Survivor season rankings: All Survivor seasons, ranked

34. All-Stars (Season 8)

Listing off the reasons as to why Survivor: All-Stars ultimately didn’t work would take quite some time. The gist of it is they clearly had high hopes and a big vision for an early all-returnee season, and it just didn’t pan out as they’d hope. There were also a number of weird moments throughout the show, the most uncomfortable being Sue Hawk dropping out of the game following an incident in a challenge with Borneo winner Richard Hatch.

Of course, the biggest reason why All-Stars didn’t translate in the way that the producers has certainly hoped largely boils down to the romance that was blossoming between Boston Rob Mariano and Amber Brkich. They didn’t just form an alliance, but they fell in love on Survivor. While that’s sweet and grand and so on, it doesn’t make for compelling television.

The result of their partnership on the show was them teaming up to systematically pick off every other castaway. In the end, Final Tribal Council was, of course, Boston Rob and Amber facing a jury that didn’t know what to do considering that the duo had essentially played the game as one unit. Amber won, there was a totally impromptu proposal (definitely not planned at all), and All-Stars was a flop. Something, something happily ever after.