Survivor Maryland: All-Stars has crowned a champion in an epic season

Survivor Maryland has left me and its fanbase more excited about Survivor in years, and the great ride culminated with perhaps the unlikeliest of winners.

My all-time favorite Survivor winner is Vanuatu’s Chris Daugherty. His comeback story seems like something out of a movie. If you were to write a script of season-long revenge, that is what you would write. What is so fascinating about Chris Thomas’s game is that you actually cannot write scripts like this.

Chris Thomas is your winner of Survivor Maryland: All-Stars. I am still in absolute shock that I am writing an article about him as the Sole Survivor. To say that he was on the bottom for almost the whole game is such an understatement, and honestly, his story is just so incredible.

You could look at the raw data from the season and see his six Immunity wins and reward from the partner twist, and say that he was just really good at challenges. However, he was faced with far worse odds. Him making it to the merge after everything he endured at six pre-merge tribals is crazy on its own.

As he said on finale night, his three closest allies early on all went out by the first vote at the swap! He was on a post-swap tribe where he literally had no one and survived three votes. For all of these votes, he had to do everything in his power to keep the target off his back. And it’s not like he stopped there; when trying to prevent LeCompte from voting him, he actively targeted LeCompte while being in the minority!

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Chris was finally gaining some power at the merge and was able to finally complete his Day 1 goal of getting LeCompte out after trying and failing over and over. This followed by him being immediately pushed back to the bottom after an unlucky rock draw. Chris then gets a must-win Final Nine immunity, but gives it up in an attempt to become the majority!

If that is not playing hard to win, I do not know what is. The position Chris put himself in at the Final Nine is ridiculous. His plan failed, so as a consolation he picked up two weeks of immunity. He makes being on the bottom sound pretty good.

Chris and Victoria winning the partner twist is a major part of Chris’s winner story being an unwritable script. They each win another Immunity that is used on Alex G, allowing them to go after the bigger targets. He clearly used the two weeks to his advantage, because he avoided getting a single vote at the Final Six when he was the largest target.

You could look at him voting out Alex G as a mistake, but then Chris Thomas likely has to win Final Five immunity, when in reality he was safe as long as Victoria did not win it. Chris correctly read Alex’s intentions to turn on him.

At Final Four and Final Three, Chris Thomas blew everyone out of the water, winning Immunity Challenge number five and six. This feat has yet to be accomplished on the CBS show. His Final Tribal proved that his game was a lot more than challenges and immunity, showing he created real social connections. Other people acknowledged his gameplay and desire to win in the end.

With this all-time great season, a satisfying winner was not needed, but of course, as a Survivor fan, you want your favorite to win. Chris’ win is perhaps the perfect ending to this generation of Survivor Maryland.