I don’t think anyone sees Xander as a threat. What has he really done? He found an idol which failed to use in any effective way, and he won a challenge. He hasn’t really orchestrated any moves.
He used it quite effectively to burn the “steal a power” advantage.
This is my thinking. It makes absolutely no sense that Xander would still be there if anybody else on the island thought he could win.
We have seen players before that seemed like favorites to win but the players in the actual game gave them zero chance. Basically “fan heroes” that were actually “goats”. I think maybe Xander falls into this category.
If not, then bully for him that he was able to correctly keep even bigger threats (Ricard in particular) around as shields for so long.
It’s almost like only Ricard and Shan were actually playing, Ricard realized that and took his shot early (relying on the fact that Deshawn/Danny apparently were perfectly happy to blow up their own games), and now the rest are just hoping Ricard slips up so they can take him out. Kinda sucks, because either Ricard wins (which yawn) or either Deshawn or Xander win (which, also, yawn).
I’m not at all against the various social commentaries that have played out over this season, but it’s a pretty damning sign of how limited the game-play footage is that the most interesting things they can show us are racial awareness conversations and Danny NOT finding an idol.
Boring end to a boring season. It was obvious from the “How can I possibly not win?” edit that Xander got that he’d go 0 for 8. The fire challenge was the only interesting part of the episode.
Does this signal the death knell for Survivor (like we haven’t heard that before), or does this just show that the cast is 10x as important as the gimmicks?
I don’t think it was that boring. Not the strongest but not the weakest. Somewhere in the middle. I think the cast being the most important thing has been known since day 1. The problem is it’s really hard to figure out how people are going to interact and if the most interesting people are going to go home first.
Well, clearly either my understanding of the show is way off or the edit was a little weird. Because I legitimately had no idea that Erika could win a Final 3 against Xander and Deshawn and do it running away.
It was clear the other players saw her as a threat to win, but she was never really doing anything as far as we saw. I guess it was a bit of an under-the-radar Sandra type of game. Maybe that type of game is just really hard to edit in a way that is convincing to the viewer.
Xander really proved the danger of not being able to read how people perceive you. He thought (as did I, and at least one other poster in this thread) that Ricard was the only person he could lose to. But apparently nobody respected his game at all. I guess that should have been obvious since they were all apparently perfectly happy to let him stick around with an idol for so long.
It was also rather unsatisfying that the random Final Advantage (which was found by the person that solved the puzzle last) was more than enough to tip the final challenge (Ricard was pretty close behind) and thus determine the winner.
I honestly think that Xander was severely affected by the rushed end and the immediate voting. I think if they’d been given a day to sit back and think, voting would have been different. There were a LOT of bitter people on the jury, and I think time would have helped that.
I really don’t agree with Erica’s win. Deshawn and Xander both had better games.
What was rushed? It’s always been that way - a penultimate TC where the final person is eliminated, then a day for the final 3 or 2 to eat a finalists breakfast, set the camp on fire (usually), hang around & reflect, then the final TC where the jury asks questions then votes a winner.
Yeah, I think you are confusing the change in when the votes were read with a change in when the votes were cast. I didn’t see anything substantively different about the latter in this season.
The big issue for Xander, I think, is that he just didn’t seem to do enough to earn a vote from the jury. His “big move” of giving the idol to Tiffany was apparently entirely Evvie and Tiffany’s idea, and I’m sure they told everybody on the jury that. Liana certainly didn’t seem to give him any props for a good play. His other big decision was to bring along Erika instead of Heather - which you could tell immediately the jury thought was idiotic.
Challenge wins? Erika did that too. Social game? Apparently Erika’s was much stronger than his.
Did Jeff do the “what if it was Heather instead of Erika?” straw poll at the reunion? I didn’t see one but based on how the actual vote went I wouldn’t be shocked if Heather or Deshawn would have won that vote too.
