Worst twists in Survivor history

Worst Twists in Survivor History – Number 2: Final Four Fire Making

• First Appearance: Heroes vs Healers vs Hustlers (Season 35, 2017)

Earlier I mentioned how sometimes it feels like twists were created in order to help out a certain player or tribe. That was most definitely the case in season 35 when a new twist was created.

Normally, when a threat to win the game loses immunity on Day 38, they’re the easy choice to vote out that night at tribal council. In Heroes vs Healers vs Hustlers, however, that didn’t happen.

Ben Driebergen was the season’s biggest threat to win the game and he lost the final immunity challenge due to a misspelling. It seemed all too likely that he’d be voted out and either Chrissy Hofbeck, Devon Pinto, or Ryan Ulrich would go on to win the game.

Instead, a new twist was invented that would allow the winner of the challenge to pick one person to go to the end with them while the two remaining players would go up against each other in a fire making competition.

Chrissy chose Ryan to take the end with her, forcing Devon to go up against Ben, who made fire before Devon could. That solidified his place in the final tribal council where he won the game.

On the message in a bottle entry, I mentioned how sometimes it really did feel like Survivor was rigging things for certain players and the invention of the fire making challenge was another case of that. In the 34 seasons prior to Heroes vs Healers vs Hustlers, Ben doesn’t win the game, but the fire making challenge was seemingly rigged to keep him around.

The problem with the twist is that it goes against the norm of Survivor and almost makes winning that final challenge a disadvantage. The twist has continued for the following five seasons and hopefully it is discontinued soon because it’s terrible.