After 26 days of gameplay and almost three months of real time spent arguing and crashing out online, Survivor 50 has finally arrived at its endgame. From a starting count of 24 iconic (and, well, "iconic") players down to a Final Five, the supersized season has been...well, let's call it "polarizing." At its best, season 50 was a real celebration of Survivor lore and 26 years of characters; the premiere was wonderful, the emotions on exhibit—particularly from the players who know this is their last chance to play this incredible game—were raw and touching, and it has been pretty reliably funny! This is all good.
Unfortunately, though, it has not all been good. At its worst, season 50 has been a demoralizing harbinger of what Survivor is becoming as it inches closer to whatever endgame it has in mind for itself. More than any already-twist-heavy New Era season, season 50 was a disaster of production interference, and the celebrity cameos that made my blood run cold in the season's trailer didn't help matters. (Christian truly did have his fate decided in the game by Jimmy fucking Fallon.) The game became less about who could navigate the tumultuous relationships of a lunatic tribe and more about who could get fucked over the least by twists, advantages, and whatever Jeff Probst thinks makes for Good Survivor Content. Figuring that out has been a grim exercise for fans; this Variety interview with Probst ahead of the finale is worth a read to see how out-of-touch he is with the game he has become inextricably intertwined with over the last quarter century.
But! There's still a finale to be watched, and though our Defector Survivor Jury (Luis Paez-Pumar, Kelsey McKinney, Alex Sujong Laughlin, and Normal Gossip producer Jae Towle Vieira) appear to be united in expecting no surprises from the final episode of season 50, a Survivor finale is a Survivor finale. And, thanks to the one fan vote this season that hit on the correct result, there's a live finale for 50. It'll be fun to see everyone glammed up and in the same place again for the first time since the opening beach scene way back in episode one.
Whether the game will end in a satisfying manner is to be determined, and will have much to do with how Survivor 50 will be remembered. After all, a terrible season can be saved by a good finale (see: season 36, Ghost Island), and a great season can become legendary if it sticks the landing (see: season 16, Micronesia). Regardless of the quality of the finale, we here at Defector have a lot of thoughts about how this season got to this point, and what we think will happen in the final three hours of Survivor 50. Let's dive in.
Has your opinion on the season changed since the merge?
Luis: When we first gathered to share our thoughts on Survivor 50, I had a bad feeling that it was only going to get worse from the merge on. Part of that is due to how many fun players were eliminated in the first half of the game, but mainly, I was worried that the twistapalooza had only begun. The "Blood Moon" episode only signaled that bullshit was about to bullshit at unprecedented levels, all under the guise of giving The Fans what they wanted. It turned out about as I expected.
So, with that in mind, I'd say my opinion on the season has gone from broadly pessimistic to one of outright hatred. Part of the fun of returnee seasons—maybe most of the fun—is seeing players who are already accustomed to the rhythms of a Survivor game come back and adapt to new circumstances. By throwing so many stupid twists and split-tribals at these veterans, the show's production bosses continued to prove that they do not trust the format of this long-running show to provide entertainment for an entire season, never mind not trusting the players themselves. This is also how you get such a boring final five, because anyone attempting to play a good game will just get gunned down by a twist. I'd go as far as saying this is the worst season of all returnees to date, something I thought would never happen after the disaster of season 34 (Game Changers), but here we are.
I will give one small bit of credit and say that the Mr. Beast portion of the season was not nearly as terrible as it could have been, though part of that is that Rick Devens did not eliminate himself on a coin toss. That would have been ass.
Kelsey: I still think that from a gameplay perspective, this season has been better than a few of the more recent New Era seasons. I love seeing the returning players. But, as I have already written, I am sick to death of Jeff Probst trying to sell me on the show I am already watching! It has been a very long time since I have been as disappointed in the final stretch of a season as I have in this one, and that sucks! I wanted to be excited and have fun!
Alex: I always enjoy Survivor more post-merge because I’m more invested and we have space to go deeper on the storylines. I continue to be exhausted with how into Survivor Jeff is, how he is constantly hyping up the concept of Survivor. I am annoyed by the celebrity cameos and by my favorites being sent home, and I feel like I’m dragging my feet toward the finale.
I wrote that first paragraph a few days ago and I just wanted to add that last night I had a dream that I was physically at the finale and I was so unbelievably excited to see how it all turned out. So maybe the truth is somewhere between the two!
Jae: At the merge, I was reserving most of my ire for Jeff. While I do think Jeff and his twists are a huge, game-ruining problem, I have found room in my heart to nurse an additional grudge, of potentially equal magnitude: the editors suck. I’ve never gotten into the edgic scene, but as a writer and producer I have some idea of what factors the editors are weighing as they make all the tiny decisions involved in putting together an episode. You don’t want a sob story to tip people off that a contestant is going home at the next vote, but you also want each vote—even the boring ones—to feel significant. The idea is to build narratives and rivalries, anoint heroes and villains, and then complicate those portrayals to give viewers a sense of change, or momentum, or comic relief.
