Survivor season 35: Why did Roark Luskin get voted out in 14th place?
Farewell, Roark Luskin; we hardly knew ye. Her sudden exit from Survivor season 35 can be explained if you’re paying attention to the subtle clues.
When Jeff Probst described Survivor season 35, Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers, as having one of the most exciting finishes ever, you start to see why in the edit. There are prominent characters being built up now for a late-game push, and every eliminated player (except for Patrick Bolton) didn’t have their exit telegraphed beyond their boot episode. The song remains the same for Roark Luskin.
A noted superfan of the show and Survivor with All The Fixins podcast patron, Roark got a fairly visible start to the game, as she was seen directing the Healers at both the marooning and the Immunity Challenge. She even set the stage for life back at camp to kick things off, usually serving as a show of things to come.
After that debut, however, we rarely, if ever, saw Roark at all. Up until this episode, I had no idea who she was aligned with, who was her most trusted confidant, nor anything about her as a person to cheer for. When she suddenly gets a strategic push about 17 minutes into the 43-minute runtime of this episode, however, it became clear that she was going to be voted out this episode.
“I’m objectively on the outside,” Roark Luskin exclaims in that first confessional of this episode; a sign of things to come. “I want to start developing friendships with these people where they feel safe with me to talk game with me,” she continued, before linking up with Ali and starting to talk about possibly voting Chrissy out.
Roark makes this suggestion unaware that by trying to get in with Ali, who’s in with Ryan, that Ryan is already in with Chrissy due to the Super Idol gift from Day 1. More importantly, as mentioned from the top, Survivor season 35 has been setting up prominent characters now for later storylines to pay off. Ali has been a kiss of death for anyone she’s aligned with at the well this season, and we get to see most of Roark’s content through the lens of how her game affects Ryan and Ali’s game.
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Betsided
The most visible downfall of Roark comes in the Immunity Challenge, where Chrissy cannot navigate her way through the swiss cheese maze. After dropping the ball (literally) multiple times, she asks if anyone else wants to try. Roark offers herself or Ali to try in her place, but Chrissy instead tries (and fails) to complete the challenge, leading to Soko’s visit to Tribal Council.
When Roark closes out the challenge with a confessional that Chrissy needs to go, it only sets up her inevitable demise. There are still six Healers in the game, she’s the only Healer on the tribe, and she’s not trusting of Chrissy, who’s good with most everyone in the tribe. When Chrissy and Roark talk strategy, both women know how intelligent the other is, and both have ulterior motives to get the other out.
What Roark couldn’t expect is how close Chrissy was with Ryan, nor how cunning she could be. She spins a yarn with JP by insisting an all-girls alliance is being plotted by Roark, and JP decides to lose all trust in Roark at the drop of a hat because of a lie Chrissy told him. With both Ali and Chrissy coming to him, Roark’s elimination focused on what was best for him.
Next: Survivor: Ranking The Best Seasons
It’s a shame we didn’t get to see much of Roark in Survivor season 35, but the edit made her a casualty of the oncoming war between Ali and Ryan with a fractured Hustler tribe caught in the middle. It would have been near impossible to penetrate the powers that be this season, as the Super Idol continues to have a lasting effect beyond the first Tribal Council.