Survivor: Defending the less touted winners in Survivor history

Jenna Morasca – Winner of Survivor: Amazon

At the time of her win in Survivor: Amazon, Jenna was the youngest player to ever win the game and to this day is still the youngest woman to ever win. She wasn’t a great strategical player and I’ll be the first to admit that, but Jenna proved that forming bonds was a foolproof strategy for winning Survivor, especially in the older seasons, as she was the winner of the sixth season.

Jenna was a part of the first ever men vs women season, which she wasn’t excited to hear. She was hoping to use her sexuality to help her out early on and that wasn’t going to be as easy for her to do with a tribe that was made up entirely of women. Fortunately for Jenna, she was able to form a four-person alliance that picked off two people before the tribe swap occurred.

Jenna was actually a big part of the swap, as she and Dave were the two youngest contestants and got to form the new tribes. Jenna had let some key information get out and that led to her and Heidi being split up, but things worked out okay for her. She formed a new alliance and was able to get to the merge despite the women being down in numbers.

Amazon was a different season though, as it truly was an individual game rather than pitting the men and women against each other. This led to those players with not so great social games being targeted first and Jenna’s alliance was controlling things. When Deena, who was a part of Jenna’s alliance, made the first move to take out one of their own, Jenna and company turned the tables on her.

The first time Jenna was truly on the bottom was when Rob flipped on her and Heidi to take out Alex. By that point, Jenna wasn’t doing great mentally or physically and had considered being asked to get booted. Despite all of that, she won four total individual immunity challenges, including the final one, which gave her the right to choose who she wanted to sit next to in the Final Tribal Council.

She obviously picked Matthew, who was very weird and not the most well-liked. Jenna won in a 6-1 landslide and while it was definitely smart of her to go to the end with Matthew, there’s honestly a good chance she beats Rob too, as old school Survivor wasn’t always based on who made the most moves, but rather the connections that were made. It was a simpler time.

I certainly can hear the arguments for why Jenna is considered a bottom tier winner, but her social game won her the season and it wasn’t even close. She knew Rob considered her to be a goat and she used that to her advantage. He wasn’t going to boot her off until he absolutely had to and look how that ended up.

Jenna is tied with three other women for the most individual immunity wins in a single season with four total. We didn’t see Jenna on Winners at War, mostly because she was going through some stuff in her personal life, but she’d have been interesting to watch for sure.