But I don’t understand how it benefits the show to avoid giving each member of the final five a full backstory. Wouldn’t it make for better TV if the show itself were less biased toward its favorite characters? The show loves Devens, Cirie, and Ozzy, for example—they get everything from extra confessionals to special music cues to teach us to be happy when they’re happy and sad when they’re sad. I bet they combined the eliminations of Devens and Cirie into one episode because one bitter pill is easier to swallow than two—but if the editors chose to tell the story differently, the audience wouldn’t be as bitter.
Tiffany is presented exclusively as a threat: she’s not the one you’re rooting for, because you aren’t allowed to get to know her, but she might snatch the game away from whomever you do like. Joe is a punchline. The show seems to be kicking and screaming about being forced to give Aubry some airtime, and portrays her through a lens of contempt. I know reality TV runs on formulas, stereotypes, and manipulating the audience as if our biases are their paper dolls, but I also know that they had enough footage to provide a compelling narrative foundation for every remaining player over the course of the season, and they chose not to do that. They wanted us to watch Christian shitting his pants instead. As much as I love Christian, they could have used their time better. Fifty seasons in, this show still doesn’t trust its players or its audience.
What did you think of all the season's twists and turns?
Alex: I haven’t loved how quickly folks have been eliminated post-merge, but the twists have been a nice way to mix things up when things might have otherwise seemed overly determined. I enjoyed the tribe being split in two and Jonathan having to walk back and forth between them. I do think I will throw my phone at my TV if I hear the phrase “Billie Eilish Boomerang Idol” one more time, so I’m glad to have left that behind.
Jae: The only one that I thought had the potential to add an interesting strategic layer to the game was the “Double Duo” twist (a name, like so many of the Survivor branding decisions, that cries out for a groan from Kif). But I hesitate to say that, because Jeff Probst has proven himself so incapable of moderating his worst instincts that maybe the party line needs to be NO MORE TWISTS, JEFFREY.
Kelsey: I understand that the show no longer trusts its contestants to create enough drama to make compelling television. This has been true ever since they started casting the biggest dweebs on the planet. However, the entire point of returning player seasons is that you should be able to trust them to make good television and therefore don't need as many twists. The sheer quantity of twists has been exhausting, and made them feel less special. But the real problem is that the twists have become the game. I do not want to spend my time thinking about production. I want players to win or lose the game on their own play.
Luis: As I said above, I hate when the show puts itself ahead of the players by breaking up the flow of a normal game of Survivor, so I won't belabor the point, but I will say that having a split tribal council at Final Nine was the worst decision in a long season full of them. As Kelsey will get to shortly, Ozzy signed his own death warrant thanks to being split from Cirie, his brain this season—but that should have never happened in the first place! What's the point of a merge if the show keeps finding ways to un-merge the players?
Whose elimination hurt you the most?
Kelsey: Honestly, I should pick Cirie here, because I love her so much and it is devastating to me that she will not get to the finale of this game, but the answer is Ozzy. Sure, he misplayed his hand trying to prep Aubry for the jury, but that entire episode was a perfect example of how badly the late-game twists worked. Ozzy and Cirie had played an excellent game and avoided a lot of deserved heat on the two of them because of good gameplay, and all of that work was ruined because... Jonathan won an immunity challenge that happened to be the most powerful immunity challenge in the history of the game? That's so unbelievably stupid. All Survivor winners survive thanks to some degree of luck. But watching Ozzy get voted off because of a twist that wasn't even fun to watch just sucked all the joy I had out of the game. I knew Cirie was cooked then, and I genuinely hope someone gets fired for this decision.
Jae: Oddly, Charlie’s elimination haunts me, even though that feels like a thousand years ago now. The way Charlie talked about his experiences with Maria, and the way that emotional damage fueled Charlie’s bitterness toward Rizo, and the way that said bitterness directly brought about Charlie’s own downfall: hamartia in action. Also that would be exactly what would happen to me if I were to play Survivor, and I would never get over it.
Luis: I won't go into my sadness over how badly this season's format bullshit screwed my pre-game pick, Genevieve, and instead will just say that Dee's elimination at the (real) merge was a real warning shot for how bad things would get. The season 45 winner was playing a great game and was the last winner alive by a mile, but once she was gotten by Jonathan over some honor and integrity nonsense, I realized quick that the strategic and entertaining players were all going to get knocked out in quick succession. And that's about what happened, as Christian, Emily, Ozzy, Devens, and Cirie made up five of the following eight boots leading up to the finale.
