Knowing she’s not the strongest of the bunch, Kellyn Bechtold looks to elevate her strength as a tribemate towards the middle during Survivor Ghost Island.
Survivor has brought many different winners across their seasons. Meek, loud, boisterous, quiet, strong, feeble; there is no definitive “winner” mold for this game. If Kellyn Bechtold wins Survivor Ghost Island, she does so with an empathetic nature and a good-hearted personality, even if she insists on being able to influence others before the game actually begins.
While reality television stars are always grinners on the outside and chaotic on the inside, you can find a genuine smile in Kellyn. Survivor Ghost Island is going to put her to the test both as a player and as a person, revealing in her introduction video that she just recently got married and divorced after moving across the United States, getting two Masters degrees and changing jobs left, right and center.
If anything, Kellyn seems to be the kind of player to push her limits to the max, learning her full potential and fully realizing their strengths and weaknesses. Whereas she compares herself to a mixture between Kelley Wentworth and Aubry Bracco in her CBS bio, mixing Kelley’s “do anything to win” mentality and Aubry’s “strategic, very intuitive, but slightly neurotic and quirky” behavior, I find more she takes on Kelley’s outgoing personality and hiding Aubry’s mile-a-minute strategic mindset towards the game.
Kellyn certainly seems like the person that will have a strong social game, utilizing that to push herself forward through each round of competition. One thing that she notes about Survivor Ghost Island is just how physically prepared for the game everyone is, and how she might not hold up in the strength department.
In a starting tribe with the inner (and outer) strength of Desiree, military veteran Angela, marine animal trainer Morgan and cheerleader/dancer Chelsea, she certainly stands out as the weakest link initially. Of course, she doesn’t know who her Naviti tribemates are yet, but her goal from the onset is to find her way into the middle of the pack and just survive long enough for the merge to come and take things from there.
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Jeff Probst sees a lot of potential in Kellyn Bechtold. In his pre-season preview of the Survivor Ghost Island cast, Jeff notes that she’s his second pick to win, behind Wendell Holland. While it’s not every day that Jeff (or any of us) get to pick a winner before the season begins, it bolds well that he sees a potential that fans who overlook “nice” contestants may not see right now.
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The fact that she’s willing to go well outside her comfort zone to the point of learning mixed martial arts shows that Kellyn wants to walk a mile in other peoples’ shoes, even if it’s a difficult task to do so. In a game with young players and fresh, varied personalities, you could see her find her way into the middle of an alliance fairly quickly.
What made my heart stop for a second requires circling back to her introduction video. Noting that she would never socially influence others against their wishes in real life, Kellyn Bechtold does find it interesting to see what she’ll be able to do with peoples’ vulnerability as they shed layers of their personality in front of her. To be able to say that with a smile and without a sense of malice exemplifies the level of game-readiness she’s brought to the table.
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I wouldn’t be surprised to see Kellyn pop off at the merge while taking a quiet, unassuming path to get there.