Who is Michele Fitzgerald’s ex-boyfriend in Survivor: Winners at War?

Since personal lives might become the focus of Survivor: Winners at War episode 5, I guess we’ll share some minor details of Michele Fitzgerald.

This post will discuss the “Next Time On” Survivor: Winners at War episode 5 preview seen at the end of this week’s episode.

Though a great many people in the Survivor stan community will disagree, the non-content-creating personal lives of former and current players are among the least important aspects of the show’s contestants. Unless you’re making a podcast, shooting videos, or broadcasting live on platforms like Twitch or YouTube, “who is dating whom” is so trivially unimportant to the understanding of the show.

Sure, it may add a wrinkle or two when multiple Survivor castaways have dated (or married) the same person like we saw on the early days of Sele in Winners at War, but thankfully, nothing too serious came from Ethan and Boston Rob’s connections to Amber. However, it looks as though episode 5 of the season will continue the meta-narrative aspects of the game by introducing storylines outside of it.

“Oh my god, how the heck did I get stuck stranded on an island with my ex-boyfriend,” asks Michele Fitzgerald in a confessional, serving as a teaser for the audience to ask, “who is Michele Fitzgerald’s ex-boyfriend?” There were clues across social media if you go back through the interactions on Instagram and Twitter, but a suspiciously-timed tweet from a fellow player this evening added text to the subtext.

Rumors of Wendell and Michele dating came soon after Wendell’s televised win in Ghost Island, although the two never went the “announce it after the season reunion” route that players have done in as recent a season as Island of the Idols (it’s not important; you can look it up). Without a timeline that fans of each player both don’t need nor should they deserve, it’s unclear when exactly the two started dating after his win.

At the very least, we know these two broke up well enough before Winners at War, because both of them likely knew they’d be competing against one another yet didn’t fully brace for the impact of this potentially awkward reunion.

I’m sure you could work your way through the rumor mill to find out exact social media interactions between Wendell and Michele to learn when the two broke up, but even blogging about this specific social interaction to assuage the questions from the Google-inclined masses feels icky enough.

What this does show is just how much the players are willing to be meta about how their stories on Survivor: Winners at War are to be portrayed and just how trusting the editors and producers are to tell these stories and have the audience understand. For both Wendell and Michele’s sakes, let’s just hope people that the standom at large can collectively be normal people and not obsess about their interactions within a game context and extrapolate that into the real world.