It felt like forever to get through it all (both the finale/reunion and the season), but at least Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fans ended with a clutch, crowd-pleasing underdog victory, rather than a dreary, boring, anti-gameplay, antihero win, as it briefly looked like it might.

The finale also took on a new-ish form, interweaving short check-ins at the live reunion with each segment of the traditional "final five to final Tribal" finale fare. This had been done before, as the most recent live reunion/finales all had Probst talking to players as they left the game. But it's been a while (pre-2020) since Survivor had a live reunion, and the biggest change here was that there was essentially no time left for a Q&A session with the assembled cast at the end (just the final three), which is what the fans wanted to see AND VOTED FOR, but Jeff Probst insists that this is always inauthentic and therefore nobody should care about it, fan votes be damned: "When we sat down initially, the first thing I suggested was, what if we don’t do a reunion show and instead, we take that time and sprinkle it in throughout the final episode?" Probst claimed this was necessary because the finale "was packed," but it was mostly full of flaccid, predictable filler, like the 15th consecutive edition of Far Too Much Time Watching People Practice Fire-making. (We could have watched Joe help Rizo and then jumped directly to F4 Tribal.) "In the Hands of the Fans," indeed.

Because of this, those constant check-ins in LA ended up being the one thing getting everyone through the finale itself, because this would otherwise have been the least interesting one in ages. That's largely because the editors had pulled out all the stops over the final three episodes, hard-selling an "Aubry is going win because she started playing hard at the Ozzy vote" mini-arc. In that context, basically every beat of the finale felt extremely obvious. The second Tiffany lost the Final 5 IC to Jonathan (by a second), it was clear she was done for. (As the all-knowing Cirie had predicted in the previous episode.) Similarly, as soon as Aubry won the Final 4 IC (which was obviously going to be "Simmotion," which fans allegedly voted for, even though it has all the excitement of a NASCAR race), it was clear she had won the game itself. The only minor piece of mystery was whether fans had voted to keep forced Final 4 firemaking (allegedly "we" did), and how that went down, but that latter part was spoiled by an epic production blunder, as Jeff Probst interviewed Rizo Velovic live on the reunion stage about fire-making, and showed him off to his jury seat ... before the fire-making showdown had aired. Bang-up job, SEG.

Because the finale was utterly predictable (except the surprise Morning 26 loved ones visit, which was nice, but oddly meant nobody even mentioned the Morning 26 breakfast, which arrived along with them), those few, spare live reunion moments we did get were welcome. In fact, they made you want to skip ahead through the actual finale, to spend more time on them. But no, we had to watch everyone in the final four successfully complete the one-ball stage, then the two-ball stage, then three-ball stage (*sigh*) in "Simmotion," and then ... whoops, we're all out of time for the reunion itself! Here's the final three, the Sia award (yay for Cirie!), and now on to Survivor 51!.

Those time-management choices felt like a huge disservice to the cast (and the audience). How could a reunion in the year of our lord 2026, with an all-star cast, manage to show even less of the 24 players than previous reunion lowlights like the S26: Caramoan, where the pre-jurors were forced to sit quietly in the audience? Was production *trying* to make the experience as underwhelming as possible, so that fans stop badgering them to have another one?

As you probably could have guessed beforehand, Jeff Probst talked to exactly one pre-juror, although he did "toast" them. Hooray? As for that sole non-juror, of course it was his buddy Mike White, who wasn't even there! But if Zoom worked for the LAST reunion (S40: Winners at War) during COVID, it can work again to remind everyone in the audience that Jeff Probst is on close personal terms with Hollywood movers and shakers. If you wanted to hear from Emily or Dee, who actually made it to the jury? Or Angelina, one of the biggest characters of the 30s? Or last season's winner, Savannah, or the sole OG S1: Borneo representative Jenna Lewis? Well, maybe you'll get a chance when they play a third (or fourth, in Jenna's case) time.

The choice to drag out the actual game-finale content as long as possible was also an odd choice if you were aware the season was awash in spoilers. I personally was one of the few viewers this season, apparently, who had managed to avoid the Kalshi/Polymarket "predictions" that Aubry would win the season, a "bet" that basically crossed into sure-thing territory before the premiere even aired. Despite my being unspoiled, even I thought the outcome was too obvious because of the heavy-handed endgame edit. That's a bit of a shame, because the season felt like it was trying to build to an epic "old school vs. new era" gameplay showdown, but it never quite got there, perhaps because the two vote-receiving finalists were both - like the finale/reunion - hybrids. Aubry began as an old-school (-ish) player in S32: Kaoh Rong, but has always been a proponent of a more fluid, "new school" (not really new era), gameplay style. Jonathan, in contrast, debuted in the early new era (Survivor 42), but was drawn to and aligned with the old-school players, and modeled his already-ossified approach to the game on them.

