It’s been 22 seasons since we last had two people sitting at the end together—Survivor: Cagayan. But with 30% of seasons featuring a Final Two, fans know exactly how it plays out when there are two people at Final Tribal Council instead of three. And it adds a lot of drama to the finale that we may be lacking in the new era.
I remember sitting down to watch the Survivor: Cook Islands finale where the world was shocked to find out there would be three players at Final Tribal Council for the jury to vote on. At the time, it was incredibly dynamic for the show to change it up. But now, it’s a little stagnant and often causes the vote to be awkward when one player gets somewhere between one and zero votes from the jury.
In fact, over the last 10 seasons, only two third place players received a vote at Final Tribal Council. The rest didn’t get any jury votes thrown their way:
Survivor 41: Xander Hastings (0)
Survivor 42: Romeo Escobar (0)
Survivor 43: Owen Knight (0)
Survivor 44: Carolyn Wiger (0)
Survivor 45: Jake O’Kane (0)
Survivor 46: Ben Katzman (0)
Survivor 47: Sue Smey (0)
Survivor 48: Joe Hunter (1)
Survivor 49: Sage Ahrens-Nichols (1)
Survivor 50: Joe Hunter (0)
If 80% of juries are already acting like there’s actually a Final Two—despite three players sitting at the end together—why don’t we just go back to that format for a little bit? Then we would truly get a battle at Final Tribal Council where two players get to defend their games without the jury either blatantly ignoring the third person or wasting episode runtime by getting their answers that the jury doesn’t even acknowledge most of the time.
Or if they do talk to the eventual third place player, it’s usually to tell them they played a game that got them to the end simply because everyone knew they weren’t a threat to win and it makes such a dynamic, brawling moment turn into something kind of sad and unnecessary.
I personally think it’s time to get back to a Final Two for a little bit and the new “open” era of the show is the perfect time to do it. When introducing the next phase for the series, Jeff Probst himself said it’s going to tie together the best parts of both the classic and new era formats. And while we understand 39 days is likely not coming back, having a Final Two would be an easy enough way to shake things up and get us back to that old-school end vibe.
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