Advantages have gotten a great deal of attention in the last decade on Survivor, but no matter how many new twists and turns are added into the game, there is one thing that will never change-- having a close ally that one can truly trust is far more powerful than any advantage. It is no coincidence that other than Sandra Diaz-Twine, who is also still the only person who has ever won the game on her first two attempts, the players who managed to win the game a second time did so while playing with a trusted friend from their real life. When Tony Vlachos tried to return to the game without Sarah Lacina standing loyally by his side, he was very easily and quickly ousted by Sandra. While Parvati Shallow has fared much better overall without her loyal ally and friend Cirie Fields, she's had to depend on her challenge strength to survive much more without her, and failed to persuade the Heroes vs Villains jury to vote for her without Cirie present to advocate on her behalf. Even a player like J.T. Thomas, whose win is considered by many to be one of the strongest in the show's history, technically playing the first ever "perfect game" by receiving every jury vote, without having a vote cast against him all season, floundered every time he came back without Stephen Fishbach by his side.
Even the wisest of people typically consult with trusted friends and family before making difficult decisions in the real world-- arguably, their wisdom lies in the knowledge that added perspective is always beneficial, no matter how intelligent one is. On Survivor, the contestants are eating little to no food, often getting very little sleep, and living in extremely stressful and paranoia-inducing circumstances, all of which would very severely impact any person's decision making skills. Having a smart person to use as a sounding board is the greatest defense against poor decision making, but the game makes it incredibly difficult to find a person one can be that candid with by design, giving a huge advantage to those in the game who are able to find someone they can trust despite the circumstances.
An idol is a great advantage to have in the game that can give new life to a player who otherwise would have been voted out. Mike Holloway, Jeremy Collins, Ben Driebergen, Chris Underwood, Rachel LaMont, and Kyle Fraser all went on to win the game after successfully saving themselves with an idol (or multiple, in Ben's case). Yul Kwon and Tony Vlachos were able to keep votes off themselves by leveraging their especially powerful idols, which could only be played after the vote, rendering them immune to a blindside, and Mike Gabler was able to survive his first tribal council by telling his tribe that he was going to play his idol, which he could only use at one of his first two tribal councils. But correctly playing an idol and then managing to get the target off of one's back to avoid receiving the majority of the votes again at the following tribal is much easier said than done. Even just of the winners alone, all of those who needed an idol to protect themselves against a majority vote after the merge had to continue to save themselves with idols and challenge wins to get to the end-- if the other players had the option of voting out Mike, Ben, Chris, or Rachel, they were taking it, and while it is undeniably impressive when players continue to win challenges with their backs against the wall, without knowing which challenge will come next, and what strengths it will favor, it is never an ideal scenario for a player to have to rely on them to continue on in the game. Incredibly impressive winners like Sandra and J.T. have given away idols as strategic gambles that led directly to their demise, and Sophie Clarke got voted off with one in her pocket. Kelley Wentworth, who successfully saved herself twice with idols on her second season, was blindsided with an idol in her pocket when she came back to play a third time. As we saw in this week's episode, there was a blindside brewing against Kristin Flickinger, and it was her relationships that saved her, rather than an advantage.
While there are some players who played an idol successfully and went on to win the game, many more still get voted out, never end up needing their idol, play one when they don't need it, or go home with one in their pocket. Especially in an era where the shot-in-the-dark advantage very strongly incentivizes players to blindside their target for all but two votes in the game (final seven is typically the last time when a shot-in-the-dark can be played, while final five is typically the last opportunity to play an idol), it is especially hard to perfectly execute an idol play. Many of the most iconic idol plays in the show's history happened in part because the player with an idol (who was wise enough to keep it a secret) knew that they were the target that night. When players have to guess which person the other side voted for, even some of the best of the best get it wrong-- as seen during the famous merge vote of Survivor Cagayan, Tony and LJ McKanas both played their idols on each other, only for their smiles to fall when they learned that the opposing alliance chose to vote for Jefra Bland instead-- they survived the vote with their alliance intact not because of their idols, but because Trish Hegarty put in the work to convince Kass McQuillen to flip to their side, giving them the majority. A well executed idol play is certainly possible, and can be parlayed into a win, but much more often, things do not go as planned.
