Survivor Winners at War Retrospective

The superbowl season of survivor has come to a close all too soon and now it's time to take a look back. This season left me with some mixed feelings. On one hand, it had the best cast in the history of survivor. On the other hand, there are so many "what if" questions that left me wanting more.

The Good

It was an absolute treat to see all of these players take a shot at the throne. Having Parvati and Boston Rob on the same beach as Jeremy and Tony still blows my mind. I also really enjoyed seeing some of the new school players take their chance to cement themselves as legends. Standouts to me are Sophie who blew me away with her game sense and Michele who cleared any doubts about her win in Kaoh Rong.

The pre-merge certainly delivered those character moments we were clammering for. Boston Rob schooling Ben in the premiere, Parvati and Michele forming an alliance, Tonys ladder, Yul being the king he is. In my opinion the content we were given in the pre-merge was near perfect.

This season also didn't dissapoint with the humour, a ton of iconic moments came from this season. Adam playing the podium idol, everything Tony did, Cops R' Us firemaking challenge, you could probably pick a moment from each episode.

And it would be a mistake if I didn't mention that this season had one of the most dominating performances in Survivor history and it came from the player that had one of the biggest targets going in. Tony is without a doubt the best Survivor ever.

The Bad

The massacre of old school survivor certainly left a bad taste in my mouth. I would have liked to see some of the more iconic players last longer. There's probably another timeline where Parvati and Yul made the merge and I wish I lived there.

The editing was straight up bad in some episodes. Why was nobody afraid of Tony? Why did Sarah think she could beat Tony? How did Denise and Ben get so close? At the Tyson vote the new alliances seemingly come out of nowwhere and it leads to unsatisfying TV.

A side effect that comes with Tonys dominating win is that too much of the post merge felt like The Tony Vlachos Show. Content for other great characters such as Nick, Kim and Denise was cut to flesh out Tony. This felt the most heavy handed with my boy Nick. He was made to look like a fool when I know he was strategizing and scrambelling with the best of them.

The Twists

The unfortunate thing about Winners at War is that it might become an example for how terribly twist heavy Survivor is. First of all, Edge of Extinction sucks. Give Nick confessionals explaining his game instead of losers eating peanut butter (unless it's Parvati).

Fire tokens were less annoying than EoE and I could see them being refined into a better state. The most disappointing part about fire tokens is they never resulted in anything. Near the end everyone had a stockpile of tokens and then Probst was like "It's the last day to use them btw haha" and that was it? Nick had 6 fire tokens at that point and he probably thought he would be able to buy in idol with them.

The most agregious mistake made during Winners at War that ruined the entire season was by far the tribe swap. I can not wrap my head around switching from two tribes to three. JUST SWAP THE TRIBES WITHOUT MAKING A THIRD NEW ONE. Production actively put huge targets into terrible positions.

Lets analyze how the swap played out. Boston Rob gets swapped into a tribe with no allies and immediately gets voted out. Parvati and Yul get swapped into a tribe with the pre-game alliance of Wendell, Nick, and Michelle, so they stood 0 chance. And if Sandra didn't give up her idol to Denise it was probably Tony that goes home that vote instead of her.

Now imagine that Yara never existed. These big threats are still big threats but instead of tribes of five, they would be in tribes of eight. That is either three more people to hide behind or three more potential allies. That gives so much more room to maneuver and would have lead to more dynamic gameplay. End rant.

At the end of the day, holding on to "what ifs" is not a constructive way to look at a season. Objectively looking at the season that we got on TV, Winners at War was pretty darn good, at least a top three season. The pre-merge was the story of old school survivor and the post-merge was the story of Tony. This is definitely a season that will hold up on a rewatch due to the amazing characters and satisfying winner.