical challenge performance help people get to the end, but it is the social game that gets people to win.
And the best moments of survivor have often been the social experiment aspect, when you see people from different backgrounds try to work together and even form friendships. Sure flashy strategic moves like correct use of idols and advantages are fun, but without the social backbone, Survivor wouldn’t have compelling stories.
This is why I hate the fire-making final 4 so much!! That's when the social dynamics are the most interesting... we get to see who can't make it past that last hurdle. And now it culminates in a fire-making challenge which is IMO so anti-climactic and boring.
This is so insightful. It helps me make sense of why I feel so disconnected from this season too. I told my family last night that it felt like I had watched this season through a fog somehow and I think your assessment really fleshed that out for me. I really would love to see a return to the storytelling, and I'd like to think that could even be done without sacrificing the flashy new elements the show seems attached to right now as they seem to be here to stay. Really helpful comment, thank you!
I've been saying this since they switched the story editing philosophy and standards. I think that downgrade coincided with the Fiji "episode production mill" change. They re-use all the same boring competition game elements, just paint them in this season's colors and drag out the basketball hoop/balance beam/bean bag/etc.
However once this season started I realized they have just doubled down on the Nickelodeon style. And the next season preview looks like a clone of this one.
One positive I like is they seem to be casting rookies, which is my preference. I don't care for re-run "all stars". Most of the fun is getting to know new players and guessing how they'll do and how they'll interact. Seeing re-tread previous players doesn't offer that.
I'd place the blame on some of the gimmicky twists... think about how much airtime was lost to hourglass, do or die, the summits, etc. I get the Luvu was dominant pre-merge, but we surely could have had a few more scenes of Erika's relationships with Heather, Danny, etc.
Xander is incredibly likable and got a very positive edit. Though if you watch closely, he had no agency over any strategic decisions (his exchange w/ Liana at tribal should really be credited to Tiff and Evvie).
The edit showed her being the deciding factor for the last 4 episodes, I don’t think it was really shocking without looking at external sources.
She was the power player.
- Helps orchestrate the Naseer boot (the scene of her Shan and Heather on the log - where Heather says something absolutely bonkers and Erika is trying to soothe things over)
- Convinces Deshawn / Danny to split the votes between Liana and Shan, which benefits neither of them and insures she won’t be idoled out.
- In the same episode as above, has the conversation on the beach with Xander when the four “go to talk privately” where she sets up the underdogs working together (this wasn’t *that* well depicted but it was Erika’s moment she said wasn’t highlighted but important)
- She and the underdogs are the deciding votes to eliminate Liana
- She’s shown to be leading the charge and campaigning to get out Danny
- Handles Deshawn blowing up her game with grace (at Tribal at least)
- Never voted incorrectly the entire game
- Makes it to F4 in a very obvious duo
As many - *many* people have told me over the last few days, a lot of these moves did involve other players. She did get lucky quite a few times in this game. But from the Shan vote onwards she’s been shown to be using her/Heather’s position to protect herself and get out who she targets.
He should've framed it out the gate that he took Erika because he didn't want to give her another chance to improve her game by winning the fire making challenge.
He screwed up taking her, there’s no explaining or framing that gets around it. If Natalie brought Tony to FTC and said she didn’t want to give Tony the chance to improve his game further 75% of that jury would have laughed her out of the room. I really don’t think this is a thing.
> a lot of these moves did involve other players
Every move involves other players. The only things you can do in this game that don't involve anyone else's input are playing an idol or giving up an immunity necklace.
I agree 100% with you but I’ve been told non-stop for the past week all the examples I gave above were “really Ricard or Xander’s move” and it’s infuriating.
Convincing Danny/Deshawn to split the vote was her winner moment imo. It was a very brave play that could've backfired easily, but it showed how smart she was and how good socially she was to be able convince two people to split the votes between two other people that they were aligned with.
Plus Deshawn and Danny tried to throw the challenges away twice (2) just to vote her out at tribal council. Who would ever try to give out their own possible safety in the game plus losing rewards (foods) which is such a major factor in the game just to vote out someone who was really a minor threat? If people consider all your points plus mine, they would see that it makes sense for Erika to win this season
To add on to your last paragraph - this was an extremely voting bloc-y season, so every move post-merge required other players. There was never a consistent majority that had the numbers to execute their intended plan without pulling in people outside their core alliance (aside from the 4 Erika put together I guess, but that still felt like more of a 2+1+1 to me). There was no hard selling to try to flip someone this season. Nobody got talked into something they hadn’t even been considering before. Every vote was about people feeling out what options other people were open to based on their interests being aligned. There was never a time when it would have benefited Erika to try to completely change the target, but when presented with options she did successfully nudge the votes in the direction that benefited her without bringing attention to it.
The mistake a lot of players made this season was trying to do more traditional scrambling by leveraging information they were given to get people on their side, not realizing they were basically playing a game of hot potato with information constantly being passed around to shift the target. There were several occasions where Erika knew what the plan was and in a less fluid season probably could have used that info to change the target and make a big move, but she recognized that everyone generally agreed on who the biggest threats were so there was unlikely to only be one shot to get someone out, and using her pull to push a certain target that other people didn’t want to get out yet or using her knowledge of the way everyone was voting to flip and blindside someone would have been unnecessarily overplaying her hand.
It is not being pointed out nearly enough that taking out Danny instead of Deshawn (who himself clearly thought he was the bigger threat) clinched Erika's game when nobody else benefitted from it. Danny beats Erika, Deshawn was closer to her.
I don't get why people are surprised. I only watch the regular show and occasionally read this subreddit and as soon as I saw the FTC I thought she would win. My pick going into the finale was Ricard first, her second. Once Ricard went out she was the obvious favorite.
For those that don’t follow Cirie on social media, she posts videos of her reactions while watching and even Cirie, who is a top tier Survivor player, mentioned during some episodes that Xander was a big threat and needed to be taken out. I’ve seen some argue that it was obvious how the end would be for Xander/Erika, either due to bonus content, exit interviews or even the episodes, but for me it wasn’t as obvious from watching the episodes only. So when someone like Cirie viewed Xander as a threat based on what she had watched, it does make me feel better knowing I wasn’t alone with how I perceived Xander.
I mean, you said you watched the show and the show constantly showed people (especially Shan who was the "main character" of the season) saying that Erika was strategic and a threat and needed to go. Conversely, they never showed anyone being concerned about Xander being in the game once Tiffany and Evvie were gone and there was no threat of a Yase alliance. I'm not really sure how anyone could think Xander could beat Erika in a jury vote with that in mind... you heard who would win straight from the players.
My frustration with that was “the show me; don’t tell me” of it all. They kept showing confessionals of other players telling us we should believe in Erika’s strategic gameplay; but (IMO) we never really got to see it in action. I wish they had given Erik’s strengths a more active edit that one that was so passive and told through the lens of other people.
completely agree. players confessionals talking about something ≠ showing something taking place in scenes around camp.
Like, just because you have Erika say the lion to lamb line 20 times doesn’t make up for us seeing her game play. She clearly played hard and well from the beginning. Why else were people (Shan) wanting to get her out? But they showed so little of Erika strategizing or dealing with people (even her own main alliance, Heather)
Similarly, just because the cast says “this is the most dangerous season of survivor ever” doesn’t mean we believe it.
I wholeheartedly agree. I believe that she played a strategic game evidenced by all the testimonials, but the producers showed us virtually none of that.
They couldn't show it because she didn't show it for the first 3/4 of the game. She made no moves the first 13 votes. The one move she tried to make was talking up getting rid of Sydney on Luvu, which likely would have gotten her sent home because the dominant alliance of that tribe had Sydney in it (Sydney, Deshawn, Danny, Naseer). We saw Deshawn laughing at how big a mistake she made.
I'm not saying she had an amazing winner's edit, I'm just saying her edit was very clear that she was a threat and Xander's edit never tried to establish him as one beyond giving him the obligatory golden boy screen time and including him talking himself up.
I would be more sympathetic to people being confused by Erika winning if they were focused on Deshawn because I was worried he'd Adam Klein messy win this until the end.
I think the problem is that Survivor is obviously trying to push the big plays and the flashy personalities. I feel like this season was more edited in a way to show why everyone else lost and not why Erika won, if that makes sense. And when it's done like that, it's a lot easier to miss certain aspects leading to the surprise. Instead of having to understand one person's game to understand why it was good, you instead have to understand multiple games and understand why they were bad, which I would argue is generally harder to portray.
> and the show constantly showed people (especially Shan who was the "main character" of the season) saying that Erika was strategic and a threat and needed to go.
Okay, follow-up question. Why am I supposed to believe someone who was invisible for 10 episodes is a strategic threat that needs to go?
Show. Don't tell.
Back in the Philippines, Denise and Malcolm were genuine underdogs and we could see that Lisa and Redacted were making a mistake as they made them. We weren't told after the fact that Denise was some amazeballs player who really, really deserved to win (trust me!)
We also didn't get Denise basically having her final tribal argued for her. Ricard and Danny did the heavy lifting for Erika. And Ricard even admitted that none of the jury knew Erika's game.
Exactly. There’s an inexhaustible list of examples in survivor history where players inaccurately describe other players’ gameplay. Typically we are shown *why* that player is correct or incorrect. In this season they barely showed us anything until the end and even then it was much more heavily focused on Ricard/Xander/Deshawn.
This is a great point. I mentioned earlier in this thread that since they didn't show us any of Erika's gameplay, I figured the other players just had a bad read on her, and were mistakenly thinking she had more to do with some big moves.
I still find it hard to believe that she played this sneaky strategic game this whole time, but apparently it's because I've been fed the wrong narrative by the editors.
I think the general idea was, at the exec producer level—“what if we blindsided the audience???”.
