Making moves is a necessary part of playing Survivor. The catch is that the more moves a player makes, the bigger target they tend to have on their back. The paradoxical relationship makes it impressive (albeit boring) when dominant players are able to maintain control for the duration of a season and leave little doubt in the mind of the jury about who should win. What I find more impressive are players that are able to sway jurors to their side with carefully crafted arguments and well-constructed narratives. The Final Tribal Council is not about what a player did in the game; it’s about what a player can convince a jury that they did in the game.
I’ve seen a lot of discussion online this week about whether Linnea’s exit was Maggie’s move or Kilby’s move. I think there are valid points to both sides. Kilby wouldn’t have been in a position to make a move if Maggie hadn’t chosen to go to the Dina Tribe and give up her personal Extra Vote. Even after she did all of that, Kilby still had to be the one to pull the trigger, lest all of Maggie’s efforts be for naught. If either of them make it to the end I think this move is likely to be a point they try to work in their favor. If both Maggie and Kilby make it to the end together then the player that is able to take credit for it most effectively will have a leg up on the other in this regard.
One of the most discussed examples of this occurring historically in Survivor is Todd Herzog’s win over Amanda Kimmel in Survivor: China, specifically regarding the blindside of James Clement with two hidden immunity idols in his pocket at the Final 7. Amanda spearheaded the plan to blindside James, notably having to pressure and reassure a hesitant and nervous Todd to make the move. Their roles were reversed at the Final Tribal Council when Amanda became defensive and apologetic to the jury for the moves she made, leaving all of the credit on the table. Todd was more than happy to pick it up and aggressively assert his influence on the game to effectively take credit for the move.
A more recent example is Maryanne Oketch’s masterclass performance at the Final Tribal Council of Survivor 42. She successfully utilized the shock factor of her unplayed hidden immunity idol, famously referring to it as “the only secret kept in this game”, but the true brilliance of the revelation was her ability to seamlessly weave its existence into the narrative of Omar Zaheer’s blindside at the Final 6. Although fellow finalist Mike Turner didn’t vote for Omar at the Final 6 Tribal Council, he was shown to be actively targeting Omar during that cycle with his ally Jonathan Young. Mike and Jonathan got cold feet after Lindsay Dolashewich won immunity, fearing that she would play her amulet on Omar, and they instead voted for Romeo Escobar. However, this is a situation where Mike had the potential to claim that he influenced Maryanne to vote for Omar and take credit for the move, as he and Jonathan were shown to be the first ones to discuss it and loop in Maryanne. While Mike’s claim to the credit wasn’t as strong as Amanda’s, the opportunity to take it was on the table and it was an argument he failed to make.
This desire to take credit for moves stems, at least partially, from one of my least favorite jury questions of all time: What move did you make that was your’s and your’s alone? I’m of the mindset that almost every move in Survivor is inherently a collaborative agreement, with the exception of an X-1 idol play or a sole vote at the Final 3 in a season with only two finalists. Every other circumstance has multiple people involved because Survivor is a game of majority rules. I think the better question, and perhaps what those jurors are actually attempting to ask, is: What move did you make that benefitted you more than it benefitted anyone else? Being able to answer this question is of the utmost importance because failure to coherently explain your strategy can leave a jury feeling that you ended their shot at winning the game without a good reason. The importance increases exponentially when sitting next to a close ally at the end because the line of questioning from a jury often ends up investigating who to give credit to if players have the same voting record.
I think Maggie and Lewis both have a stronger claim that this move benefitted them than Kilby does. The benefits to Lewis are obvious: If Kilby doesn’t use the Extra Vote to force a tie then Lewis goes home. If Lewis gets to the end then I think he has a good case that he had to make Kilby feel so good about his relationship with Lewis that it was worth risking his own life in the game to ensure that Lewis also stayed. Had the OG Savu majority stuck to their guns then there was a 25% chance that Kilby would have drawn the bad rock and gone home at a Tribal Council where his name was never written down.
Maggie has less defined benefits than Lewis, but still has a good case to make if she gets to the end. Should she make it to the Final Tribal Council with Kilby then her pitch becomes that she was able to get out her intended target without taking as much heat for it as Kilby inevitably will in the fallout after Linnea’s exit. She can assert that Kilby did her dirty work and took the blame for it in the game while she’s taking credit for it in the end. Maggie did have some things to lose in the Extra Vote at a Tribal Council she wasn’t attending and potentially Brady’s trust, though that was already on thin ice, but the relative risk to her overall position was much lower than the risk that Kilby took on.
I have always been, and will always be, #TeamTV. As soon as the Alliance Builder Extra Vote was revealed I was craving the opportunity for a messy Tribal Council and I made multiple tweets both imploring Kilby to make the move and celebrating when he eventually did. It made for a fantastic television viewing experience. All of that said, I don’t think this was an optimal move for Kilby for the exact same reason I don’t fault Sharonda, Christian, or Eric for not going to rocks: You never know what tomorrow will bring in the game of Survivor.
There is a possibility that Lewis will end up being the number that Kilby needs at some point down the line to save him and propel him to a win. There is also a possibility that the players will swap to new tribes or merge. If the players stay in their current tribe configurations for another cycle and the Dina Tribe loses another immunity challenge I think there is a high likelihood that Kilby has angered Sharonda, Christian, and Eric enough to vote him out instead of Lewis. If there is a swap or a merge then Kilby now has three more people who don’t trust him to do what he says he will do. The potential to upset Maggie by not using the Extra Vote also existed, but I think the fallout from that hypothetical is far less damaging to Kilby’s reputation and far easier to explain his way out of.
There are no right or wrong moves in Survivor, just moves that end up working and moves that don’t. Players that make it to the end did something right, but players that win know what they did right and how to spin what they did wrong in a positive light. There is a very fine line between taking credit for a move at the Final Tribal Council and taking blame for a move that ends your game. The player that can best position themself to avoid the blame and take the credit will be the one who takes home at least a million dollars.