The finale of Survivor 49 capped the comeback of the three members of the Tres Leches alliance, Sophi all the way from the collapse of original Kele and the trio as a whole from a disastrous merge vote, after which they found themselves outnumbered, 7-3. Similarly, their improbable post-merge rise elevated the season as a whole to solid status, after an extremely rough start. (Also, two of those same three will be coming back next season, in S50: In the Hands of the Fans). Comebacks all around.

There's not a lot more to say about Survivor 49 that hasn't already been said at various points this season. Despite Jeff Probst's intra-finale claims that this season's post-merge was "fluid" and any alliances were "temporary," the story of that post-merge was obviously dominated by the (belatedly named) Tres Leches alliance, which had been a tight trio since way back at the first swap in Episode 4. They never turned on each other, and the only semi-betrayal was Sophi's decision to put Savannah up against Rizo in forced F4 fire-making, a move that guaranteed all three members of their alliance would not reach the finals together. It was more or less a replay of the standard new era winning formula: Just get a strong three, or at least a tight duo. We saw it in S41, S44, S45, S46 (for Charlie and Ben, at least), and S48.

Where the season did break some new ground was in some of the welcome production decisions (not just one, but two swaps; no "earn the merge") but moreso in the bold gameplay of the winning alliance, who somehow managed to turn Nate's 7-4 blindside at the merge into a winning majority, eventually. Some of that success was due to less-welcome production decisions (the unnecessary split Tribal at F10), but most of it was their own hard work. (And some timid, conservative choices by their opponents.) It was also a memorable comeback for a season that felt overshadowed throughout its run by the Survivor 50 hoopla.

Since this season exceeded low expectations, maybe it's a good thing the post-finale preview for S50 thoroughly dampened a lot of fans' enthusiasm for the upcoming returning players season. Nothing says "a yearlong celebration of 25 years of our show" quite like inviting a whopping 24 legendary and recent standout players back, and instead of giving the audience time to catch up with them again, forking screentime over instead to ... Mr. Beast. Or Zac Brown. (Could they have made an even worse choice than Jimmy Fallon? Should we be expecting Kid Rock?) Or really any other as-yet unshown celebrities, who for some reason were decided to be critical to the success of the season, instead of, you know, the people who made it great over the past 25 years. Definitely not a distraction from the actual game!

The show gives, and the show takes. And it takes, and it takes, and it takes.

Oh well, at least we did also get the shot above.

Savannah's hard-driving game (Can she run it back?)

In a way, Savannah's victory is a demonstration that if Russell Hantz had just tried for a few minutes not to be a complete asshole, he might have won Survivor. (This is a bit glib, because Hantz was not especially great in challenges, while as we'll discuss below Savannah very much is, so Savannah has a leg up there.) But they do have a lot in common: They're both very direct, they're not afraid to be confrontational, and they don't spend a lot of time pretending to like the people outside their alliance. Savannah is far more socially adept than Hantz, though, and while she didn't seem to get along with Kristina, she was at least pleasant around camp to everyone else, and was never directly abusive to anyone. Hantz was just a dick whenever he felt like being one, which seemed to be more and more often as the game progressed.

Having said that, their approach to the game was also similar. They marched to the end with a "Oh, you want to vote me out? I'd like to see you try. Ha ha, now you can't!" attitude. It's the opposite of playing under the radar, and it's something that juries do tend to reward. If you can get to the end while daring people to stop you, and they don't stop you, that's consistently impressive. That kind of swagger is very much a part of Boston Rob's game, as well. It's also something that's been in short supply recently, so it was refreshing to see it resurrected, especially by a woman.

With the Survivor 50 cast now officially complete, the question for Savannah now becomes: Can she repeat this feat? Again like Russell Hantz, Savannah finds herself thrust into an all-star season at the last minute, a complete unknown to everyone else on the cast (except Rizo, obviously). Historically, back-to-back players have done really, really well when they return. Rupert vaulted from 8th in S7: Pearl Islands to 4th place in S8: All-Stars (they'd seen part of S7, but not Rupert's boot episode), James was 7th and Amanda was a back-to-back losing finalist in S16: Micronesia, Hantz became a back-to-back losing finalist in S20: Heroes vs. Villains. More-recent tries were less-successful: Malcolm dropped from 4th to 9th in S26: Caramoan, Zeke from 9th to 10th in S34: Game Changers, but then again, Michaela leapt from 14th to 7th that same season. (Not quite the same, but Bruce's 18th to 8th improvement in S45 was also good, although he had nowhere to go but up from a Day 1 medevac.) So for both Rizo and Savannah, history suggests their chances of doing well are pretty good.