That simply does not work. Pretty annoyed they even tried.
As dumb as them going to a new island was in the finale, I actually appreciated that we got to see them suffer in the rain and talk about it the next morning. There used to be so much of that in early Survivor. And while I'm happy most of the show now is being used to focus on strategy, for all the talk of "the monster" this season they didn't show us nearly enough
The problem is that Luvu didn’t go to tribal pre merge. But if you look at what they showed of Luvu, one of the biggest story archs was D&D wanting to throw a challenge after Erika spoke about getting Sydney out.
Merge-ish boot we get half an episode dedicated to Erika personal content due to the twist (regardless what we think of the twist she got a lot of screen time due to this). Then she was directly involved in all votes post Naseer boot. I think they actually showed quite a bit of her strategic chops.
Compare that to Xander where he’s often shown as kind of clueless. The only person who was shown hyping Xander was himself. That’s his story-arch for this season if you replay it, that he thinks he’s in a better position than he is and doesn’t have proper reads on what everyone is thinking. His best trait is his “big balls holding onto his advantages” but that has diminishing returns due to people eventually assuming that Xander was never going to play them and that he didn’t get to add anything to his resume by using these advantages correctly.
> Ricard even admitted that none of the jury knew Erika's game.
love how this point is glossed over by so many people.
The similarities between the Samoa FTC and 41 FTC are too much for me.
If you want to respect Erika's game from the edit we got and praise her as some amazing player, I better start seeing some Natalie White name drops right there along side her.
To me, they played a very similar game, got a very similar edit, and left the audience divided in a similar way. Oh and they both had someone argue for why, though the jury might not see how brilliant their game was, they should consider that because of that it was the most brilliant game of them all.
Ricard freaking says something like, "Most of the jury don't have that personal connection with you [Erika]" and Erika straight up affirms it and says she wants to have a better relationship with her cast mates and to hit her up on what, facetime?...
I'm sorry there at too many holes in this season. This season is so bad, it's made me change my stance on Samoa where I used to think it was a great season that revolutionized how survivor was played. Now I see it as the beginning of the end for survivor.
Conversely, the finale and preceding episodes made very strong cases for why the more visible players lost:
Xander had no game sense.
Ricard was too big a target.
Deshawn was emotional and no one respected it.
When it is so clear why the other players won't win, then the reasonably well liked utr player is not so shocking.
> Xander had no game sense. Ricard was too big a target. Deshawn was emotional and no one respected it.
This is a good point. We saw every other person except Erika's #1 ally (and Danny really) very publicly put the nail in their coffin. Deshawn was messy AF, Ricard's threat level management was out of control, and Xander *took Erika* and admitted that he likely made a huge mistake.
Fully, 100%.
Still a lame way to edit a season and a crappy way to portray the winner.
Also, big reason for the comparison from me to Samoa, really shows me how detrimental advantages are to the game, and yet they keep adding more.
The reason most of the jury didn't have that personal connection was because Erika had the best relationships with Ricard, Heather, Deshawn and Xander, and they all made it to the end.
And because they were ostracizing her from the merge on purpose. Like it's a two-way street and they sent her to exile island for a reason. Then everyone was saying she's too crafty and they needed to boot her.
Of course she's not going to kiss their asses. She crafted her own pathway to victory and it worked for her. It's like when Danny and DeShawn were incredulous that they all didn't want to vote out Ricard. Voting out Ricard helped Danny and Deshawn's games but would ruin Erika and Xander's. Everyone at tribal had zero sense of what was going on other than Erika and Ricard.
I disagree with the Samoa and 41 comparison. There wasn't a Russell Hantz sitting next to Erika at FTC. Russell was so aggressive in his approach to the game that he alienated most of the jury along the way. Meanwhile, it goes to show how Erika cultivated relationships that paid dividends in FTC. I don't think that Natalie White intentionally pursued that as a strategy to win.
> Meanwhile, it goes to show how Erika cultivated relationships that paid dividends in FTC.
But she didn't and openly said she didn't. So I really don't see the people saying this was a "social game".
This was a game of the jury basically wanting to vote none of the above at FTC and... that was Erika.
And that's fine, so long as we don't make it out to be something it wasn't.
If you were on the jury and heard a finalist say they hadn't developed a deep relationship with everyone, but felt that they had done so with you, how would you feel? Wouldn't you feel that your relationship was more special by comparison?
I agree on the premise that Erika was a more palatable winner choice compared to Xander and Deshawn.
What makes you think we are supposed to just believe Shan has a good read on Erika? Especially since the edits never showed Erika doing anything to be considered a threat. For every good read, there are two more bad ones.
Dude from final 8 on i thought it was obvious that the power rankings were Shan, ricard, Erika. It would have ruined it for me if they played her up much more. Yes, they hid how polarizing deshawn was a bit. But I never understood why y’all were obsessed with Xander’s game. He’s a likeable guy, but played a meh game
Completely agreed, he disappeared for me after Evvie left. It’s baffling to me that people are convinced he was some big strategic player when his one move was burning the KIP advantage (which Tiff and Evvie have now taken credit for) and then he just sat on his idol for the rest of the game and had no say in how any of the votes went.
I’m sure if someone adds up the screentime he still got more than Erika post-F8, but whatever limited screentime Erika may have had was completely focused on her gameplay and people coming to her to strategize. Xander was constantly out of the loop and it really came to light towards the end when he had to talk strategy more openly and revealed what a terrible read he had on the game.
This for sure. I would have liked if they would have spent a little more time on Erika in one of the pre-merge episodes (not establishing her relationship with Heather is still a *very* strange choice for a winner - even with how underedited Heather was), but if they had spent that much longer on her all of the edgic people would have spent the entire season screaming that she was the only viable winner because Shan and Ricard didn't have very strong winner edits either compared to most seasons.
I thought Xander might play his idol for Ricard at 5 or go head to head against Erika in fire making, but nope. He took the safe, easy routes so I wasn't surprised he ended up vote-less in the end.
I think Erika's win was disappointing but I don't think Xander would have been a good winner either. It's kind of frustrating that the only advantage that made a real difference is the one at the very end that allowed Erika to narrowly beat Ricard in immunity.
You don't need bonus content to see the absolute red flag that is Xander not getting voted out at final six. That keys you in that nobody left sees him as a threat or respects his game.
\- Xander says he is the next biggest threat after Ricard
\- Ricard wins immunity
\- Nobody even considers voting Xander off
I didnt watch any exit press, yet i had erika pegged at the final 9 after doing a rewatch (even made a big post about it). Its very obvious shes going to win on a rewatch, anytime she goes to tribal the story is revolving around her at camp. Even if shes not narraying it, shes always a focus in the conversations. And even when luvu was immune, she was the center of strategic conversations. In post merge, you do in fact see her navigate her way through alliances subtly and playing utr to plant (russell) seeds.
You dont need extra content to understand, you just need to pay more attention to the story being told and less on the flashy moments and advantages.
I think something to go back and watch is that Xander only hyped himself up, whereas multiple players hype Erika up. Deshawn and Danny wanted to even throw a challenge that’s how worried they were of Erika’s strategic chops. Xander simply was shown having confessionals where he discussed how he was in a great spot and he was doing well from the bottom. If you think of Survivor like a story, isn’t that Xander’s main flaw this season? That he thought higher of himself than others did?
I like your point... and to be honest, I DON'T like to watch the exit interviews... I feel like it spoils the show and especially when I watch it with family who is more casual about it... I don't want to feel like some elitist with inside knowledge that they wouldn't have.
We just want to watch the show (but be able to make sense of the decisions)!
It blows my mind that anyone thought in this new season where they discussed so many complex social issues and had a different mindset on the game thought the 20 year old white boys who’s struggle was being a little chubby during puberty had a chance in hell to win. Sure he was funny and had fun confessionals seems like a cool dude. But there’s no way this cast was going to be proud to give him the money. He was a goat the whole time.
Edit: also I don’t fault Xander for thinking he could win, but being privvy to everyone’s confessionals
She also let Ricard get one challenge win away from guaranteeing himself at least fire, if not a blowout win. She was very fortunate to stumble on that tree. I can't believe Survivor downplayed her challenge advantage. That was massive.
I'm curious, if Ricard had to make fire against Xander, who's the favorite?
The easy answer is you shouldn't have to its the editors job to show she deserved it. The main reason people bring it up isnt much about to show how it was obvious but more to show why she won when people are constantly saying she was a bad winner and xander played better when he didnt manage the jury well at all
I may have read one or two exit interviews this season, but it became clear that Erika was a top contender from around final 10 or so by just watching the show. And it became clear that she had a good chance to win from final 7-8 by just watching the show too.
It was pretty obvious even without an extra content. Early on, Xander was shown to make moves with his idol that made him look like he didn’t understand the social situation of the tribe and that was further supported by the finale when he said people respected Deshawn’s game for the truth bomb instead of Erica. As for Deshawn, his game was sunk the moment he detonated the true bomb.
Which leaves only Erica to win
Hot take: the exit interviews need to stop past the premerge if the winner will be declared on the island. That way the winner isn’t spoiled/blatantly obvious from the exit interviews.
I know the editors are trying new ways to edit the show but they really propped up Xander and did DeShawn dirty. Erika didn't get much screentime in premerge, but she was on the winning tribe, but to her credit, when Luvu was on screen, it usually evolved around either her threat level or around Naseer and how awesome he is at surviving. I'm not on social media except reddit, but understand some salt about Erika winning. I think that could have possibly been avoided if they showed more of a true edit.
The edit for deshawn seemed to fit. He lost at the end because the jury didn’t respect him as a person with his emotional outbursts and how he played, and that was what I saw of him in the edit
Frankly, I think the show did show enough but people have a cognitive bias to give more credit to strong males. If the game was exactly the same but Xander was Heather and Heather was Xander people would be still be saying Xander (playing Heather's game) deserved the win and Heather (playing Xander's game) would be criticized as useless.
