Survivor Island of the Idols: Should Chelsea Walker return?

One of the biggest superfans, Chelsea Walker proved that you can play the game perfectly and still be taken out. Should she get another shot at Survivor?

It’s remarkable just how well a person can nail all aspects of Survivor only for the circumstances of the season forced the ground to crumble below them. For all intents and purposes, Chelsea Walker did absolutely nothing other than having a dude be her ally, and both of them were perceived as single, young individuals. That was enough to mark them as a showmance, despite the facts being the contrary.

Before we talk about Chelsea, a number in a couple, we must talk about Chelsea, the Survivor superfan. Entering the game with knowledge and practice in individual challenges, she found herself in a core group of women who had the opportunity to run the gamut. With the exception of Aaron’s physicality, the Lairo women were held back by the men, who had floundered early.

Whereas they couldn’t make a fire or produce cohesive gameplay, Chelsea was at the front and center of Lairo’s well-being, as she was the one first to make a fire that Tom, Aaron, and others could not make. Not only that, while she was going out to search for more firewood, she was the first to find a Hidden Immunity Idol not handed out at the Island of the Idols, proving she could play the social, physical, and strategic game early.

Unfortunately, despite the Lairo women poised for success, Island of the Idols was laden with people making late-game moves as early as possible. Despite being a pivotal member of a core group, she was labeled as part of a showmance in a joke that kind of stuck. Whereas Dean kept bumbling on puzzles, Karishma’s woe-is-me perception dragged on in the early going.

What broke up that core women’s group is that Karishma found out she was on the bottom of the group of five Lairo women, and Missy decided it was more pertinent to work with Aaron. That meant not targeting Dean, who was close with Aaron, but it would also mean getting rid of a loyal number like Karishma.

Inevitably, despite a litany of options, Missy pulled a power move in targeting Chelsea to split up a non-existant showmance in order for her to maintain both Aaron and Karishma while appeasing Elaine and Elizabeth (even though she pulled rank and on her own numbers swiftly). In short, Missy couldn’t go after the bad guy Dean so, to remark with a bad Probst-ism, they went after the bad guy’s wife (stand-in).

Chelsea Walker was a bubbly, stoked superfan who managed to do everything right that a superfan should do; blend in, keep cool, maintain relationships and stumble into advantages (not going searching for them). She just happened to be part of one of the most gamebot-driven pre-merges in Survivor history, so vote here in our straw poll to let us know if she should get a fair shake in a second season.