Alex: I am so bummed to see Cirie go. I wrote in the season preview that if they were smart, the cast wouldn’t let her make it to the merge. When they did, I realized they were not as smart as I had assumed they were. When she survived the two-tribe double elimination, I started to feel a glimmer of hope that maybe she could pull this out. It’s incredible to watch someone who is so clearly superior run circles around everyone else left. For a long time, Survivor hasn’t been a game of actually figuring out who is best; at a certain point, it becomes a game of trying to be the best of the remainders, and that is a bummer to me. In my heart, the final five is Cirie, Ozzy, Devens, Emily, and Christian.
What do you think of the Final Five?
Luis: I went back and looked at every Final Five from seasons with at least half of the cast being returnees, and I'm confident this is the worst Final Five by a long shot. (Congratulations to Aubry for being in both the worst and second-worst [Game Changers, again], great accomplishment!) Any of these five winning would be a disappointment, and I say that as someone who likes Rizo (clearly not taken seriously as a threat by anyone in either of his seasons, which is why he was allowed to take a public immunity idol to Final Five twice) and Tiffany (if she wins, they need to put the Survivor 50 editors in jail). I'm steamed!!
Jae: I don’t love this combination, but then again, this stage of the game almost always sucks. The last meaningful machinations usually happen when there are six or seven people left, and then it’s all just a hangover until final tribal council.
Kelsey: I don't think about them at all.
Alex: *raspberry noise*
Who do you think will win?
Alex: I am rooting for Tiff and then Rizo, but I think Jonathan and Aubry will be the top two. Between them I think Jonathan deserves to win, but lacks the verbal skills required to persuade the jury. So my prediction is Aubry.
Jae: It’s looking good for Aubry. (They could never make me hate you, Aubry, but they’re sure trying. [That said, it’s a bad look to cry after you tried and failed to sabotage Tiffany at the immunity challenge. You gotta own that one, babe.]) If Tiff wins, I’ll be so happy for her but so confused by the edit she's received. I don’t think it’s gonna be Rizo, but—dare I say it—I’m coming around to a downright lukewarm position on the Rizgod, who has been cutting down legends left and right, even though he seems to be quite sick. There are no other acceptable outcomes.
Luis: It's gotta be Aubry. Kelsey called it back in our first questionnaire, and though I tried to fight it by clinging to some edit red flags—why did she get zero credit for the Genevieve boot, given that it was her whole mission for half the game?—and the fact that Aubry didn't actually do anything this season, it's pretty obvious to me that she will win rather comfortably on Wednesday night.
The jury will not vote for Rizo; Tiffany is almost certainly the first finale boot; Joe is a joke of a player with negative win equity (again); only Jonathan has a sensible path to victory outside of Aubry, and he definitely pissed too many people off to get the amount of votes he'd need. (Also, that would somehow be worse than Aubry winning.) So, yeah, congrats to Aubry Bracco for parlaying a 7/10 debut season into becoming the most middling four-time player and now a winner. You don't have to like it, and I certainly don't have to respect it, but I'm pretty sure it's happening.
Kelsey: Aubry. I am unhappy and cannot be made happy.
Finally, what do you hope Survivor learns from this season?
Luis: I could complain about a lot of things in hopes that someone on Survivor reads it and learns from it, but I think nothing pissed me off more than the split tribal councils this season. Between the Blood Moon and the final nine, split tribals cost us Genevieve, Colby, Kamilla, Ozzy, and Emily, while also basically eliminating Dee and Cirie as collateral damage. I already don't love the three-tribe format over two big tribes, but split tribals consisting of four or five people per is a recipe for boring gameplay and a terrible boot order. It fails both key aspects of what Survivor should be out: It's not fun to watch votes be decided by a rock draw, and it's not fair to the players who get voted out.
Survivor has always been about luck, but ever since the New Era began post-COVID, the randomness of the game has been elevated to new heights, very often to the show's detriment. My hope, and it's not a realistic hope, is that Jeff Probst and his band of underlings realize that the best parts of Survivor are watching players navigate complex social webs, not seeing who will pick the right color rock. But given how successful season 50 has been, and knowing how much Jeff loves his little twists and turns, I don't have high hopes for the 50s.
Jae: Returnee seasons are good! But in all other respects, we need fresh blood. We’re unlikely to get it, because CBS is CBS, ratings are ratings, and Jeff Probst thinks Jeff Probst is doing a great job, but this show could be such a joy with different hands at the helm.
Alex: Is it naive for me to say that the show doesn’t need so many bells and whistles? Some of my favorite moments this season were moments of absurdity between cast members—shout out to that crazy shot of Christian gently rocking Joe in the hammock early on. Especially on a season like this one, the cast can handle themselves, and I don’t think the show needs so much manufactured drama to stay interesting.
Kelsey: For the past few seasons, even though I have been unsatisfied with the product Survivor produces, I have watched it. I understand that many, many millions of other people seem to be very happy with the product in its new form, and I wish them all the best of luck. The viewership is up, so whatever Survivor learns from this season will be none of my business. I have better things to do now (watch Love Island).