I kind of think it’s time for the fire-making challenge at Final 4 to go away. It’s exciting, but it greatly diminishes winning the final challenge. They starting doing it in Season 35, and since then 4 of the 7 fire-making winners have won the game (Ben, Wendell, Chris, and Tony). Two of the eventual winners were chosen to go by final-challenge winners (Tommy and Erika). Only Nick actually won the final challenge and then won the jury vote.
I could make the argument that it would have been better for Xander to lose that final challenge to either Desahwn or Heather and then have to make fire against Erika (which he would likely have won). At least then he could point to something positive he did and not make the obvious blunder of choosing the wrong person to sit next to.
I’ve never been so wrong about a vote – I predicted that Xander would win and Erika was the goat…the exact inverse of what actually happened.
The fire-making challenge was the most exciting thing of the entire season. The rain was the only time we saw them doing anything other than discussing idols and strategies.
Until Jeff’s post-game comments, I didn’t realize they’d condensed the time spent on the island. Was that a Covid thing? (It probably also explains why there was no loved one visit this time.)
I also thought Xander had won. I was actually kind of happy Erika won, but both my wife and I agreed we will be lucky to remember who won even a week later.
I will repeat what I said earlier: Survivor Australia is a vastly better show. Well, it is more consistently like the best seasons of American Survivor.
That stack the blocks and inch backwards task(which Xander won). That was just on Australia survivor, but I swear it was even harder on the AU version.
Anwyay, not the best season by any means. I think the rules and twists don’t make a huge impact; it’s the luck of the personalities that go deep. We just kind of had snooze-fest people go deep this time. It happens.
They’ve done it before. I think this was the first time they added the rocking platform as well.
Nah, they’ve done that exact challenge before. They’ve also done it without the rocking platform, but a longer walk and more blocks.
Add me to the list of people who thought Xander had it locked up. As I mentioned upthread, my final five order was Ricard-Xander-Deshawn-Erika-Heather. I think everyone agrees about Ricard, but I was way off on the rest.
My wife insists that Heather would have gotten some votes. I say no, but we’ll never know for sure.
Does anyone think the result may have been different if Xander had done a better job of making his case at Final TC? I still think he played the most complete game of the three finalists in terms of physical, social, and strategic play. But he lost the jury when he explained that he chose Erika because of their reaction to Deshawn’s truth bomb. It was as if they resented being told what they thought, and he wasn’t eloquent enough to win them back after that faux pas.
Unlike some of you, I didn’t find this season boring. It’s true that all the new twists they threw in didn’t add much except confusion. But most of the cast had some interesting reason to watch them, and their interactions were mostly engaging, and even compelling at times. Most seasons don’t have a lot of people I would like to know in real life; this one did.
I think Xander would have had a shot if he chose to make fire against Erica and won in a final three of Heather-Xander-Deshawn. I don’t think he ever had a chance of winning against Erica as long as she didn’t completely bomb the final tribal.
It’s almost like they were trying to under-edit Erica to make it a twist winner. All the people in the jury seemed to think she deserved to win, but the show didn’t do a proper job of showing that to the audience.
I think Xander’s big mistake was proposing to Ricard to save him, and not following through. He should have never brought it up. Ricard was persuasive enough (and bitter enough) to turn the jury against Xander.
Ultimately, as much as I liked Xander he might not ever had a chance. After the first episode, I told my wife he will be gone next episode.
This might be true. How Sandra won once, much less twice, is beyond me.
She’s a lot less likeable now. Money reveals what you are really like, I guess. Anyway, she formed close relationships with almost everyone. It’s how she won.
That and the overt playing for himself whilst grinning is what I think did him in.
There was a reason Shan was so vocal about voting Erika out for so long, I’m presuming Erika was doing a lot of behind the scenes work that didn’t make the edit.
And one more thing. When Heather had her aside with him, the first thing she said was - The truth - you cannot beat Erika in the final. He blurted out his response immediately, “I think I can”.
I’m wondering, if in hindsight, he wishes he had taken a beat and asked her why she thought so?
So popularity contest and not merit? Got it.