Survivor: Game Changers season finale synopsis: “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished”

“No Good Deed Goes Unpunished” is a rather interesting title for the Survivor: Game Changers finale, but it’s not a new sentiment for the game.

Survivor has to pull together three eliminations, a final Tribal Council, and probably some interpersonal drama in two hours (with commercials) for the Game Changers finale. That’s rather a lot. Of course, it just aired a double elimination episode in one hour this week, so it’s not that much of a tall order in that respect.

But without further ado, let’s take a look at the CBS synopsis for “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished”:

"“A historic tribal council takes a shocking turn on one unsuspecting castaway. Then, after a game changing season, one castaway will be crowned sole Survivor and awarded the $1 million dollar prize, on the two-hour season finale, followed by the one-hour live reunion show hosted by Emmy Award winner Jeff Probst, on SURVIVOR, Wednesday, May 24 (8:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.”"

At its core, as Jeff Probst noted in the previous episode, Survivor is a game of deception. It does generally require a player to tell a lie or two, to use someone and then abandon them, and it does not always reward doing someone else a favor. Troyzan sort of picked up on this idea as well. So, which of these experienced Survivor players is going to say something like this?

Just based on the events of the last episode, the obvious guess is Sarah. If you’ll recall, she gave her vote-steal advantage to Cirie as a way to cement her trust. Cirie then proceeded to try and use that advantage. It did not work, but she had to do it openly, which means Sarah now knows about it. Survivor has had episode names come out early in recent episodes. A post-Tribal confessional from Sarah seems like a perfect time for her to utter the words.

However, that brings us back to our initial point. There will be a lot of talking in this season finale. There usually is. In fact, the Final Tribal practically requires it. If you don’t speak well, you probably lose votes. As that synopsis helpfully adds (even after 34 seasons!), this game does reward its winners with a million dollars. Of course, the finalists are going on 39 days of not much to eat and little sleep — another running point Probst has reiterated a few times through the recent episodes. In other words, talking may become rather difficult.

But two of the remaining six have been there before. Granted, neither Tai nor Aubry actually won, and you can argue that for Aubry, at least, the case she made didn’t quite fit the jury she had.

Right now, there are players on the jury that might value different things. It could be tough to see a jury sweep here. Then again, who knows? Someone may manage to pull it all together and receive those 10 votes.

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Survivor: Game Changers will air its season finale next week Wednesday.