Most importantly for Savannah, she's an elite challenge performer on a season full of similar players: Colby, Ozzy, Stephenie (also probably Coach, according to Coach), even Chrissy, although I don't think Chrissy views herself that way. Ozzy has already shown he'll happily vote for a challenge beast to win the game, with his vote for Brad in S34: Game Changers. With the right mix of enough of those kinds of jurors, Savannah could be pretty well positioned to be the first ever back-to-back winner. Her biggest problem, however, is that, again, it's a returning player season, and unlike everyone else, she hasn't been able to pregame. It's also an oversized returnee season (24 players!) and the first sped-up, 26-day all-star affair. There is likely to be a *lot* of pre-merge voting. So the complete unknowns of Savannah and Rizo might seem like easy first-boot options at the start of the game, because removing them won't piss anyone off. Hopefully that's not the case, but we will see in a few months.

Fine, he can be a Rizgod (Will he be next time?)

Much like Savannah, Rizo's game this season was also big and aggressive. Rizo's in particular was characterized by his extremely in-your-face, fate-tempting theater at Tribal Council. But he also did a really good job with the small game: Talking to people, getting consensus on the moves he wanted to make, and controlling the game that way. In his exit interviews, he credits Australian Survivor's Feras Basal and Tony Vlachos (who I guess now belongs to both US and Australian Survivor) as models upon whom he built his game. Rizo was pushing back on the post-S46 lesson that idols are best played defensively, so at least you get some benefit from them, rather than being voted out with one in your pocket. True, it's easier to make big, effective, idol-based moves when your idol is secret, but for a good chunk of the new era, it's been nearly impossible for idols to be secret. So the big thing Rizo took away from Feras's and Tony's games is that idols can also have a lot of power (and last a lot longer) when you *don't* play them, and merely threaten to. It's the first demonstration we've seen of that approach in the very-public-idol new era format, and congratulations to Rizo for proving it can be done.

Rizo's game should also mesh well with a lot of the Survivor 50 cast (especially Devens and Christian, who are unfortunately not on his starting tribe). It seems unlikely he'll be viewed as a big threat early, although he faces the same "that anonymous player who has no connections to anyone is an easy, no-feathers-ruffling target" problem that we brought up for Savannah. As a superfan who would know who all these people are, at least he'll have the experience of meeting some of his heroes, no matter what. But if he can elevate his game against the S50 cast? Everyone will be calling him Rizgod, finally.

What forced final four fire-making prevented

If there was ever a season that could have been made better by an alliance reaching the Final Tribal intact, it was this one. Just forcing jurors to choose between Sophi, Rizo, and Savannah would have likely made the jury vote a lot closer. Imagine if Savannah had been forced to depend on Rizo to force a 2-2 tie at actual F4 vote (or vice-versa)? Would Sophi just say, "Yeah, Savannah's going tonight," and Rizo falls in line? (I'm not sure, but it is very possible Savannah votes out Rizo if Sophi prefers an all-women F3, as she said she did after it had happened.) No matter what, without forced F4 fire, there's a decent, or at least non-zero, chance we get both Rizo AND Savannah in the finals.

Then let's ponder: suppose Savannah votes Rizo out, depriving him of a 2-2 tie and the chance to make fire, and we end up with the same F3 as actually happened, but via a vote ... does he still vote for her as a juror? I'm doubtful about that. Sophi starts looking like a much better finalist to Rizo after such a betrayal, right? All of these questions are far more interesting and complicated and revealing of how people feel about each other than watching three people practice fire-making for what appears to be the first time, and then watching Rizo blow another individual challenge, this one at Tribal.

Everyone explicitly voted Kristina out at Final 5 because they knew she was good at making fire. Obviously that likely changes if there's not a guaranteed firemaking challenge. Maybe it still does, because someone having that skill, but little chance to win the jury vote, is a clever way to emerge with a goat in tow from a 2-2 tie. But wouldn't it be more interesting to see someone actually plan that and try to put it into action, than ... whatever it is we were supposed to be impressed by here?

