Survivor Edge of Extinction: Should Victoria Baamonde return?

Victoria Baamonde was such a strong jury threat in Survivor: Edge of Extinction that only a former juror could out her game. Should she return in the future?

It’s super hard to gauge how well a player’s social game is in Survivor if they’re also not dictating who goes home each week. Players like Victoria Baamonde, who never received a vote until they were voted out in the finale, are able to hide in the bushes and strike when the time is right, but also know to be on the winning side of the numbers instead of forcing an issue.

For the first four rounds of Edge of Extinction, with no opportunities to vote out anybody, she started to connect with others and create a common goal; get out the returning players. It was a value that connected the likes of Julia, Julie, Gavin, Eric and others together, with those women and her especially sharing notes on how well Aubry’s “dialogue” one-on-ones were so convincing.

It was when four Kama players swapped to Manu 2.0 that Victoria was able to pull off her biggest move of the game; blindsiding Aubry despite having an idol and an extra vote in her pocket. She kept Wendy as a loyal voting number and took out one of the biggest strategic threats of the game while getting props from someone who has made it to finale night in both of her prior seasons.

From there and through the merge, however, Victoria took a more passive route, opening herself up to as many voting possibilities as possible and making sure to stay on the right side of the numbers. She voted correctly at every Tribal Council she attended, including the Ron vote by working with Lauren and Aurora to throw the extra vote against Ron knowing Rick’s potential to play an idol.

She had built up such strong bonds with the jury after Day 34 that the only person who could prevent her from winning was Rick Devens. Unfortunately, Chris Underwood spent 27 days working the jury and prying information that he used Victoria’s threat level, unknown to all the other players, to get Rick to vote out Victoria alongside him while Rick played his idol to protect himself.

Victoria Baamonde was a likable, sociable and great under-the-radar strategist that brought a classic “anybody but me” gameplay style to a modern season, proving you don’t need a thousand idols and immunity necklaces to have winner potential. Vote here in our straw poll and let us know if Victoria should return in a future Survivor season.