Survivor winners: Ranking all 45 Sole Survivors by season

Best Survivor Winners No. 29: Wendell Holland (Survivor: Ghost Island)

A big problem Survivor: Ghost Island had was that it was a two-person race to the end for the majority. Domenick Abbate and Wendell Holland were running the show for the majority, operating under the banner of “Naviti strong” while secretly working with Donathan Hurley and Laurel Johnson ahead of the merge.

In the two-man operation, Wendell Holland was certainly the face, securing Domenick’s safety at the merge by reassuring 11 others about Chris Noble’s stranglehold of the game and noting how he directed others to do their will. Funnily enough, that’s what he was doing with Domenick, letting him take the heat for their collective moves.

He would have been voted out if not for a late Immunity Challenge run after the Naviti women picked off the Malolo tribe and, later, themselves.

Wendell could not win Ghost Island were it not for several factors, chief among them being Laurel refusing to make a self-interested winning move against him.

Furthermore, too many Naviti players stayed original tribe strong, even as it came at a detriment to their game.

Finally, Wendell made Survivor history by being the first winner to tie their original vote with the runner-up, receiving votes from the last five jurors while Domenick received votes from the first five.

Laurel broke the tie, showing that Wendell had many factors going for him, and even then, it was a coin flip at the end.