There was nothing particularly new or interesting about the fire-making itself, nor the preparations for it. The only novel development was Sophi explicitly refusing to be talked into anything, and spending the time between her IC win and Tribal just chilling and thinking. (A very smart move, to forestall anyone else taking credit for her decision.) Apart from that, it went exactly as you would have expected from the jump, and it wasn't even particularly close or interesting. It was just something we sat through, waiting for it to be over. (Honestly, Probst deserves a repeat of Becky vs. Sundra, and it's sad that with three people who didn't know how to make fire, we didn't get that.)

We have now had a whopping 15 straight seasons of forced F4 fire. Forced F4 fire's chief selling point appears to be that - much like the equally pointless challenge advantage scramble - it reliably chews through 20 minutes (not counting ads) of the finale. (Imagine if even 10 minutes of that could be funneled into an actual reunion instead of the never-not-painful Aftershow?) It's possible the fans were wise enough to vote it out of S50 (and that Probst honored the fan vote, and didn't just do what he wanted anyway). If not, how many more tired repetitions of this charade do we have to go through before Probst admits the problem is not that it's outlived its novelty, it's that it's decomposing?

Sophi was robbed? (Final Tribal doesn't matter)

It sounds from the exit press like (1) the jury was really, really negative to Sage, which explains her breakdown in the Aftershow, and (2) Sophi actually performed much better in her answers than we saw (especially in response to Kristina's question, which was edited out). So well, in fact, that before Probst read out the final tally, Savannah told Sophi that she thought Sophi was going to win. It's really interesting that the edit toned down Sophi's performance quite a bit, and hid a lot of Sophi's social/strategic game throughout the season.

There are a lot of potential reasons for doing this. One is simply wanting to help the audience agree that Savannah deserved to win instead of Sophi, which is reasonable. The last thing this season needed was a post-finale fan backlash against the winner, as we saw after S32: Kaoh Rong, especially since Savannah will be appearing again next season. It might be to keep the spotlight on Rizo and Savannah's return-earning performances. It could also be that they also had really strong performances by the second-place finishers in Final Tribal for the past two seasons (Sam in S47, Eva in S48), and they don't want to stomp down on the fan belief that the jurors actually come in with open minds, and a good performance can win them over. (Three straight FTCs where the person who made the best case did not win indicates that's clearly not true.)

Regardless of the reasons, the jury must have had good reasons to vote the way they did, and Sophi seemed thrilled to finish in second place, so I'm not complaining. Rather, I just wanted to acknowledge what a delight Sophi was all season, even considering her strategic flub in Ep12. She was relentlessly positive and energetic, and her irrepressible optimism went a long way toward advancing her social game. She had a good knowledge of the game, solid instincts, everything you would want in a player. She even won a really important challenge in dramatic fashion! But where Sophi might have been robbed is in the casting for next season.

Savannah and Rizo make perfect sense as picks for S50. They're both very good players, they give great confessionals, and they both clearly have a strong drive to win. No complaints there. But it's a shame there wasn't also room for Sophi. (Same thing, mostly for the same reasons, for Steven.) Really, though, we'll just have to add Sophi's name to the long list of new era returnee snubs. I will forever resent the lack of a new era All-Stars season, which would have allowed the likes of Ricard, Shan, Omar, Maryanne, Jesse, Cody, Carolyn, Sam, Andy, Rachel, and maybe Sophi and Steven to play again. Oh well, better luck on the next 25-year celebration of the show's history, I guess?

The burning of the Sage (Final Tribal doesn't matter, again)

(Alt. title: Different Carolyn, same result.) The take-home message of Survivor 42 appeared to be: "You can be weird and still win this game!" Carolyn being shut out by the Survivor 44 jury very strongly argued the opposite, and Sage getting roasted by this jury for betraying them appears to slam that door shut permanently. I think in Sage's case, the jury also regarded her much as the S26: Caramoan jury viewed Dawn Meehan: A lot of jurors felt like they had given a finalist space to let their emotions out, and deeply resented having that person then turn around and play strategically against them. How DARE they?

Honestly, this is a flaw in the game. There shouldn't be one exclusive "right way" (non-emotionally) to play the game. (This feels very similar to the tiresome "unwritten rules" in baseball, like hitters being forbidden from celebrating after hitting a home run ... which thankfully finally seems to be fading away.) But at the same time, how do you convince jurors that it's okay to cry occasionally in this game, if they think otherwise? (Relatedly, if Rizo is in the finals, do the jurors hold HIS tears against him? Unlikely.) Ultimately the decision is the jurors' to make, under whatever criteria they choose. Hopefully the game eventually evolves enough for a Dawn or a Sage to be more respected. But it hasn't happened yet.