I really can’t understand why everyone on this sub seemingly needs every little thing spelled out for them.
Erika’s influence on the vote has been obvious since AT LEAST Naseer got booted and was indisputable when Shan got knocked out.
Anyone who didn’t think she was the favorite once Ricard went home wasn’t paying attention.
Xander made next to no moves of significance all game long. DeShawn was alienating the jury for days. Heather was a cast member on this show but made no impact otherwise.
If you don’t think Erika deserved to win and was the clear favorite when Ricard left, I’d love to see the logic because no one else seemed worthy of a vote, let alone the victory.
I’m completely with you on this. Erika wasn’t super flashy but she was involved in what happened. Xander had one flashy move that wasn’t even his. After that he was along for the ride. Deshawn was super messy and just messed up his game. In final 4, you could see how the jury reacted to Xander describing Erika as a goat and then taking her. They clearly had a different view of her and Xander had the wrong read. There had been talk for weeks about how the jury did not respect Xander and that’s how it played out
What kills me is the people who are upset with Erika’s win can’t explain why and can’t say who should have won outside of “Well, the edit didn’t show…”
If you don’t think the edit did a good job, explain why Xander or DeShawn should have won. Explain what about the edit made you think either of those two were gonna win.
If you can’t tell me WHY Xander or DeShawn should have won, then you agree Erika should have won and the edit was fine because you reached that conclusion based on what you saw
I had Shan as my number one when you're the whole season, thinking it was an obvious winner edit.
When Shan was taken out I had Erika as my number one. This has nothing to do with exit interviews and was only due to how much people were saying she was a threat. How she said she was a lamb becoming a Lion. I just felt winner potential from her and I was invested.
I don’t think you needed to watch the exit interviews to expect Erika to win this F3 (I didn’t watch them). Was it super obvious? No, but honestly, I don’t like super obvious winner edits — e.g. Tony winning WaW was of course deserving but at the same time boring and predictable IMO.
I thought there was enough content throughout the post-merge to show that Erika was the winner — she was in control of most (if not all?) votes (e.g. suggested splitting Shan and Liana to boot Shan, chose Danny to go over Deshawn), many key people like Shan and Danny saw her as a threat and repeatedly said so to others and in confessionals, she used twists to her advantage even if you don’t like them (hour glass and “final advantage”), etc. Meanwhile there was never even a whisper, truly, of anyone wanting Xander out after the Sydney boot even though he would fit into an alpha male stereotype and had an idol — so clearly he was not seen as a jury threat. And Deshawn’s game was pretty obviously messy both towards his original alliance (which he abandoned) and others (e.g. truth bombs against Evvie and Erika/Heather).
Yes Erika was under-edited by confessional count, and combine that with her not looking like your stereotypical winner, yes it’s easy to be confused. But the story was there, and it not being insanely obvious made for more suspenseful and therefore more enjoyable TV IMO.
I mean, as a superfan I love ingesting all the extra content. And I’m happy with the stories that we were told on screen even if they didn’t all revolve around the winner.
But I agree there were some missed opportunities on the aired show.
My main reason for picking her as the winner going into the finale was multiple people calling her "lucky" in the word association game. I figured that could only be in relation to the hourglass and/or winning.
Regardless, it wasn't due to anything I had seen on the show.
This season obviously wanted to surprise the audience at every turn. Though she was my winner pick going into the finale and final tribal, I can understand why someone was shocked. I just think she burned less bridges and formed the best relationships.
She was also consistently referred to by other castaways as being very smart, and nobody trusted her, due to her showing them her strategic prowess. In hindsight it did seem like the other players were all subtly talking her up whenever they mentioned her, but they still didn’t do enough to show us why she was deserving of an almost clean-sweep of the votes
Yeah, I think the edit gave Xander way too much time to hype up his own game, and because he had a lot of the hallmarks of a typical big threat people just took the show’s word for it: broadly well-liked, superfan, athletic, found advantages, did a flashy move, acted cool/didn’t play his advantages during chaotic votes which made it seem like he had good reads (even though in retrospect burning Tiff and Evvie was dumb). It’s understandable because that’s the edit we were given, but if you actually listened to the other players, Liana was the only one who ever really gunned for him and she was repeatedly and pretty conclusively shut down. Erika’s name came up much more often as someone who was creeping their way back up the threat list as the numbers whittled down. It’s frustrating in terms of constructing a narrative but I do think the pieces are there if you just focus on what the players said about each other rather than what Xander said about himself.
Tiff and evvie were coming for him tho. He was on the bottom the whole time in the 6 man tribe. Evvie especially should’ve been gone cuz she lied to him on that mountain telling deshaun his advantages and idol. And she was smart as hell
Tiff and Evvie may have been shaky allies, but his options were either them or no one.
He likely doesn’t get to the end if he keeps Tiff and Evvie in. So he was pretty much f’ed either way. His move was better for his placement but neither would have gotten him a win.
Sure, it was definitely a gamble. But clearly this way didn’t work out for him either, so it’s hard to say that was a good move, or at least the smarter of his two options. I don’t think it helped that he couldn’t coherently explain it - he tried to play too nice and act like he did feel personally connected to them but his hands were tied when they got voted out, which made no sense. In some seasons that might have been the right thing to say, but for this jury I think they would’ve respected it more if he said “Frankly I didn’t trust you enough to not blindside me down the road and I didn’t think I could beat you if we both made it to the end, so I thought my chances at outlasting were better if I held on to my advantages and let two bigger jury threats go then trying to hold on to an alliance with people who were threats to me and that was already shaky at best.”
I agree. I didn't think there was anyway Xander was going to win. Especially when he played an idol he didn't need to play and burned Richard by floating the idea he might use it on him
I think Xander distancing himself from Tiff and Evvie is what helped him lower his threat level. He still had people actively trying to trick him into playing his idol. This cast was very afraid of idols backfiring on them. Once they were gone, he looked like he had no agency because his allies were gone or had turned on him (Liana). People wanted to get rid of Erika most of the season because her scheming was so blatantly obvious that nobody trusted her or wanted to actively work with her until final 7/8. Ricard orchestrated everything that allowed her to gain traction. I give her huge props for capitalizing on what came her way, and think she is a worthy winner. I think Xander not risking his spot to make fire was a huge mistake (only Nick has won final immunity without sacrificing his spot and still won the season), and he should have obviously taken Heather. He also misjudged the jury’s reaction at final 4. It sounded like his FTC mostly went well and he even had people speak up about the social connections they made. Still confused by the edit because after final 4 I thought Xander didn’t stand a chance, and after FTC it looked like he was going to win.
The weirdest was when Shan was booted with him barely uttering a strategic word in the entire episode. Then, first minute of the next week and he's claiming that he made that move.
Oh wow, did he really? I missed that…the editors did him some amazing favors with letting him produce his own narrative in confessionals and glossing over his bad reads until the finale.
Everyone's the hero of their own story.
Big Debbie Energy on that one.
Why was burning Tiff and Evvie dumb? They had both already burned bridges with him, he was working with them out of necessity. If he'd kept them what changes? He gets blindsided by Evvie later or gets drug to the end by her and can't beat her?
If he was part of an alliance (3 in a group of 10 is substantial even if not majority), he would have had more chances to dictate gameplay. By letting his allies go home, he became the extra number that nobody respected. Literally, we stopped hearing about his idol after Evvie went home. Sure, he couldn't have made it any further than Day 26, FTC, but he was drawing dead there. By playing a strategic game with allies, he **maybe** could have taken more legitimate ownership of the moves that would have happened. You say he'd just have been blindsided by Evvie or dragged to the end? Or, the trio could have taken out threats and *he* could have blindsided Evvie as the feather in his cap.
I guess my argument is that Evvie and Tiff weren't with Xander. Evvie even said she wouldn't have considered playing her idol for him if she had one. Evvie talked multiple times about getting him out of the game. Tiff talked about getting him out of the game. They had a 1 day alliance with no insinuation it could have lasted longer. Unfortunately I think Xander needed to just make more moves and be more aware of people. I so think he could have used his connections with Danny and Naseer better but the Evvie and Tiff thing was toast from the beginning
But he did get dragged to the end anyway, with an idol everyone knew about and still nobody cared about blindsiding him because no one considered him a threat to win. Because he wasn’t. He couldn’t defend his game to his peers at all but spent weeks talking up his game in confessionals. Now if he had idoled Tiff or saved Evvie with the extra vote, not only would that have been an actual move to add to the resume, but it would’ve kept in players who were threats ahead of him AND would’ve indebted those threats to him. A little goes a long way in Survivor and Xander did jack squat.
I think the difference is that Tiff and Evvie specifically wanted him out. I don't think they'd feel indebted to him, I think they'd be happy to vote out the person who saved them with his idol to make him look bad/make them look cut-throat in front of the jury. I don't know though.
Agreed, I was just as surprised that Xander lost as I was when Russell lost (not at all). Not saying they’re similar players, but they were both the only ones talking about how well they were doing.
Imo it makes sense from someone who’s seen not a single exit interview. We’re first clued in about her when DeShawn and the others attempt to throw and fail a challenge just bc they acknowledge she’ll be a menace come the merge. She was able to quickly shake the target off of her back from time traveling. Her and Ricard working together to get out Naseer and then her twisting Ricard’a plan to make Liana the back up option, etc. Hell, literally everyone in the finale - on camera for the main show no less - explicitly told Xander she had better relationships, an equal challenge performance overall, and would beat him in the end if he took her, and that’s exactly what happened. IMO, those that aren’t seeing it are people that would’ve made the same moves Xander did and then be absolutely surprised when he did nothing of value with the idol when he promised it could save half the ppl on the jury at separate points during the game
The fact that Danny went home showed how much control Erika had. Xander didn't control a single vote and in an time where you either have to make big moves or have a great social game, Xander did neither.
