Survivor winners: Ranking all 45 Sole Survivors by season

Best Survivor Winners No. 5: J.T. Thomas (Survivor Tocantins)

While J.T.’s later games show that he may have been as reliant on their partner as any other Survivor winner in winning the million dollars, J.T. Thomas did play Survivor Tocantins with an overall brilliance. Not only that, it came from a position of weakness, as his starting Jalapao tribe went into the first post-merge tribal council down in numbers 6-3.

J.T. Thomas was so likable that everyone wanted to work with him throughout, buying into his honest, forthright approach to gameplay.

As much as Stephen Fishbach poured his heart into a gameplay strategy where either one, the other or both would make it all the way to the end, the two worked as a team to screw over everyone else in the game. Both players banded together to create the perfect gameplay strategy, but it was J.T.’s personality that sold it.

There is no other time I can think of where most of the entire cast was happy to see a Survivor player win their season over themselves. It’s a testament to the piercing charm, affable approachability and overall greatness of J.T. Thomas in Survivor Tocantins that would earn the first perfect game ever.