Survivor Game Changers: Why Maku Maku voted Sierra out
Survivor: Game Changers’ twelfth elimination didn’t come as much of a surprise, but how it worked out was a little less expected.
Sierra Dawn-Thomas knew she was in trouble on last night’s episode of Survivor: Game Changers. In fact, by scrambling to save herself, she effectively helped her elimination along. Let’s break down how and why that happened.
No matter what Sierra tried to do, she was a target as a leader of a competing alliance. As we saw at the very top of the episode, Andrea, Cirie, Sarah, and Michaela all agreed that the next to go would be Brad or Sierra. However, Sarah had a connection with Sierra, and the latter tried to play on it by sharing information.
Telling someone a secret in Survivor tends to be a risky move. On the one hand, it increases trust between the two players. On the other, once the secret’s out, whoever knows it can use it to their own advantage. This is effectively what Sarah did, and she correctly read who to tell it to: Michaela. (Then again, picking up on Michaela’s dissatisfaction wasn’t particularly hard at the reward challenge.) In this regard, Sarah got the positive benefit from sharing information. It may make working with Michaela and securing her and Tai’s votes much easier in the future.
Key among her other moves that led to Sierra’s elimination was voting for Tai (and subsequently admitting to it). That also came out right after the previous Tribal Council, reducing her alliance to three members already. Michaela then pulled Tai in, making them a strategic pair — and the fifth and sixth votes needed to oust Sierra. That brings us back to Sarah’s work with Michaela revolving around the existence of the Legacy Advantage.
With those two moves in mind, Sierra gets some credit for her own elimination. Although she tried to flip Sarah back, it backfired on her. Additionally, doing a little more to assuage Tai’s concerns the very night it came out that she’d voted for him may have helped secure the alliance again.
Additionally, Andrea and Cirie had a hand in the vote, since the two of them picked Sierra as the target. Ditto with Michaela and Tai voting that way, obviously. However, Sarah ended up doing the lion’s share of the work, and also reaped the most benefit from it by getting Sierra to give her the Legacy Advantage to boot. She now sits in a powerful position with immunity at the final six and a vote steal that works through the final five. She has also adeptly worked with multiple groups through the season.
Next: Sierra at Ponderosa (video)
It’s now just a matter of getting to places where she can put her advantages to use.