What’s Sandra Diaz-Twine’s Legacy After Survivor: Game Changers?

We won’t have a three-time winner of Survivor after Game Changers, but nor will we have another two-time winner, either, and that may be Sandra’s legacy.

In Survivor: Pearl Islands, Jeff Probst cheerfully called Sandra Diaz-Twine “the lippiest mother we’ve ever had on the show. Somehow, after roughly 33 1/2 seasons, she probably still has the title. Here we are, sitting a few days after we saw Probst finally get to douse her torch for the first time ever on her third try at the game.

Now, it may disappoint fans that Sandra won’t sit at a third Final Tribal Council and make her case. (I certainly am, speaking as someone who remembers Pearl Islands fondly.) As we noted in our breakdown of her elimination, she beat the other two winners there and nearly made it halfway through the game. That’s pretty impressive, considering that Tony Vlachos started targeting her at the very beginning of the game. J.T. Thomas tried to vote her out, too, and yet both went home before she did. They came, they missed, she conquered. As she always ends her voting confessionals, adios.

And in that, isn’t there something to be celebrated? The queen of Survivor will stay the queen of Survivor as the only two-time winner of the game. Will anyone ever replicate that? Well, we know that Survivor has at least two more seasons, but reports indicate that both will only have new players. In other words, there won’t even be a risk until season 37 at the very earliest.

Sandra plays loyally, but she also knows when to cut an alliance mate like Rupert Boneham. That’s how she won Pearl Islands. She has no patience for those who won’t take chances when she offers them. That’s how she won Heroes vs. Villains. Her game may not be easy to repeat, and savvy players going forward probably know better than to let someone like her go forward.

Will she play a fourth time? No winner has come back again for a fourth shot at the game after winning. Rob Mariano won on his fourth shot, so that doesn’t count. Tina Wesson played twice more after Australia. So, no one else quite comes close to Sandra in that respect, either, though there are other winners who played again after their wins. She may come back once more, several seasons down the road, but does Sandra want to come back and play?

That may be the only thing stopping her. If she does return, though, she might not even make it to Day 16.

Honestly, for that reason, it may be best for her to perhaps quit while she’s ahead. Why risk ruining her pretty-fine record as a player of Survivor? But that prompts another question. If Sandra did something like quit, would she still be Sandra? To the very end of her run on Game Changers, she did her best to try and ouster Tai Trang, even letting him believe she would vote for Ozzy Lusth while appealing to others to vote Tai out with her.

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Either way, if the queen of Survivor ever does make her return to the game, we expect her to be just as much fun and just as willing to vote anyone out, in her words, “as long as it ain’t me.”