There’s no doubt that Kyle Fraser is one of the best Survivor players of the new era. I knew this before the game even started. Now it’s time to see if he’s one of the best players of all time as he goes up against some true legends in Survivor 50.
And with the show’s filming schedule, his win was announced days before all our returning castaways flew out to Fiji. So his game is fresh in everyone’s minds as they hit the beach.
Kyle’s Quick Stats
Survivor Career: Survivor 48 (Winner)
Total Days Played: 26 days
Total Votes Against: 4 votes
Individual Immunity Challenges Won: 2
Individual Reward Challenges Won: 1
Immunity Idols Played: 1
Advantages Played: 1
- Kyle played Kamilla Karthigesu’s extra vote the same night he played his idol, though he didn’t need it.
Survivor 48
Kyle started the game on the Civa tribe, made of us good challenge players. They just barely lost the marooning challenge to the strength-dominant Lagi—with Vula nowhere close to the finish line. Kyle volunteered to compete in the second chance challenge to win tribe supplies where he competed against Vula’s Kevin Leung.
He was on track to win when he got too enthusiastic and accidentally broke the glass jug that needed to be filled with water, automatically forfeiting the challenge. Rather than show his anger, he grabbed his pot and helped Kevin finish the challenge to earn supplies for Vula.
When he returned to Civa, everyone was disappointed to hear he lost the challenge, but his positive social personality immediately rectified his potential ousting from the tribe. He bonded with everyone over real-life commonalities—most strongly with Kamilla Karthigesu—and only lied by telling his tribe he was a teacher, not a lawyer.
Kyle and Kamilla teamed up with Chrissy Sarnowsky and David Kinne to create a majority after Charity Nelms dropped Kyle’s name on day 1, which made all of them immediately distrust her. Later on, Mitch Guerra approached Kyle about working with him and Charity, and he was smart as he sat in his middle-man position in the game.
Despite losing supplies, he seemed to be the most desired ally in the tribe and on top of the game. On day 4, he found the beware advantage, which he shared with David Kinne. With neither of them being good at puzzles, however, he took it to Kamilla—his secret no. 1 ally—who was able to solve it, giving Kyle a hidden immunity idol.
Civa won the first three immunity challenges, allowing them to avoid Tribal Council for a while, but on day 8, a tribe switch sent him and Kamilla to the cursed Vula tribe where they were the minority against three former Lagi members—Joe Hunter, Shauhin Davari, and Thomas Krottinger. To better their chances of breaking into the three for information, they pretended they weren’t working together and in fact hadn’t talked much in their time at Civa, at all.
When they lost the next immunity challenge, they had individual conversations with the Lagi members where they determined the three were going after Kyle—after they’d searched his bag in front of Kamilla, thankfully not finding his idol. Kamilla gave him an extra vote she’d earned on a journey and told him to play his idol, but the two debated whether to go after Thomas or Shauhin.
In the end, Kyle chose to go after Thomas since he’d gone on a journey and possibly had an advantage. He used Kamilla’s extra vote and played his idol that night to blindside the Lagis and send Thomas home—without any of them realizing he and Kamilla were working together.
New Vula went on to win the next reward and immunity challenges, which led to an open-hearted bonding session where the four agreed to stick together. And when the merge came, Joe and David connected to create the Strong Five alliance, bringing in their close mutual ally—Kyle—along with Shauhin and Eva Erickson.
Kyle kept up positive relationships with everyone, though—keeping his middle-man ease while sitting at the top—and maintained his secret alliance with Kamilla, as they fed each other information from either side of the tribe. The two initially wanted to target Shauhin as he was equally as strategic as them, but when David dropped Kamilla’s name, Kyle shifted course and convinced the Strong Five to turn against their ally, blindsiding David.
At Final Six, Shauhin approached Kyle about blindsiding Eva, which was the spark Kyle needed to finally enact a blindside against Shauhin. He crafted a plan to not only tell Joe and Eva that Shauhin dropped her name, but also that Shauhin showed Kamilla a hidden immunity idol that he’s kept secret from the rest of the alliance. Kyle told Kamilla about the plan, so she was able to validate the information when Joe came asking. This led to Shauhin’s blindside at the next Tribal Council.
Once down to the Final Four of Kyle, Kamilla, Joe, and Eva, the two stealth allies know that they could not sit next to each other at Final Tribal Council as they would split the jury votes. So when Kyle won immunity, he took Joe to the end—which he’d previously promised him—and put Kamilla against Eva for fire. Eva won and Kyle’s day 1 ally was sent to the jury.
At Final Tribal Council, all the stealth moves Kyle made throughout the game finally came out. When Joe and Eva tried to take credit for Shauhin’s blindside as a major move, Kamilla interrupted and had Kyle share the true story, which majorly impressed the jury. He was named Sole Survivor in a 5-2-1 victory, earning votes from Kamilla, Mitch, Shauhin, David, and Chrissy.
Survivor 50 Predictions: How far will Kyle go?
I have a feeling the old school players are going to be gunning against the new era winners to be some of the first to go and with Kyle being named the most recent winner publicly before they began filming 50, it’s not looking great for him. But he’s proven he knows how to build early, strong, lasting relationships. So maybe he can talk his way into a good alliance? I don’t think these returning players will allow it, but who knows what will happen in Survivor 50?
Kyle Fraser Survivor 50 Player Score
I’ve previously shared that I think Kyle basically played a perfect game in Survivor 48, but with that fresh in everyone’s mind, I don’t know if there’s anywhere for him to go from there. None of these other returning players will let him go anywhere from there.
Outwit (Social Game): 14/15
Outplay (Physical Game): 10/15
Outlast (Strategic Game): 14/15
Wildcard Factor: 2/5
Total Player Score: 38/50
If Kyle’s tribe doesn’t win immunity, there’s a high likelihood he’s the first going home. Guess we’ll find out soon enough when Survivor 50 premieres Wednesday, February 25, at 8 p.m. ET on CBS and Paramount +!