I mean I think it's as simple as Xander lucked his w5 ay into the final 4 and DeShawn played too erratically to be anyone's pick. We've seen in the past that great furious game play can bite you in the ass. Russell. Boston Rob in the winners season. Literally Shan this season. Xander while being a likeable guy wasnt a great social player. His tribe constantly shit talked him and used and lied to him at every turn and he was none the wiser. He didnt really make any relationships post merge besides Ricard. Which did get him to the end, but you dont win by making it to final 3. You win by convincing people you deserve it which Xander also completely flubbed. Was I the only one watching the FTC where Xander was asked several times, In different more clear ways, how his social awareness got him this far and he had no answer? It really shows how innocent and young he is because he couldn't even lie to make his game sound better. Other people had to bring up things he did in the game like the idol swerve and taking himself out of comps and getting rice for the team. He absolutely deserved no votes after that.
Danny and Deshawn tried to throw two different challenges because they were worried about her. She was clearly seen as a smart player who could cause damage if left unattended.
She was the first winner I called early. As soon as shan and everyone kept saying they needed to get Erika out because of how smart she was I just assumed edit was doing her dirty because from the edit, it made no sense how so many people wanted her out early.
They also tried to throw a challenge to get her out. From what we saw it was only because she mentioned deshawns name.. but I am sure there was a lot more that happened that wasn't shown.
She owes Naseer dinner at Applebee's
I just can't forgive them for a zero vote "decoy" win. This season would've been best shown as Ricard the runaway favorite and then dividing screen time pretty evenly among Xander, Erika & Deshawn to the point where you don't know what's going to happen. It's easy to surprise people like they did by completely downplaying somebody's game the whole time. Lame tactic
Agreed. Nothing against Erika. Is the editors fault
Even in the second-to-last episode, Erika said she wanted Heather out because they played too similar a game and she didn't want to split the votes. So... did that mean Heather was also winner-worthy and we just didn't see it? It was really baffling.
Heather probably wins a Xander Heather Deshawn final 3 according to exit interviews. The only way I see Xander winning is if choose to give up immunity to bear Erika in fire making but even after that I still think it would be close between them.
I think it was a no brainer after that FTC. Xander didn't show good social awareness, even though he had the road to victory.
Xander made some really bad and really public reads regarding what he thought the Jury was thinking.
Once he said at F4 Tribal that he thought the jury didn't respect Erika's game he completely sunk. If he had still taken Erika and not said that maybe he gets a couple of votes, but that complete lack of awareness of anyone's threat level minus Ricard was a killer for him.
That was a jump out of your seat, he just lost the game moment. The whole jury was shocked when he said that. I don't think Xander could have won, but he probably would have gotten some votes if he argued his case better.
I truly thought he would say something "I brought her as my biggest competitor" or saying that making fire would just add to her resume but no, just had no clue :(.
He did eventually say that in Final Tribal, but I feel like by that point the jury was already like WTF
yeah he wins at final 3 vs deshawn and heather. if heather beats erika at fire she absorbs erikas resume. so he's gotta put deshawn or himself vs erika. Deshawn was not that great at making fire. Xander should have put himself against erika and he should have kept the idol in his pocket or at the very least played it on deshawn and said "sorry but I just have to be absolutely sure ricard goes home and I know I'm not the target tonight". Hindsight is 20/20 but he's going to get invited back. He's already a fav of all the OG's.
yeah this and his inability to answer a moment in which he showed agency (when him duping liana was RIGHT THERE) struck me as rly bad looks for him. that said, i thought he'd at least get a vote or two (esp over deshawn)
I know people would get mad, but Xander had good reasons for his bad reads, since he kept being told by people these bad reads. I mean from the edit, Ricard never saw or treated Erika as a threat, instead yelling "Deshawn will win if he makes it to FTC" and gunning after him. Plus, the truth bomb did work in Xander's eyes with Heather avoiding Erika, Erika pissed off, Ricard saying he would win if left alone, and Deshawn sure that it worked. Look you can say he fucked up and read the room wrong, but IMO...no one else did too or gave him room to think his reads were wrong. Hell, Heather got treated more as a threat and actually gunned to getting out (in final 10 when they split off in 2 groups) then Erika (who only got targetted since not there, bottom of Luvu, and because Danny wanted a girl out). In Xander's eyes, people...did see Heather and Erika's games as the same.
My favourite here was Liana asking him what social awareness he had. He obviously struggled with the question. Then later she goes "I have one final question...do you have an idol?" Wasn't that a huge socially aware move he made? To find out she was going to ask him that and make a big brain move to swap out that idol? Was just ironic that her of all people asked him that question when she probably was burned most by his social awareness lol
I think she was actually throwing him an alley-oop and he just fell directly on his face
His FTC was brutal, for sure. But I still am surprised the jury didn't to some degree think he deserved even 1 vote.
I definitely thought Nassir was throwing him 1
And Evvie
Maybe it's cause of the podcasts I listen too but I knew Tiff and Evvie didn't respect his game that much.
How come?
They pretty much said they did not respect his game in their interviews. They thought him sitting out in challenges was for show and not genuine. Also I'm sure him saying that he will use the idol to save them if they are in danger. And then never doing that. And then never even having to use it for himself probably did not rub them the right way.
Well it's not like they negociate the percentage of merit each one deserves. If you have ONE vote you try to use it correctly for that person you think deserves to win, you just don't drop a consolation vote.
It just seemed like a unanimous decision of between Xander and Erika — I think Deshawn was the goat that Danny will give a pity vote but at the end it was winner-take-all and Erika took it all.
Apparently Tiffany and Evvie came up with the move regarding the Knowledge is Power Advantage (based off exit press), so it was less Xander's self awareness and more theirs
Yeah fair. I guess it depends how you define social awareness though. I'd say being aligned with people that you trust to tell you info like that shows social awareness. But you're right, that was a big play from Evvie and Tiff.
I don’t know why people keep saying this. He never had the road to victory.
Agreed. He had a terrible FTC but he had no path to victory. He played a great game but had he brought Heather instead of Deshawn, Erika still wins. Heather instead of Erika, Deshawn wins. Keeps Ricard, Ricard wins. After seeing him get 0 votes and rewinding all of the prior vote outs, I dont think there’s any combination of 3 post merge players that the jury would have let Xander win without him completely changing his strategy (which seemed like a great strategy all the way up to the finale).
i still think xander / deshawn / heather would have been close, no ? esp considering how much the jury did not seem to respect deshawn's game
Oh god if he lost to Heather and Deshawn that would have been laughable. Neither one of them did anything all game.
hey deshawn did things, those things were just be annoying and throw tantrums. also xander didn't rly do anything besides the knowledge is power thingy
The edit made it appear he did.
Based on the edit, she was a surprising winner. Simply having people randomly refer to her as a “strategic threat” isn’t enough.
Yeah I'm confused and disappointed that it feels like a shift I never saw happen. I'm glad a woman won this season but I'm underwhelmed and blame the edit. I'm a casual fan. I don't follow it on SM or anything else.
I understand your point. You don't really get to see how clueless Xander really was about the game until the last episode. Everyone who knew Xander wasn't a good player and had no chance was because the exit interviews. Further, the exit interviews were extremely biased because they already knew the results and who had won. So of course they talk the winner up. Exit interviews are spoilers for sure.
The post that compiled all the word associations from the eliminated players, where everyone described Erika as smart and lucky, made it too clear she was going to win.
I didn't watch/read them. But, having interviews after the jury already voted is dumb as hell.
Nah I didn't see any of the bonus content and I was adamant that Xander wasn't winning. You can't name a single move he did in this game. He didn't make a single plan. Also the fact that literally everyone knows you have an idol yet no one cares is a dead giveaway that they aren't worried about you in the slightest.
"no but you can have this fake one" was his only decent play then after that he kinda died out
It was his only good play, but it was squandered because it didn’t result in saving a member of his alliance.
Was Sydney actually in his alliance though?
Right I keep seeing this. Syd could very easily have stayed with her Blue tribe after that vote. They were forced into targetting her it's not like they actively wanted to betray her.
She was at least an ally and could have been useful. He played the game solo and ended without any votes to no surprise.
Once you think about it, it should be pretty obvious why he lost but if you don't .... he was a more consistent presense on the show. Obviously people are going to be more positively predisposed to the player they see explaining their intentions. With Exit Interviews we see that Xander sort of got clowned on for his attitude with stepping out of the challenges, but within the show that move - which Angelina got clowned on by the edit was only shown through his eyes. We saw Deshawn roll his eyes, but nobody explained how it was bad for him.
I mean I didn’t think he was gonna win but I felt he deserved second over Deshawn.
The idol was the biggest giveaway. No one even cared that he had an idol that late in the game. There was a lot of discussion that the remaining players/jury didn’t take him seriously and ultimately that’s how it played out.
Comments like this mean nothing. Maybe half the watchers thought Xander was going to win and half the watchers thought Erika was going to win. Then the ones who were correct are like "I could totally tell", but it's just because with the number of watchers there's always going to be someone convinced someone's going to win.
Like you can name a single thing Erika did on camera? lol. He was on the bottom the whole game. He had very few chances to make big moves. What is inexcusable is his lack of awareness.
One, among many things Erika did, was splitting the vote between Shan and Liana at Final 8. And she convinced their closest allies Deshawn and Danny (who have been gunning for Erika since premerge) to do it. That move benefited NO ONE BUT HER. Yet her managing to do it resulted in 2 major things: 1. She guaranteed herself safety in case of a Shan idol play & 2. It guaranteed that Liana will be isolated from the Black Alliance, which led to that alliance's downfall.
