Survivor Edge of Extinction: Ponderosa becomes a jury documentary

A lot happened to the Survivor: Edge of Extinction jury after finally accepting defeat. Thankfully, Ponderosa videographers were there to capture it.

This post will discuss the Survivor: Edge of Extinction finale as part of the conversations surrounding the jury at Ponderosa.

The biggest fear I had hearing about the season theme for Survivor: Edge of Extinction is that we would be robbed of a true Survivor Ponderosa experience. The fact that we’d go most of the game without players being voted off for good meant that if we did have a video, it would only be when the game is over for the jury members.

It’s a shame that we didn’t get weekly videos in the post-merge phase, but as a result, CBS went overboard once 10 members of the jury finally arrived. The nine (!) Survivor Ponderosa videos went up live last night, with six detailing the wild ~36 hours after the Edge of Extinction players leaving the game and reacclimating themselves into real life.

The first video you can see below has the players walking on the beach just a few hundred yards away from the Edge of Extinction Challenge, moments after the crushing defeat and seeing the reactions of people accepting their fate. One of the funny things about the players heading to Ponderosa as a group is that they go into this experience together; something unheard of at this level.

You can tell that after a season where the players have really fought for their right to play once more, James Seale and his team poured their hearts into capturing anything and everything about these players’ reflections of the game. The pace in which these images come out, with the second of six videos just getting players’ reactions to how much weight they’ve lost, allows for a ton of unique perspectives.

Because they run between 6-8 minutes long each, the six Edge of Extinction Ponderosa videos of the jury becomes something of a documentary, capturing how people react to the harsh reality of their situation. Eric is contemplative, Ron is upset with himself, yet the veterans are out there living the full extent of their experiences. We even get one last shot at Wardog being brutally honest to another player!

If you want to watch in sequential order, check out Survivor: Edge of Extinction Ponderosa videos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Victoria, Lauren, and Rick at the links within.