I'm not sure how the story could have been told differently, because it was clear Jonathan only had a few supporters on the jury (the three who voted for him), and that jury numbered a whopping 11 people total this season. Without some viable third option creating a plurality vs. Aubry in the finals, there was no real path to the win for Jonathan. His only real shot, as the finale edit admitted, was against Rizo and Joe, and that was off the table when the final immunity challenge ended. Oh well.

Aubry's win

Aubry was a clear fan favorite in S32: Kaoh Rong, and the fandom is STILL debating Michele's win over her in that season (in the comment section of this very site, even). So it's nice that Aubry finally achieved closure for that, and had a chance to thank Michele for the lessons learned, which factored into Aubry's endgame this season. Aubry's description during the finale of her overall approach to the season (staying under the radar early, playing hard at the end) certainly tracked with the results. It's a pity she really wasn't shown much in the early going, except as a foil for Genevieve (a storyline that fizzled out in the "Blood Moon" twist), and as the beneficiary of Christian's Billie Eilish Boomerang idol (a storyline that fizzled out when she was forced to play it the episode after that).

Looking at Aubry's season results, it's not *terribly* surprising that she basically followed the same path Michele did to the end in Kaoh Rong: Aubry never attended Tribal in the pre-merge, just like Michele. She won the final immunity challenge, as did Michele. But unlike Michele, S50 Aubry was working from the bottom the entire game. She never really had a solid alliance with anyone. She connected with Tiffany at the swap, but they were foes by the finale. She was working with Jonathan, but he wanted her out of the game. Christian gave her an idol! But then she helped vote Christian out (to be fair, so did Christian). Through most of her post-merge twists and turns, we were never really given Aubry's thinking about her changing fortunes, at least not until the Ozzy vote. It's an odd choice for a winner's edit. But she came away with a $2 million prize and a new car, so who cares about the edit, right?

It's possible the edit undersold Aubry's game not because she didn't talk about it, but because the people crafting the story were more interested in highlighting big-name returning players who were playing bigger games, which is perfectly valid. It's an all-returning player season, we know all these people and their past history with the show already. Still, it felt like something was missing from Aubry's story specifically. I dunno, maybe it'll feel different on rewatch.

Jonathan's loss

To be fair, for most of this season I was convinced by editing clues that somehow, Jonathan was going to win. The signs included his constant jabbering about his "improved" gameplay in the pre-merge, despite only attending Tribal once, then various foreshadowy segments in the postmerge, as detailed the last couple of weeks. But by last week, the only way I could see that happening was if Tiffany and Aubry *both* left the game at F5 and F4, in some order. And clearly, that didn't happen. And since filming wrapped a year ago, Jonathan knew it didn't happen.

So it's a bit weird to hear that Jonathan was apparently shocked by the jury vote result as it was read live (much as Russell Hantz was in S19: Samoa). His exit interviews bewail a "bitter" jury, and he can't figure out what he could have done differently. He chalks Aubry's win up to some unfair past-performance considerations, because she's a four-time player. He seems disappointed that training with his hero Boston Rob for four years resulted merely in a disappointing second-place finish. Perhaps someone should let Jonathan know where Boston Rob finished the second time he played?

Well, Jonathan, I'm here to help. (Boston Rob finished second.) Also, perhaps the person who best summarized the threat that Aubry posed to Jonathan's game was ... you guessed it, Final 5-era Jonathan himself, in a confessional: "Aubry, she's like an underdog story for the century. You have someone that's fought against everybody, going back and forth to make it to the final three? These are HUGE plot points to talk about at the end of the game."

In contrast, Jonathan basically had a free pass to the merge, because he's a big strong guy, a benefit that definitely did not fall to Aubry. Aubry was a pariah on her first tribe AND swapped tribe, and would have been the first boot from either, but never went to Tribal (thanks to production for having single boots for the first four episodes). At the "Blood Moon" RC/IC, big strong Jonathan was hilariously carried to the Applebees reward by four women (one of them Tiffany), who all outlasted him. His first individual immunity win was the result of a disqualification (of Tiffany), and for his second necklace, he beat Tiffany by about a second. So much for Jonathan's allegedly overwhelming challenge prowess.