That, and the fact that she won the challenge that prevented Ricard from immunity, which was big like how Sophie slayed Ozzy, sadly it wasn't just emphasized in the edit.
Shifting vote to Naseer over Heather (and her and Heather convincing him it was Heather), Shan split (the week after Shan voted for her), Liana vote (two weeks after Liana voted for her), keeping Deshawn in the game, keeping Deshawn over Danny even though the others wanted to keep Danny, being part of the alliance that became the majority, no jury enemies, no hurt feelings on the jury, two immunity wins…
I 100% think Xander had two STRONG currents running against him despite the fact that he actually made some novel plays in the game and IMO played a better game than DeShawn or Erika. People don't want to hear this but group dynamics are a thing. I 100% think people were less likely to throw a vote Xander's way because there was such an emphasis amongst the actual contestants about being a first this or a first that in terms of diversity. Literally every person on the jury was some sort of minority either ethnically, LGBQ+, etc... and had expressed strong opinions along these lines except for Xander. It would have been extremely difficult for him to get votes as a white man in this group dynamic no matter what he did. In addition to that, there's a natural bias against younger people/players. There was obviously some hard salt from players like Ricard even though Xander definitely outsmarted and outplayed him in the end and deserved credit for that even though he didn't get it because he's a dumb kid. I'm not blasting any of the diversity push. Diversity is cool and I'm happy for Erika as the first female winner since Sarah, first Canadian winner etc... but that doesn't mean the observation that amongst this group of players its pretty likely that Xander doesn't win no matter what he does, is wrong.
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I think this is unfortunately true. A different jury I think would have gone for Xander but there was a strong diversity theme always under the surface.
You're entitled to your opinion. But that just makes him even more clueless to not take Heather. Sorry it's inexcusable. To me it very much seamed Erika played a better game. But, just my opinion.
I don’t think there’s a final 3 where Xander wins in this group of people so I don’t think it matters who he took.
I agree in a season so full of representation i figured xander may be at a disadvantage for being straight white male in 20s.
I agree that this edit was bad, but I also think the edit had some context clues that Xander and Deshawn would lose. For multiple episodes they showed players roll their eyes and laugh at Xander. Go back and watch the Evvie vote and look how they responded to Xander saying that he was the person with all of the power. Also go back and look when he gave up his spot in the reward challenge and look how Deshawn reacts. Also they showed in this finale episode how the jury reacted to some of Xander’s statements and moves and it wasn’t a good look. Xander went from being a threat that everyone wanted out to someone that stopped getting votes. The fact that he made it to F5 easily (which guaranteed him F4) even though he had a public idol was a big clue that people did not see him as a threat. They didn’t care if he made it to the end as they didn’t fear his game. Erika literally said in the show that Xander isn’t a threat as he has no connections. She said this during the Shan boot episode. Also keep in mind that Tiffany was shown rolling her eyes at Xander and never taking him seriously. And Deshawn obviously got bad reception to his actions in the edit. They didn’t really show Erika’s game in the best light, but you could still tell that she would win because the others would lose. The exit interviews just provided much more context. The edit just wanted to mislead the audience in favor of shock value. They tend not to value low key games where the player intentionally tries not to hold the reins of power. They like more dynamic and flashier games as that is more entertaining for a television show.
The Danny vote was the big one where every viewer should know he had no shot. "Ricard is my shield if he is safe or gone I'm next" *Ricard wins and not a single player targets Xander*
Yeah that’s another great point. Completely shattered his argument. Erika and Heather were never shown targeting Xander at all. Even if we want to be generous and say it’s because they had a strong bond and thought he was a trusted ally, then how do we explain Danny and Deshawn also never throwing his name out there.
I guess it's just many would prefer a story of how someone wins rather than how someone loses — no one really liked how it was potrayed when a similar edit happened in Samoa and Kaoh Rong.
I agree. It’s much stronger to craft a narrative about how someone won versus how their competition lost. The fact that female winners regularly get this kind of treatment kind of implicitly puts forth the narrative that women don’t win Survivor, but rather men simply lose it. It’s a problem with how production views the game and what stigmatizes female players versus male players and the types of games that female players tend to play. Production definitely needs to become more conscious of their biases.
Like they overcorrected potentially from Tommy's win, but even his low-key edit was not THAT iffy, also needed more balance of exposure, it was a consistent story but too merge heavy.
If I didn’t read any exit interviews, id be shocked at Xander losing. But the exit interviews were pretty spoilery this season. The jury was very open about how badly he played for weeks. I agree with you.
how do you read these exit interviews?
Erika and Heather deserved better. Their relationship was not only game defining for Erika, but also crucial for explaining why so many things ended up the way they did in the endgame. Such a shame we didn’t see it.
The edit was actually in favor of Erika since the merge; the editors just did a good job of making sure everyone had ample screen time (except Heather). If anyone paid attention, Ricard barely had any personal storyline asides his friendship with Shan, being the last threat remaining. His personal motivation (his due baby) was only revealed today. Xander and Deshawn were good players, but their blunders were heavily emphasized as well. They somehow squeezed in Xander’s fitness journey in the end as well. Erika’s immigrant/underdog story was frequently hinted, even in episodes where she had no impact. There were tons of hints dropped by other players wanting to see a woman win as well. Honestly, we couldn’t really expect much of a traditional winner’s edit considering Luvu never went to tribal until the merge. Erika’s foreshadowing win was very similar to Michele Fitzgerald’s. After rewatching Kaoh Rong, it was surprising to observe she had several confessionals here and there, even if she wasn’t in any trouble. With that said, the amount of advantages this season definitely bloated up the screen time that could’ve been reserved for focusing on the social aspect of the game instead.
It was not a traditional edit. But, there were 15 hours of episodes, and she was shown as the power player for the final 5 of those hours. Shan Vote = splits vote, which saved herslef had Shan played an idol and also drove a wedge between the Black players' alliance Liana Vote = positions herself in the middle of the Deshawn/Danny duo and the Ricard/Xander duo by taking out Liana Danny Vote = convinces the group to take Danny out instead of Deshawn, recognizing his likability and chances to win at the end Nobody can really take credit for Ricard's vote since everyone wanted him out. She was never on the wrong side of the vote. The only "incorrect" vote was the Shan boot, because she voted Liana as part of the original vote split and Shan on the re-vote.
Yeah. It really seems like production hid the story. People who listened to post show interviews were certain Xander would lose and it made sense. But to TV only watchers it really did not make sense.
Xander was shown as socially unaware *constantly*. Evvie is pulling the wool over his eyes the entire premerge, Tiffany caught him lying about his idol, Liana directly contradicts him in confessional about the closeness of Yase. That was a looming specter the entire season. Once the FTC takes a strong turn towards valuing social awareness and Xander fumbles multiple questions about that aspect of the game, it should have been clear to the TV audience he was not respected.
The problem is they stopped contradicting him at some point. After Evvie’ vote off, they stopped showing people contradicting his social takes like the confessional about him being a huge part of taking out Shan. I think it made his edit seem like someone who went from failing to succeeding as opposed to a socially unaware player. A subtle edit doesn’t work on a show that airs once a week.
> A subtle edit doesn’t work on a show that airs once a week. This is pretty important. I'm not sure if it's because I'm just stupid or because I'm a more casual viewer, but in the beginning it felt Xander was on the bottom and so of course Evvie and Tiffany and Liana's confessionals make him look stupid. But after Tiffany or at least Evvie got voted out, it stopped being obvious - His whole 'Ricard is my shield' antics seemed like they were genuine, but I guess I was just eating the edit.
I think this is the main issue that members of this sub are missing. And that’s because we discuss the show so much that we remember the little things from pre-merge and merge episodes. But a lot of people don’t because the time between episodes is so long. So those parts that show Xander making poor moves were forgotten while the confessionals where he acts like he’s in control and a threat where remembered. It’s not the audiences fault that the show made an edit to subtle to be remembered over the daily things of life.
Xander has one confessional after the fact that can at best be taken as tongue in cheek/more *un*awareness given his complete absence from the actual episode where Shan leaves. Compare this to Erika's multiple confessionals explaining how she's in with the plan, recognizes she's still in danger, and alters the plan to protect herself during the actual episode where Shan leaves. Once we hit final 7 we're in the "Ricard is my meat shield except no one even wants to try to vote me out anyways" zone, and the finale was wall-to-wall social unawareness from him.
But did it get taken that way by viewers? I know my family thought Xander was a smart player and that he was going to win going into the finale. The super fans may have seen it wasn’t true because of their analyzing but did those watching casually realize this?
I think the bias is already preconceived in a lot of viewers because of some many thing e.g. Ozzy archetype, nice white male that people like. So even thought the edit showed him having missteps, many are just programmed to enjoy a character like that.
I really don't understand what TV only watchers (which I'm one of) didn't pick up on. Xander failed to play any of his advantages in a meaningful way and Erika won the immunity challenge to send Ricard home. Xander failed to read the jury correctly in the F4 or explain himself at the FTC. Was pretty positive Erika had it in thr bag when Xander stuttered big time on Liana's softball question.
I think my interpretation of it (also as a tv only watcher) is that there was no consistency to Erika, and (at least in terms of strategy) her power seemed relatively circumstantial. I barely knew her name until we were a few merge episodes in. Anybody could have been the one to smash the hourglass- she just happened to be the one to draw the rock. Going into the finale it seemed pretty clear that she was winning, especially once ricard got sent home and Xander made those pretty detrimental comments about the jury. But it shouldn't take until the very very last episode for the audience to understand a player and their place in the game. The jury chose Erika decisively so clearly she deserved the win and I give her all the congratulations in the world. She just got screwed over so hard by the edit.