It's also important to note that Sage appeared to make a pretty reasonable case for herself at Final Tribal, pointing out that her moves were intentional, and made sense in the context of her military intelligence background. But as with most last-minute revelations at Final Tribal, the jurors were either unwilling or unable to process this new information before it was time to vote. Maybe they were just too eager to get their licks in, attacking Sage for turning on them. And as predicted, it's really tough for someone to take credit for a unanimous vote, at least not without a lot of pushback. As with Sophi barely making a dent in Savannah's vote total, Sage's beatdown shows it doesn't really matter what you say at Final Tribal. Most of the time, the jury is going to give the million to the player they came in wanting to annoint as the victor. (Unless there was no pre-existing consensus, and it's really, really close.)

Also, as always, it sucked that Sage had to go through all that, then attempt to process her loss and everyone's hostility while the group is swigging champagne and Probst is giddily going through idol- and advantage-play statistics, and the like. There's still no reason to immediately put losing finalists through the Aftershow, not in its current format. Especially when the whole post-show "reunion" keeps getting whittled away to virtually nothing, in favor of filler like the challenge advantage scramble and people practicing making fire. And as always, it doesn't matter what fans want, or what contestants want, even when finalists are clearly in acute mental anguish as they participate Probst's preferred debrief. His is the only opinion that matters.

Challenge records in context

Savannah fell just short of the overall single-season five IC-win record, but part of the blame there is new era Survivor: There are just fewer individual challenge opportunities these days. Savannah only had seven total individual IC appearances, and won four of them. Colby and Tom Westman had one more total chance, Mike Holloway had two, and Brad Culpepper had three more. (10 total individual ICs!) Note that Ozzy had just six appearances in S13: Cook Islands, which had a ridiculously belated merge. (Day 25! The same day as Savannah's final challenge appearance.)

The paucity of opportunity in the new era becomes more apparent when you look at the records for single-season individual challenge wins. Savannah won five of the eight challenges she saw. The only person in the top 15 with that few appearances was ... Cook Islands Ozzy again, with eight. Colby saw 11 total in S2: The Australian Outback, and Terry a whopping 12 in S12: Panama. True, you probably don't want to be winning individual reward challenges if you can help it. But the point is, Savannah is right up there with the all-time greats.

Given that two of those people (Ozzy and Colby) will be on Survivor 50 with her, and she'll probably be about as good in challenges there as she was here (she had about three weeks off between seasons), if Savannah can duplicate that performance the next time around, there should be at least a few jurors who think challenge performance is Very Important in playing Survivor. Sure, it's *unlikely* she'll manage back-to-back seasons of reaching the finals. But if she does, I'm saying she has a pretty good chance of being our first back-to-back winner.

The land of tepid takes

Welcome back, shipwreck theme! The season has had a vaguely pirate/shipwreck theme (original tribe logos, intro, Tribal Council set), but then promptly abandoned that, in favor of generic challenges. But then all of a sudden, we went back to piratey shipwrecks for the finale, with the treasure map in the advantage scramble (X marked the spot), and the crow's nest structures in the F5 IC. (Maybe only Day 24 can be themed, I dunno.) If you're not going to have named themes in the season name, at least a consistent motif like this during challenges, etc. would be a big boost in differentiating between otherwise almost-identical seasons. (We sort of had spurts of a medieval theme in S44, which was also welcome.) I'm not sure what S51 will bring, but this would be good, right?

"This is *not* an advantage" [/DevonPinto] (who was also robbed of a spot on S50). Sophi had to run around in the jungle for probably 15-20 minutes, do a puzzle, then figure out her advantage bag was in a tree to earn her "challenge advantage," which she had to use a few hours later. When she actually got to the challenge, she learned she'd saved herself roughly 30 seconds on the easiest task. Pretty lame, Milhouse.

Better late than never? We never had any discussion whatsoever of the merge tribe name during the show itself, but if there was one bright spot in the Aftershow, it was Sophi's explanation that "Lewatu" was a tribute to her late grandmother, and in the fine tradition of "Enil Edam," Sophi had given her tribemates a fake definition, that it was Fijian for "family." It was still fun to learn this after the game had ended, but it would have been far more fun if we'd been in on the joke in real time at the merge, so we could giggle along with Sophi each time "Lewatu" showed up in someone's chyron. Oh well, I guess it's probably wrong to wish for things to be more fun.