It’s been a big week for Survivor fans. Those of us that tuned in to the live finale last Wednesday, May 20 have been buzzing, sharing all our thoughts on the finalists and whether or not they earned their spot at Final Tribal Council. And slowly over the weekend, the fans that can’t watch live have been joining the conversation, sharing their own opinions.
Plus we’ve gotten a lot of interviews with our Final Three players (not all great…we’ll get into that later…) which has given us a little bit of insight into their version of the game as well as a lot of drama. And now joining the conversation is Survivor 50’s third-place finisher, Joe Hunter.
Joe sat down with TV Line (below) the day after the finale to discuss the big night, Final Tribal Council, his in-game reflections, and more. A refreshing contrast to the Jonathan Young exit press we’ve been seeing all over the place where he tells every single outlet who talks to him that the jury was bitter and he should have won.
But Joe starts off by immediately showing his gratitude. With the new teaser trailer for Survivor 51 being released at the end of the finale, Joe says he’ll, “take it in while I can,” referring to the attention because the show is already onto the next season and he knows soon he and all his Survivor 50 castmates will be yesterday’s news.
He then goes on to share his POV on Final Tribal Council, naming the jury members who he felt did their job well by clearly not coming into the end with a vote already cast. “Emily [Flippen], to Rick [Devens], Christian [Hubicki], to Dee [Valladares]...they gave grace, they gave peace, they gave an environment that at least made you feel like you had a fighting chance—for all three of us.”
He goes on to tell TV Line’s Staff Editor, Nick Caruso, that that’s the kind of jury you want. But—as we already know without Joe even having to name names—that obviously wasn’t the case for everyone. There were certain people who came in with a “sentence” rather than a desire to hear everyone out which made him feel “cooked,” thinking he stood no shot of persuading certain people to vote for him. He claims Jonathan and winner Aubry Bracco probably felt the same way.
“It takes a special person to truly [put] emotion aside and listen,” he continues, citing the four as the only people who he thought did their jobs well at the end of the game. And when Caruso asks Joe about pre-existing relationships and biases that might have swayed the end vote, Joe just started shaking his head and chuckling.
“Here’s the deal,” the former Survivor 48 finalist opens up while being mindful of his word choices, “returning seasons…you clearly have relationships with people…and I deal in realness, like, hey, those relationships absolutely affect the game.” But he clarifies that doesn’t mean there were necessarily pre-game alliances with that in mind. “You can hate them, you can love them, but the relationship matters.”
And for the players who had either played more than once prior to Survivor 50 and the one-time players who played years ago, he notes that relationships in Survivor aren’t just about who you played with. It’s a whole community of people you attend watch parties, events, former finales with, so everyone knows everyone with each passing day since they’ve been in the game. And he could easily blame those relationships for being the reason he lost, but instead, he reflects on his own game and if it deserved to win.
“Most exit press I’ve seen point the finger everywhere else…I’m looking at it like, ‘it’s me…’ I clearly didn’t give them any reason in the game to vote for me.” - Joe Hunter to TV Line
Joe takes full responsibility for not playing a game worthy of those specific jurors' votes—or at least he didn’t do a good enough job of explaining his game to the jury. And now that he’s had time to watch the season, see how he was perceived, and understand where he might have gone wrong, though he does believe he deserved at least one vote in response to the game he played.
And while he might not have received Devens’s vote in the end, he finally lets everyone know that he has no problem with the way the Edge of Extinction-returnee played the game. “This whole theory of ‘you can’t lie, cheat, or steal,’ he absolutely is allowed to. He absolutely should.” That was never the problem during their multiple clashes, but rather they can’t both play their ways and both be right.
Joe says in the eyes of the fans, one person always has to be a hero and one person always has to be a villain when there’s two opposing styles of gameplay. And that’s exactly what happened. The people who loved Joe hated Devens and the people who loved Devens hated Joe. But Joe says, “if I could go back right now, that conversation goes completely different,” as far as the early head-butting with Devens goes. And based on his exit press a couple weeks ago, Devens agrees.
And as I’ve said multiple times, Joe seems like an incredibly upstanding guy. Like we saw in Survivor 48, he’ll do anything to protect the people he’s vowed to protect and that surely translates into the real world. Survivor 50 just wasn’t the right group of people to play 100% loyally with. While his honor got him to the end, it’s also the reason people felt the need to be faux authentic with him, to keep him in their pocket and they used his greatest strength against him.
If Joe does ever come back for another season—which he’s said he absolutely would do in a heartbeat—I would love to see him get a little more in it and not be afraid to “lie, cheat, and steal,” as he put it.
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