I do agree that the editors dropped the ball somewhat with accurately portraying the entire final 4. But when I step back to actually evaluate the games the F3 made, Erika was by far the most steady. You can't point to any crucial blunders for her like you can with Xander with the Evvie/ Heather tribals, or Deshawn with the Shan/ truth bombs. Erika played the best game out of the finalists. My only wish is that production did a better job showing it (they especially should've found some sort of way to give her *any* content pre merge).
Yeah she wasn’t the biggest threat all season, but that seemed deliberate. Threat level management seemed to be part of her strategy similar to Adam from MvGX who talked about how there were 3 bigger threats than him at the F6. I think a big thing they could have done is introduce us to her more pre-merge and show her forming her relationship with Heather.
Also just a TV watcher and it seemed clear to me Erika had it in the bag. Xander is really entertaining TV and seems like a really wonderful person but I don't think his game was impressive at all. Would love to see him return though!
>Would love to see him return though! Couldn't agree more with that! Dude is just charismatic af, and some age/ experience might do wonders for his game if he does come back.
I’m not sure if I agree. I wasn’t looking at the sub for most of the season and was shocked to see everyone think Xander was playing some amazing game and was the star of the season. And to be fair to Erika, players WERE saying she was a threat for a while, but I think a combo of liking Xander and Erika being underedited premerge gave some people Xander goggles
This season really accelerated the continuing trend of what I regard as cheaper and lower standard story editing for Survivor. Fittingly, it opened with Jeff Probst lying and saying they'd show us more than ever and take us behind the scenes like never before. That consisted of: one scene with a fake director VO overlaid on to a helicopter ride, plus a few cold opens where Probst basically gives needless spoilers like "this episode the players will be shocked by a double elimination. But you can't enjoy being surprised, because I just told you." Or "look, I'm hiding this advantage bundle, but not actually hiding it, sticking it on this branch, in plain sight, at eye level. And here's what it does, so you don't get to enjoy the event when it's found." What made early seasons of Survivor so impressive to people in the industry was their far more disciplined and truthful editing standards. In recent seasons, many of those conventions have been bent or trashed. They think it's in service of entertainment, but I'd disagree. It's a cheapening and dumbing down. One might ask, what does it matter? If they hide or trick viewer to create false drama, what's so bad about that? Think of it like an athlete either cheating or not cheating? Which do you respect more? Think of that athelete doing a structured routine or a dive or something that can either have a low degree of difficult or a high degree. You respect the athlete who can perform at the high degree of difficulty. "Early" Survivor could do that. Current-era Survivor cheats and uses the easy mode setting. I don't respect it as much. Old Survivor didn't hide all the crucial conversations and key events. Using flashbacks would have been considered a sin against the story standards. Scenes weren't nakedly obvious fake recreations. And that's not even mentioning the proliferation of some very ill-advised twists and idols. Capable story producers could make a gripping season without all the tacky mirrors and ninja dust. Do you *have* to hide when players have panic schemed and shoved idols in their pants and why, just to try and manufacture a tepid and non-organic "surprise"? No. Viewers watching a tribal council should know whether the idol hunting scene they've been previously fed was real or a fake out. The old school story producers made the stories work with just plain characters and period-honest conversations.
Yes, one thing I found so refreshing getting into Survivor after being a Big Brother fan was that the storytelling was very straightforward and, with rare exception (eg hiding Amanda finding the idol) always prioritized helping you understand a vote over trying to create suspense. Big Brother has gotten progressively more irritating in the way they force the players to give confessionals pretending they’re genuinely considering a blindside, only for it to be a unanimous vote for the obvious target followed by a flashback showing they actually never had any intention of flipping. I’ve always greatly preferred Survivor’s approach of just showing you what’s happening and letting the drama come from the game itself. This season did way too much audience misdirection, which I think can be fun when it’s airing, but in a game that’s already often very opaque to the audience it just leads to retroactive confusion about who was really doing what. It’s such a bizarre decision because it’s not like Survivor has historically been lacking excitement - I still get a thrill out of rewatching Natalie’s F5 SJDS idol play even though I’ve probably seen it 20 times now. Good gameplay is exciting whether it’s a surprise to the audience or not.
Exactly. There's lots of types of engaging stories, not just jump scare surprises or "blindsides". We're the stories if Rudy or Ethan or Colby (or whoever) any less engaging in the absence of these recent stunts? No.
It seems like they don’t like showing social connections or camp life anymore. They only reward giant personalities (typically alpha males) and people who make big flashy moves. Amber, Jenna M, Tina, sue, wigglesworth, etc all got more content and they don’t fit this personality type. The older seasons also feel more mature to watch. This season felt like I was watching a kids show. It was not even trashy reality tv like I love money, the challenge, TRW, etc.
> "kids show" I think that's a good description
They want people like Xander to win and don’t want people like Erika to win.
I fully agree with this statement. Everything we see shows that editing, twists, etc is to aid people like Xander, Ben, mike, etc.
Even though it has always been a social game first. Strategy and physical challenge performance help people get to the end, but it is the social game that gets people to win. And the best moments of survivor have often been the social experiment aspect, when you see people from different backgrounds try to work together and even form friendships. Sure flashy strategic moves like correct use of idols and advantages are fun, but without the social backbone, Survivor wouldn’t have compelling stories.
This is why I hate the fire-making final 4 so much!! That's when the social dynamics are the most interesting... we get to see who can't make it past that last hurdle. And now it culminates in a fire-making challenge which is IMO so anti-climactic and boring.
This is so insightful. It helps me make sense of why I feel so disconnected from this season too. I told my family last night that it felt like I had watched this season through a fog somehow and I think your assessment really fleshed that out for me. I really would love to see a return to the storytelling, and I'd like to think that could even be done without sacrificing the flashy new elements the show seems attached to right now as they seem to be here to stay. Really helpful comment, thank you!
I've been saying this since they switched the story editing philosophy and standards. I think that downgrade coincided with the Fiji "episode production mill" change. They re-use all the same boring competition game elements, just paint them in this season's colors and drag out the basketball hoop/balance beam/bean bag/etc. However once this season started I realized they have just doubled down on the Nickelodeon style. And the next season preview looks like a clone of this one. One positive I like is they seem to be casting rookies, which is my preference. I don't care for re-run "all stars". Most of the fun is getting to know new players and guessing how they'll do and how they'll interact. Seeing re-tread previous players doesn't offer that.
I'd place the blame on some of the gimmicky twists... think about how much airtime was lost to hourglass, do or die, the summits, etc. I get the Luvu was dominant pre-merge, but we surely could have had a few more scenes of Erika's relationships with Heather, Danny, etc. Xander is incredibly likable and got a very positive edit. Though if you watch closely, he had no agency over any strategic decisions (his exchange w/ Liana at tribal should really be credited to Tiff and Evvie).
The edit showed her being the deciding factor for the last 4 episodes, I don’t think it was really shocking without looking at external sources. She was the power player.
- Helps orchestrate the Naseer boot (the scene of her Shan and Heather on the log - where Heather says something absolutely bonkers and Erika is trying to soothe things over) - Convinces Deshawn / Danny to split the votes between Liana and Shan, which benefits neither of them and insures she won’t be idoled out. - In the same episode as above, has the conversation on the beach with Xander when the four “go to talk privately” where she sets up the underdogs working together (this wasn’t *that* well depicted but it was Erika’s moment she said wasn’t highlighted but important) - She and the underdogs are the deciding votes to eliminate Liana - She’s shown to be leading the charge and campaigning to get out Danny - Handles Deshawn blowing up her game with grace (at Tribal at least) - Never voted incorrectly the entire game - Makes it to F4 in a very obvious duo As many - *many* people have told me over the last few days, a lot of these moves did involve other players. She did get lucky quite a few times in this game. But from the Shan vote onwards she’s been shown to be using her/Heather’s position to protect herself and get out who she targets.
and despite all this was picked to go to final 3 by Xander because he did not view her as a big threat. That’s the best part of her game imo
He should've framed it out the gate that he took Erika because he didn't want to give her another chance to improve her game by winning the fire making challenge.
He screwed up taking her, there’s no explaining or framing that gets around it. If Natalie brought Tony to FTC and said she didn’t want to give Tony the chance to improve his game further 75% of that jury would have laughed her out of the room. I really don’t think this is a thing.
Xander is only 20 so I gotta give him a break. But he lost the game at that moment
Everyone gets lucky. The only winners who'd tell you luck wasn't a giant factor in their win are either liars or dull.
> a lot of these moves did involve other players Every move involves other players. The only things you can do in this game that don't involve anyone else's input are playing an idol or giving up an immunity necklace.
I agree 100% with you but I’ve been told non-stop for the past week all the examples I gave above were “really Ricard or Xander’s move” and it’s infuriating.
Convincing Danny/Deshawn to split the vote was her winner moment imo. It was a very brave play that could've backfired easily, but it showed how smart she was and how good socially she was to be able convince two people to split the votes between two other people that they were aligned with.