Aside from that, I didn't care for Jonathan's alleged "improved" game. He was still extremely short-tempered with Devens when Rick pulled off his fake idol "find." He did a solid job of pretending to be working closely with Kamilla and Dee, then voting them out in retaliation for the Charlie boot, sure. But he was also extremely hypocritical about it, calling them both snakes, while he was the noble hero exacting revenge. It's pretty clear he thinks he should have won because he's a man, and that a woman should not be able to beat a man. His core alliances were all with men, and Tiffany reportedly asked him directly why he was trying to get her out as "a threat," when she and Joe had the same number of immunity wins, and he told her it was because she was a "girl." (In the pre-Final 5 IC segment, he said it was more because she had "a lot of friends" on the jury ... so why not say that, instead? Even if you ARE a misogynist, why state that publicly in a social-strategic game? Are you really as dumb as Russell Hantz? Are you aware that Russell Hantz also lost a jury vote, twice?)

Jonathan's loss and his sore-loser postgame performance also taints the people who were openly stumping for him at Final Tribal. To be fair, Stephenie had no reputation to lose. She was exposed as a small-minded, self-absorbed bigot in S11: Guatemala, long before her drunken anti-Semitic rant about Eliza before this season started streaming. (Frankly, the show should have had much better judgment than to try to polish her image at the reunion.) But for me, the biggest reputation hit went to Chrissy. Her female S35: HvHvH castmates were fairly consistent in describing Chrissy as anti-women. But there was always at least some plausible deniability. Some of the more vocal people (Roark, Ali) had been blindsided by Chrissy. Maybe they misinterpreted gameplay as personal animus? Chrissy said she got along well with Ashley. (I'm not sure that Ashley ever confirmed or denied that.) But here, where her main contribution to the season was fiercely advocating for Jonathan, of all people, at Final Tribal? Against Aubry? I guess it makes sense that Chrissy moved to The Villages, a hotbed of MAGA retirees in Florida. Hopefully we've seen the last of both of them, and of Jonathan.

Classic challenges vs. new elements

During finale week, Ben Rosenstock had an enlightening Time article with key challenge department leaders John Kirhoffer and Chris Marchand, plus some input from Jeff Probst. Good article, a few surprises, like Kirhoffer's quote, "I don’t pitch anything that goes more than an hour anymore." But a good glimpse into the day-to-day thinking of the people who design and build the challenges.

Jeff Probst sounded very proud of the brand-new "Survivor fishing pole" element (note: not a Superpole 2000, sadly) in his pre-challenge spiel for the F5 IC. It was ... fine, I guess? The problem is that it was the one new thing in a challenge that was otherwise all rerun parts of an obstacle course, and those types of challenges are basically every other challenge. It lasted for (being charitable here) around a minute, in a 10-minute challenge in a three-hour episode. In the olden days, an entirely new challenge (or even an old classic that's not a static obstacle course) could hold your attention for 5-10 minutes of an hour-long episode. I don't know why the challenge department has decided that making micro-adjustments to things the audience already finds boring is what they do now (especially when it was revealed the previous season's "exciting new" elements - teeter-tubes, pulling discs off a slotted pole - were borrowed from other international versions).

Then again, if "40%, a majority [sic.]" of fans allegedly want to see the same F4 IC every season, why would production bother changing anything? (Also, please can someone tell Jeff Probst what a plurality is over the offseason? Maybe he'll be excited about plurality votes then?)

Anyway, I understand that with Survivor always in the same location now, a lot of recent challenge apparati are kept around in a holding pen on-site, so it's easier just to re-use them, rather than building something from scratch. But I'm arguing Survivor has been around for 50 seasons now, and has a massive back-catalog of challenges that, while they may not still have the pieces sitting around, they could at least dust off some of the old classics for more variety. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. There are lots of fun challenges they *could* bring back:

"Dragged Through the Mud" - If there's one thing the new era (now the oh-so-different "open era") loved, it was coating players in mud. If there's another, it's brute force challenges. The Ep2 IC in S11: Guatemala combined the two much more organically than "Here's an obstacle with mud, everyone has to go through it." True, this might not seem particularly fair with production-picked tribes, but it would work fine for a separate reward challenge, perhaps not immunity. Or it could make a great post-merge RC with schoolyard-picked teams.

Survivor Trivia - The closest we've come to this since way back in season 16, Micronesia, is Hunter's S46 journey task where he had to sort season logos into chronological order. That seemed incredibly easy to me, as someone who's watched and run a website from the start, but I can see the difficulty for someone who came in somewhere in the middle and binged a bunch of seasons out of order. So why not turn it into a full challenge? Sorting logos could easily be an end task in a challenge, or it could be combined with arranging winner's pictures, or you could have winners represent numbers for a combo lock, or ... whatever! With so many "superfans" (allegedly) nowadays, it seems a waste to not put their knowledge to the test. (Especially if the token old person, who I would be, has an advantage?)

