Most Underrated Survivor Winners – Number 2: Danni Boatwright (Guatemala)
No one is a bigger fan of Danni Boatwright than I am, at least not amongst Survivor fans. For one, she’s from Kansas City and has repped my incredible hometown on both seasons in which she’s appeared on. So, obviously I’m going to be biased because of that, but even if she wasn’t from Kansas City, I’d still fight hard for Danni’s win.
Danni won season 11 and remember how on the last slide I discussed how Sophie winning South Pacific was so important for the course of the show? Well, Danni was also on a season where two contestants were brought back to captain a team.
Guatemala was the first to utilize this by bringing back Stephenie and Bobby Jon from Palau. Stephenie was wildly popular during her run on Palau, and Guatemala was practically handed to her on a silver platter, but one thing stood in her way and that was crafty Danni Boatwright.
Danni started off on Bobby Jon’s tribe and when she got to the merge, she was in the minority alliance and she could only watch as her fellow alliance mates were picked off one by one. Soon, it was only Danni left and it felt like she’d be easy pickings as the next boot, but instead, she made it all the way to the end.
She was able to do that by flying under the radar while the Nakúm alliance turned on each other one by one. Danni then gave a great performance at tribal council while Stephenie floundered a bit in front of a jury that was already pretty peeved at her. As a result, Danni won 6-1 over someone who had the season gift wrapped for her from the jump.
One of my favorite rumors floating out there about Danni is something I’ve seen on Survivor Reddit on more than one occasion. Evidently, Danni would only talk strategy while she was going to the bathroom and would intentionally not discuss it in her confessionals, but instead try to figure out what was going on by what questions the interviewer would ask her. Brilliant.
If this were true, it was no wonder why Danni or anyone else from Guatemala wasn’t brought back until Danni was for Winners at War, which she got a terrible edit on. She was honestly probably only asked back because of the smaller pool of female winners to choose from because her edit on season 40 proved she wasn’t a favorite of production’s.
Even with the not so stellar showing on Winners at War, Danni Boatwright is an underrated winner and it’s time we show the woman some respect!