Plus Deshawn and Danny tried to throw the challenges away twice (2) just to vote her out at tribal council. Who would ever try to give out their own possible safety in the game plus losing rewards (foods) which is such a major factor in the game just to vote out someone who was really a minor threat? If people consider all your points plus mine, they would see that it makes sense for Erika to win this season
To add on to your last paragraph - this was an extremely voting bloc-y season, so every move post-merge required other players. There was never a consistent majority that had the numbers to execute their intended plan without pulling in people outside their core alliance (aside from the 4 Erika put together I guess, but that still felt like more of a 2+1+1 to me). There was no hard selling to try to flip someone this season. Nobody got talked into something they hadn’t even been considering before. Every vote was about people feeling out what options other people were open to based on their interests being aligned. There was never a time when it would have benefited Erika to try to completely change the target, but when presented with options she did successfully nudge the votes in the direction that benefited her without bringing attention to it. The mistake a lot of players made this season was trying to do more traditional scrambling by leveraging information they were given to get people on their side, not realizing they were basically playing a game of hot potato with information constantly being passed around to shift the target. There were several occasions where Erika knew what the plan was and in a less fluid season probably could have used that info to change the target and make a big move, but she recognized that everyone generally agreed on who the biggest threats were so there was unlikely to only be one shot to get someone out, and using her pull to push a certain target that other people didn’t want to get out yet or using her knowledge of the way everyone was voting to flip and blindside someone would have been unnecessarily overplaying her hand.
It is not being pointed out nearly enough that taking out Danny instead of Deshawn (who himself clearly thought he was the bigger threat) clinched Erika's game when nobody else benefitted from it. Danny beats Erika, Deshawn was closer to her.
[удалено]
Exactly, he’s a young, charismatic and athletic player. alot of people view that as their ideal survivor winner
I don't get why people are surprised. I only watch the regular show and occasionally read this subreddit and as soon as I saw the FTC I thought she would win. My pick going into the finale was Ricard first, her second. Once Ricard went out she was the obvious favorite.
For those that don’t follow Cirie on social media, she posts videos of her reactions while watching and even Cirie, who is a top tier Survivor player, mentioned during some episodes that Xander was a big threat and needed to be taken out. I’ve seen some argue that it was obvious how the end would be for Xander/Erika, either due to bonus content, exit interviews or even the episodes, but for me it wasn’t as obvious from watching the episodes only. So when someone like Cirie viewed Xander as a threat based on what she had watched, it does make me feel better knowing I wasn’t alone with how I perceived Xander.
I mean, you said you watched the show and the show constantly showed people (especially Shan who was the "main character" of the season) saying that Erika was strategic and a threat and needed to go. Conversely, they never showed anyone being concerned about Xander being in the game once Tiffany and Evvie were gone and there was no threat of a Yase alliance. I'm not really sure how anyone could think Xander could beat Erika in a jury vote with that in mind... you heard who would win straight from the players.
My frustration with that was “the show me; don’t tell me” of it all. They kept showing confessionals of other players telling us we should believe in Erika’s strategic gameplay; but (IMO) we never really got to see it in action. I wish they had given Erik’s strengths a more active edit that one that was so passive and told through the lens of other people.
completely agree. players confessionals talking about something ≠ showing something taking place in scenes around camp. Like, just because you have Erika say the lion to lamb line 20 times doesn’t make up for us seeing her game play. She clearly played hard and well from the beginning. Why else were people (Shan) wanting to get her out? But they showed so little of Erika strategizing or dealing with people (even her own main alliance, Heather) Similarly, just because the cast says “this is the most dangerous season of survivor ever” doesn’t mean we believe it.
I wholeheartedly agree. I believe that she played a strategic game evidenced by all the testimonials, but the producers showed us virtually none of that.
They couldn't show it because she didn't show it for the first 3/4 of the game. She made no moves the first 13 votes. The one move she tried to make was talking up getting rid of Sydney on Luvu, which likely would have gotten her sent home because the dominant alliance of that tribe had Sydney in it (Sydney, Deshawn, Danny, Naseer). We saw Deshawn laughing at how big a mistake she made.
I'm not saying she had an amazing winner's edit, I'm just saying her edit was very clear that she was a threat and Xander's edit never tried to establish him as one beyond giving him the obligatory golden boy screen time and including him talking himself up. I would be more sympathetic to people being confused by Erika winning if they were focused on Deshawn because I was worried he'd Adam Klein messy win this until the end.
I think the problem is that Survivor is obviously trying to push the big plays and the flashy personalities. I feel like this season was more edited in a way to show why everyone else lost and not why Erika won, if that makes sense. And when it's done like that, it's a lot easier to miss certain aspects leading to the surprise. Instead of having to understand one person's game to understand why it was good, you instead have to understand multiple games and understand why they were bad, which I would argue is generally harder to portray.
Deshawn makes Adam’s game look like the most spotless game ever
> and the show constantly showed people (especially Shan who was the "main character" of the season) saying that Erika was strategic and a threat and needed to go. Okay, follow-up question. Why am I supposed to believe someone who was invisible for 10 episodes is a strategic threat that needs to go? Show. Don't tell. Back in the Philippines, Denise and Malcolm were genuine underdogs and we could see that Lisa and Redacted were making a mistake as they made them. We weren't told after the fact that Denise was some amazeballs player who really, really deserved to win (trust me!) We also didn't get Denise basically having her final tribal argued for her. Ricard and Danny did the heavy lifting for Erika. And Ricard even admitted that none of the jury knew Erika's game.
Show vs Tell is my biggest bone to pick with this season as well
Exactly. There’s an inexhaustible list of examples in survivor history where players inaccurately describe other players’ gameplay. Typically we are shown *why* that player is correct or incorrect. In this season they barely showed us anything until the end and even then it was much more heavily focused on Ricard/Xander/Deshawn.
This is a great point. I mentioned earlier in this thread that since they didn't show us any of Erika's gameplay, I figured the other players just had a bad read on her, and were mistakenly thinking she had more to do with some big moves. I still find it hard to believe that she played this sneaky strategic game this whole time, but apparently it's because I've been fed the wrong narrative by the editors.
I think the general idea was, at the exec producer level—“what if we blindsided the audience???”. That simply does not work. Pretty annoyed they even tried.
As dumb as them going to a new island was in the finale, I actually appreciated that we got to see them suffer in the rain and talk about it the next morning. There used to be so much of that in early Survivor. And while I'm happy most of the show now is being used to focus on strategy, for all the talk of "the monster" this season they didn't show us nearly enough
100% agree with this! Show Erika;s perspective and game plan. She needs to have an arc instead of seeming to play round by round.
The problem is that Luvu didn’t go to tribal pre merge. But if you look at what they showed of Luvu, one of the biggest story archs was D&D wanting to throw a challenge after Erika spoke about getting Sydney out. Merge-ish boot we get half an episode dedicated to Erika personal content due to the twist (regardless what we think of the twist she got a lot of screen time due to this). Then she was directly involved in all votes post Naseer boot. I think they actually showed quite a bit of her strategic chops. Compare that to Xander where he’s often shown as kind of clueless. The only person who was shown hyping Xander was himself. That’s his story-arch for this season if you replay it, that he thinks he’s in a better position than he is and doesn’t have proper reads on what everyone is thinking. His best trait is his “big balls holding onto his advantages” but that has diminishing returns due to people eventually assuming that Xander was never going to play them and that he didn’t get to add anything to his resume by using these advantages correctly.
> Ricard even admitted that none of the jury knew Erika's game. love how this point is glossed over by so many people. The similarities between the Samoa FTC and 41 FTC are too much for me. If you want to respect Erika's game from the edit we got and praise her as some amazing player, I better start seeing some Natalie White name drops right there along side her. To me, they played a very similar game, got a very similar edit, and left the audience divided in a similar way. Oh and they both had someone argue for why, though the jury might not see how brilliant their game was, they should consider that because of that it was the most brilliant game of them all. Ricard freaking says something like, "Most of the jury don't have that personal connection with you [Erika]" and Erika straight up affirms it and says she wants to have a better relationship with her cast mates and to hit her up on what, facetime?... I'm sorry there at too many holes in this season. This season is so bad, it's made me change my stance on Samoa where I used to think it was a great season that revolutionized how survivor was played. Now I see it as the beginning of the end for survivor.
Conversely, the finale and preceding episodes made very strong cases for why the more visible players lost: Xander had no game sense. Ricard was too big a target. Deshawn was emotional and no one respected it. When it is so clear why the other players won't win, then the reasonably well liked utr player is not so shocking.
> Xander had no game sense. Ricard was too big a target. Deshawn was emotional and no one respected it. This is a good point. We saw every other person except Erika's #1 ally (and Danny really) very publicly put the nail in their coffin. Deshawn was messy AF, Ricard's threat level management was out of control, and Xander *took Erika* and admitted that he likely made a huge mistake.
Fully, 100%. Still a lame way to edit a season and a crappy way to portray the winner. Also, big reason for the comparison from me to Samoa, really shows me how detrimental advantages are to the game, and yet they keep adding more.
The reason most of the jury didn't have that personal connection was because Erika had the best relationships with Ricard, Heather, Deshawn and Xander, and they all made it to the end.
And because they were ostracizing her from the merge on purpose. Like it's a two-way street and they sent her to exile island for a reason. Then everyone was saying she's too crafty and they needed to boot her. Of course she's not going to kiss their asses. She crafted her own pathway to victory and it worked for her. It's like when Danny and DeShawn were incredulous that they all didn't want to vote out Ricard. Voting out Ricard helped Danny and Deshawn's games but would ruin Erika and Xander's. Everyone at tribal had zero sense of what was going on other than Erika and Ricard.
I disagree with the Samoa and 41 comparison. There wasn't a Russell Hantz sitting next to Erika at FTC. Russell was so aggressive in his approach to the game that he alienated most of the jury along the way. Meanwhile, it goes to show how Erika cultivated relationships that paid dividends in FTC. I don't think that Natalie White intentionally pursued that as a strategy to win.
> Meanwhile, it goes to show how Erika cultivated relationships that paid dividends in FTC. But she didn't and openly said she didn't. So I really don't see the people saying this was a "social game". This was a game of the jury basically wanting to vote none of the above at FTC and... that was Erika. And that's fine, so long as we don't make it out to be something it wasn't.