Depending heavily on a close trusted ally or alliance still leaves room for things to go wrong, but it is often a risk worth betting on, as even the best of the best inevitably falter when they have to act as independent agents in the game. For years, many fans have even discussed the strategy of doing what is called the "intentional Matsing" or losing on purpose to build trust with one's remaining ally or two, and lower one's threat level going into the merge, in honor of the Matsing tribe of Survivor Phillipines, who lost the first four immunity challenges, getting down to only two people on their tribe-- Malcolm Freberg, and Denise Stapley, who managed to survive all the way to final four despite being severely outmatched. Similarly, J.T., Stephen Fishbach, and Taj Johnson-George made it to the final four of Survivor Tocantins despite being completely outnumbered at the merge, and Natalie White, Russell Hantz, Mick Trimming, and Jaison Robinson made it to the final five the following season, Samoa, despite being similarly outmatched.
Survivor is a game of majority rule, but we see season after season that a small group of people who really trust each other often become the power nucleus of the season, even when they are outnumbered by players from less cohesive tribes. And with only Sharonda Cox, Kristin Flickinger, Cristian Chavez, and Eric Macksoud remaining of the original Savu tribe's alliance this season (excluding Carter Krull, who chose to mutiny, and voted against them at the merge), and no clear fractures within the group, they are potentially in a very good position to run the game. But, as the one member of the alliance who was on a different swap tribe for the second half of the pre-merge phase of the game, Kristin could be at a serious disadvantage within the group, as she had much less time with them than they had with each other, making an opportunity to build trust and grow a tighter bond with another member of the alliance extremely valuable.
Choosing to tell Sharonda about the true power of her idol was certainly a calculated risk, but the conditions of Kristin's idol and how she chose to mitigate them made it a much safer choice. Because the idol can only be used by Kristin on Sharonda for as long as Sharonda remains in the game, Sharonda has no incentive to vote her out, and every incentive to keep her in the game, and giving her the idol eliminates any chance Kristin would have to vote her out to keep the idol for herself. And the final twist that the tethered idol becomes a regular, fully powered one if both of the tethers are voted out of the game is extremely obvious-- so much so that I separately came to the conclusion that it should become a fully powered idol once the tethers are gone, and took to social media to say as much, before being informed that it did exactly-- I just missed the part of the episode where Kristin was informed of the final twist and explained it to the audience (I must have been too busy tweeting about how absurd it was that it took the show so many years to cast Kristin on the show). But if I came to that conclusion at home without giving it much thought, then surely intelligent players in a game designed to make them question every bit of information they received would have eventually at least considered the possibility that there was more to the idol than what they were initially told, and Kristin being forthcoming with that information reassures Sharonda that she doesn't have to worry about any unknown elements of the power the idol holds. Of course, giving Sharonda the idol does leave room for the possibility that Kristin will be blindsided with it in her pocket, leaving her without her idol or her ally, but if that does happen down the line, from what we have seen so far about how threatening some of the other players find her to be, an idol would likely only get her one round further in the game anyway.
Sharonda is not just another number in the game. She is intelligent, level headed, has a lot of social capital in the game, and has yet to show any signs of being a chaotic, disloyal player. For those reasons, locking her in as a tight duo would be extremely advantageous for Kristin's game, and giving Sharonda all the information as well as giving away possession of the one incentive Kristin had to betray her gives Sharonda as much certainty as she could have in the game about Kristin's commitment to playing with her, making a compelling case for her to take the alliance as seriously as Kristin appears to be, which is exactly what Kristin needs at this point in the game. While we heard very limited reasoning behind Jelly Loblack and Devin Way's decision to flip with Mike Pinsky to the original Savu tribe over their former Toka tribe mates, their helicopter alliance with Sharonda was presumably a major factor in that, which ultimately saved Kristin this round, as Mike's attempt to flip Kristin's vote on his own did not go particularly well. Having Sharonda as a close trusted ally in the game insulates Kristin in the game far more than an idol ever could, and as of now, Sharonda has no reason to flip against her. It is a mutually beneficial relationship, at least for the time being, which is the closest to a sure thing that a person can have in the game without having a close personal relationship that formed before the game started.
Whether the move will work out for her remains to be seen, but with the information Kristin has in the game, and as a superfan who is well versed in the history of the show, the decision she made to disclose the full details of her idol to Sharonda was the most logical choice for her to make considering her position in the game. An idol may provide brief certainty and a guarantee of safety in the game, but only briefly so, and if one does not want to rely too heavily on luck in the game, a tight alliance provides more stability in the game than an idol ever could. It may have been a calculated risk with a chance of backfiring on her, but all factors considered, in the words of Adam Klein, "it was worth a shot."