Survivor Edge of Extinction: Victoria Baamonde is episode 12’s MVP
Victoria continues to fly under the Survivor radar, while still popping up to make a move and take advantage of her opportunities.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for episode 12 of Survivor: Edge of Extinction.
With two solid challenges, a great Tribal Council, and no time wasted on the Edge of Extinction, this week’s episode might have been the best one of the season! It had the same feel as some of the exciting recent Survivor seasons including David vs. Goliath and Millennials vs. Gen X.
On the surface, it might seem that Rick deserves to be honored as the player of the night. He is the first person this season to play a hidden immunity idol correctly, and he did so in epic fashion. That said, it’s hard to overlook the fact that Devens was on the wrong side of the votes yet again.
In the past seven tribal councils, Rick has only voted with the numbers twice. Victoria, on the other hand, has made a remarkable streak of being on the right side of the votes for every single Tribal Council this season. It’s true that this week technically broke that streak as she wrote Rick’s name down, but that didn’t stop her from creating a masterful plan b that eliminated another huge threat.
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Sometimes Victoria has decided to be a passenger on some of these votes, letting others make the plan and just sticking with it. This week’s vote was a different story. She wasn’t in jeopardy, but she knew she could make a push to get a big threat out, and she succeeded.
Victoria had the awareness to recognize how good of a game Ron was playing. Instead of being satisfied with Aurora as the backup plan in case of Rick’s idol, Victoria knew this was the perfect time to make a move on one of the best social players of the season.
She continues to show her clever strategic and social gameplay by taking the initiative to talk to people outside of her original alliance. In this case, she approached Lauren and Aurora and made the argument to vote out Ron.
What makes Victoria’s move so great is that she pulled it off without causing undue attention to herself. The conversation she had with Aurora and Lauren was very balanced. In no way did someone come away from that thinking “Victoria is pushing me to vote this way.” We’ve seen from Wardog, Ron and Julia how pulling off an impressive blindside can come back to bite them.
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Making a savvy strategic move without raising eyebrows isn’t easy to accomplish on Survivor. It’s this brilliant gameplay that cements Victoria as one the best players of the season.