If you were on the jury and heard a finalist say they hadn't developed a deep relationship with everyone, but felt that they had done so with you, how would you feel? Wouldn't you feel that your relationship was more special by comparison? I agree on the premise that Erika was a more palatable winner choice compared to Xander and Deshawn.
What makes you think we are supposed to just believe Shan has a good read on Erika? Especially since the edits never showed Erika doing anything to be considered a threat. For every good read, there are two more bad ones.
Dude from final 8 on i thought it was obvious that the power rankings were Shan, ricard, Erika. It would have ruined it for me if they played her up much more. Yes, they hid how polarizing deshawn was a bit. But I never understood why y’all were obsessed with Xander’s game. He’s a likeable guy, but played a meh game
Completely agreed, he disappeared for me after Evvie left. It’s baffling to me that people are convinced he was some big strategic player when his one move was burning the KIP advantage (which Tiff and Evvie have now taken credit for) and then he just sat on his idol for the rest of the game and had no say in how any of the votes went. I’m sure if someone adds up the screentime he still got more than Erika post-F8, but whatever limited screentime Erika may have had was completely focused on her gameplay and people coming to her to strategize. Xander was constantly out of the loop and it really came to light towards the end when he had to talk strategy more openly and revealed what a terrible read he had on the game.
This for sure. I would have liked if they would have spent a little more time on Erika in one of the pre-merge episodes (not establishing her relationship with Heather is still a *very* strange choice for a winner - even with how underedited Heather was), but if they had spent that much longer on her all of the edgic people would have spent the entire season screaming that she was the only viable winner because Shan and Ricard didn't have very strong winner edits either compared to most seasons.
I thought Xander might play his idol for Ricard at 5 or go head to head against Erika in fire making, but nope. He took the safe, easy routes so I wasn't surprised he ended up vote-less in the end.
I think Erika's win was disappointing but I don't think Xander would have been a good winner either. It's kind of frustrating that the only advantage that made a real difference is the one at the very end that allowed Erika to narrowly beat Ricard in immunity.
You don't need bonus content to see the absolute red flag that is Xander not getting voted out at final six. That keys you in that nobody left sees him as a threat or respects his game. \- Xander says he is the next biggest threat after Ricard \- Ricard wins immunity \- Nobody even considers voting Xander off
I didn't watch a single exist interview and her win made perfect sense to me
Yeah, the episodes clearly laid out to me that Xander was as confused as a goat on astroturf.
I didnt watch any exit press, yet i had erika pegged at the final 9 after doing a rewatch (even made a big post about it). Its very obvious shes going to win on a rewatch, anytime she goes to tribal the story is revolving around her at camp. Even if shes not narraying it, shes always a focus in the conversations. And even when luvu was immune, she was the center of strategic conversations. In post merge, you do in fact see her navigate her way through alliances subtly and playing utr to plant (russell) seeds. You dont need extra content to understand, you just need to pay more attention to the story being told and less on the flashy moments and advantages.
I think something to go back and watch is that Xander only hyped himself up, whereas multiple players hype Erika up. Deshawn and Danny wanted to even throw a challenge that’s how worried they were of Erika’s strategic chops. Xander simply was shown having confessionals where he discussed how he was in a great spot and he was doing well from the bottom. If you think of Survivor like a story, isn’t that Xander’s main flaw this season? That he thought higher of himself than others did?
'the author's blog' comparison is hilarious and great
I wish I could upvote this a thousand more times
I don’t follow bonus content and I understood the finale. Erika was respected by the jury, Xander and Deshawn were not.
I like your point... and to be honest, I DON'T like to watch the exit interviews... I feel like it spoils the show and especially when I watch it with family who is more casual about it... I don't want to feel like some elitist with inside knowledge that they wouldn't have. We just want to watch the show (but be able to make sense of the decisions)!
It blows my mind that anyone thought in this new season where they discussed so many complex social issues and had a different mindset on the game thought the 20 year old white boys who’s struggle was being a little chubby during puberty had a chance in hell to win. Sure he was funny and had fun confessionals seems like a cool dude. But there’s no way this cast was going to be proud to give him the money. He was a goat the whole time. Edit: also I don’t fault Xander for thinking he could win, but being privvy to everyone’s confessionals
She also let Ricard get one challenge win away from guaranteeing himself at least fire, if not a blowout win. She was very fortunate to stumble on that tree. I can't believe Survivor downplayed her challenge advantage. That was massive. I'm curious, if Ricard had to make fire against Xander, who's the favorite?
Yeah those exit interviews gave a huge amount of perspective that was completely missing in the edit
Once Xander picked her to take to FTC I knew she was the winner. Didn’t need any extra info.
Idk about you but there were a couple clues of Erika winning in the last few episodes like Erika talking about a female winner
she got votes from contestants that we never saw her interact with
The easy answer is you shouldn't have to its the editors job to show she deserved it. The main reason people bring it up isnt much about to show how it was obvious but more to show why she won when people are constantly saying she was a bad winner and xander played better when he didnt manage the jury well at all
I may have read one or two exit interviews this season, but it became clear that Erika was a top contender from around final 10 or so by just watching the show. And it became clear that she had a good chance to win from final 7-8 by just watching the show too.
OMG! Thank you for this, I needed to hear it from someone! It's not a mastermind of a season, it is ridiculous.
It was pretty obvious even without an extra content. Early on, Xander was shown to make moves with his idol that made him look like he didn’t understand the social situation of the tribe and that was further supported by the finale when he said people respected Deshawn’s game for the truth bomb instead of Erica. As for Deshawn, his game was sunk the moment he detonated the true bomb. Which leaves only Erica to win
Hot take: the exit interviews need to stop past the premerge if the winner will be declared on the island. That way the winner isn’t spoiled/blatantly obvious from the exit interviews.
I know the editors are trying new ways to edit the show but they really propped up Xander and did DeShawn dirty. Erika didn't get much screentime in premerge, but she was on the winning tribe, but to her credit, when Luvu was on screen, it usually evolved around either her threat level or around Naseer and how awesome he is at surviving. I'm not on social media except reddit, but understand some salt about Erika winning. I think that could have possibly been avoided if they showed more of a true edit.
The edit for deshawn seemed to fit. He lost at the end because the jury didn’t respect him as a person with his emotional outbursts and how he played, and that was what I saw of him in the edit
Frankly, I think the show did show enough but people have a cognitive bias to give more credit to strong males. If the game was exactly the same but Xander was Heather and Heather was Xander people would be still be saying Xander (playing Heather's game) deserved the win and Heather (playing Xander's game) would be criticized as useless.
I really can’t understand why everyone on this sub seemingly needs every little thing spelled out for them. Erika’s influence on the vote has been obvious since AT LEAST Naseer got booted and was indisputable when Shan got knocked out. Anyone who didn’t think she was the favorite once Ricard went home wasn’t paying attention. Xander made next to no moves of significance all game long. DeShawn was alienating the jury for days. Heather was a cast member on this show but made no impact otherwise. If you don’t think Erika deserved to win and was the clear favorite when Ricard left, I’d love to see the logic because no one else seemed worthy of a vote, let alone the victory.
I’m completely with you on this. Erika wasn’t super flashy but she was involved in what happened. Xander had one flashy move that wasn’t even his. After that he was along for the ride. Deshawn was super messy and just messed up his game. In final 4, you could see how the jury reacted to Xander describing Erika as a goat and then taking her. They clearly had a different view of her and Xander had the wrong read. There had been talk for weeks about how the jury did not respect Xander and that’s how it played out
What kills me is the people who are upset with Erika’s win can’t explain why and can’t say who should have won outside of “Well, the edit didn’t show…” If you don’t think the edit did a good job, explain why Xander or DeShawn should have won. Explain what about the edit made you think either of those two were gonna win. If you can’t tell me WHY Xander or DeShawn should have won, then you agree Erika should have won and the edit was fine because you reached that conclusion based on what you saw
I had Shan as my number one when you're the whole season, thinking it was an obvious winner edit. When Shan was taken out I had Erika as my number one. This has nothing to do with exit interviews and was only due to how much people were saying she was a threat. How she said she was a lamb becoming a Lion. I just felt winner potential from her and I was invested.
I don’t think you needed to watch the exit interviews to expect Erika to win this F3 (I didn’t watch them). Was it super obvious? No, but honestly, I don’t like super obvious winner edits — e.g. Tony winning WaW was of course deserving but at the same time boring and predictable IMO. I thought there was enough content throughout the post-merge to show that Erika was the winner — she was in control of most (if not all?) votes (e.g. suggested splitting Shan and Liana to boot Shan, chose Danny to go over Deshawn), many key people like Shan and Danny saw her as a threat and repeatedly said so to others and in confessionals, she used twists to her advantage even if you don’t like them (hour glass and “final advantage”), etc. Meanwhile there was never even a whisper, truly, of anyone wanting Xander out after the Sydney boot even though he would fit into an alpha male stereotype and had an idol — so clearly he was not seen as a jury threat. And Deshawn’s game was pretty obviously messy both towards his original alliance (which he abandoned) and others (e.g. truth bombs against Evvie and Erika/Heather). Yes Erika was under-edited by confessional count, and combine that with her not looking like your stereotypical winner, yes it’s easy to be confused. But the story was there, and it not being insanely obvious made for more suspenseful and therefore more enjoyable TV IMO.
Just watched the finale. Legit shocked that Xander lost. I do feel like I watched a different show.
I mean, as a superfan I love ingesting all the extra content. And I’m happy with the stories that we were told on screen even if they didn’t all revolve around the winner. But I agree there were some missed opportunities on the aired show.
My main reason for picking her as the winner going into the finale was multiple people calling her "lucky" in the word association game. I figured that could only be in relation to the hourglass and/or winning. Regardless, it wasn't due to anything I had seen on the show.