"Hot Pursuit" ... on dry land - In the Time article, John Kirhoffer mentioned they really want to do Hot Pursuit again, but Fiji's choppy waters and lack of knee-deep lagoons bars them from that luxury. Well ... Survivor solved that problem 33 seasons ago, by just doing it on dry land. I don't see a reason why it couldn't be done again.

Blindfolded mazes - In that same article, the challenge team also noted that they loved their mazes, but they take a long time to build, they don't have the large flat areas to build them, and the construction requires a lot of manpower. To that I say: Add blindfolds! You don't need a gigantic footprint if the players are blindfolded, as they were in the F5 IC from S30: Worlds Apart (also the F4 IC in S20: HvV). I love making excuses as much as the next person, but they're generally just a shield for not wanting to actually try (or just not remembering).

Alternatively, if "not enough physical space" really is a barrier, I will always maintain that the S9: Vanuatu F4 IC's vertical maze (above) is one of the coolest-looking challenges ever built, and it neatly solves that problem.

Looking ahead to the 'open era'

The preview for Survivor 51 featured two very welcome changes: An actual marooning (!) and two starting tribes! ("This is huge! I needed this!") But also one very worrisome shot across the bow for anyone who didn't love the "bullshit twist of the week" feel of the S50 post-merge, as Jeff Probst narrates it: "For the first time ever, our entire history - every advantage, every idol, every twist we've ever done - 50 seasons of Survivor is in play." This is apparently what separates the "new era" from the (new new) "open era": more twists, somehow. The missing theme from the season appears to be "Oops, all twists."

That could work out to be either really fun and exciting, or the second season in a row where production's entire goal seems to be to stifle player-generated moves, intentionally blocking any long-term strategizing. Keeping them off-balance, or to use Probst's new favorite word, "uncertain" enough, that they can't plan something in the morning then have it happen that night. Although the preview itself contains a twist that looks a lot like one of two possible from the show's ancient past, or as Brady the pro wrestler says, almost "back to the single digies! [sic.]"

Is having every advantage, idol, and twist a good thing? Do we really need another edition of Redemption Island/Edge of Extinction? (With 21 contestants, hopefully we can avoid that.) Are we getting another Ghost Island? The vaunted return of the Medallion of Power? Super-powered idols, like in S12: Panama, S13: Cook Islands and S28: Cagayan? The hourglass and Do or Die, again? I dunno, man. There are a lot of twists and advantages that were wisely retired because they didn't work, or because they were overpowered, or massive time sinks that gave unfair advantages to one person (RI/EoE).

(The rest of this section contains speculation/observations that are fairly obvious if you've looked through the preview carefully, but if you want to stay spoiler-free, please skip ahead to the comments, and have a great summer/offseason.)

The first big question for the season: How do you have two tribes with 21 players? Well, again, if you think back almost to the single digits, there are two existing ways: The S10: Palau way, or the S14: Fiji way. Both involved no tribes at the beginning, with the selection of tribes a day or three into the season, before the first big challenge. And we indeed (as The Grim Recapper first pointed out to me on Bluesky) see people jumping off the boat on Day 1 with no buffs, while there are just two tribes (yellow is Toka, purple is Savu) competing in what's probably the Ep1 IC - dumping sawdust on themselves, going in blindfolded/sighted pairs over the tipping net that snapped Missy's ankle in S29: San Juan del Sur, because who doesn't love a medevac in the premiere? It's unclear if the 21st person is just cut immediately, or is exiled (as in Fiji), but given that there was an Ep1 exile in S50, I'm guessing the latter - I also count 11 people wearing one tribe's buffs in one scene or another, so either it's 11 vs. 10 to start with (highly unlikely), or someone joins that tribe in the second episode.

If it is an opening exile, that raises the possibility that production was so excited about hardly booting anyone in the S50 pre-merge, they're doing it again in S51. If there's an Ep1 exile, we'll start Ep2 with 20 players left, more than any season that wasn't S50. And unlike In the Hands of the Fans, we won't have the option of one winning tribe/ two losing tribes that each must vote someone out in the (early) pre-merge. (I would assume we'll swap to three tribes at 18 or so, which would open that chance back up.) Note that the S51 cast would have seen the "Blood Moon" twist before they left for filming, but otherwise are in the dark about things like "Double Duos" (ugh), "One in the Urn," and the MrBeast coin flip. (The celebrity-attached twists can't be recurring things, can they?)

Still, I'm not willing to write S51 completely off yet. It's possible that the show realized that twist after twist in the S50 post-merge impeded gameplay, rather than enhanced it. (Nothing Jeff Probst has said in the last six months would suggest that, but he also never admits to a design flaw in a season while it's airing.) I'm certainly not holding my breath, though, either. That just leads to suffocation, which is what the producers tried to do to the game this season. No thanks.