Our first impression of Roark Luskin is that if she controls a few things, she might go far in Survivor season 35, and that includes her snark.
Anyone who namechecks Courtney Yates in the context of personality on Survivor sounds like the kind of person we want to watch, and Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers has Roark Luskin not only namechecking Courtney in her cast bio, but also namechecking a winner that you don’t hear namechecked often: Sophie Clarke, South Pacific‘s eventual Sole Survivor.
Now, that might seem like a strange combination, but she also flat-out says she’s “sarcastic” in the “three words” answer, so that tells you a lot right there. The overall feeling here is that if she can be snarky and funny to the right people at the right time, that could earn her some likability points in the social game.
Additionally, to name Sophie as someone she thinks she’s like speaks to someone who has studied the game. The question there is whether she’s over-studied and might try to go too far, too fast.
However, she appears cognizant of that issue in her cast video from CBS. Okay, frog-boiling is not the metaphor I was expecting (and a quick peek at the comments on YouTube show that it’s getting some questionable reactions), but it’s a pretty apt one. It seems to imply she wants to try an under-the-radar game.
However, then you get to hear her talking about how she’s okay with being called bossy. The two seem to suggest that she might try and be part of the leadership — maybe not the sole leader or the obvious leader — of an alliance, and possibly even form suballiances for that lowkey game where she can turn the heat up at a moment’s notice. The bossiness is something she’ll need to keep in check, however, but she does identify that as a potential problem when she talks about “correcting.”
Check the video out below:
What could end up being a great strength of hers, though, is that she’s currently working with teenagers on a regular basis as a social worker, which probably is what earned her spot on the Healers tribe, Soko. That could equip her to take a listening position in the tribe and might help her with some of the bigger, more mercurial personalities that are sure to be on the island with her. It’s just a matter of balancing that with the aforementioned sarcasm.
Next: Survivor season 35: Ashley Nolan wants to be the alpha
Additionally, the fact that she’s been able to roll with the punches of social work speaks to a certain resilience. So long as she restrains herself from being too overtly vocal and nitpicky in the early game where that could send you home, it’s possible we could see Roark go to the merge and beyond.