When you think of Survivor, there are certain players that come to mind and odds are that Ozzy Lusth is one of them—and with good reason. In addition to tying the record for most immunity challenges won in a single season, he’s also set so many other records that people don’t even realize because a lot of them aren’t likely to be broken, ever.
He was the first returning player to ever find a hidden immunity idol. He was also the first player ever to make a fake hidden immunity idol that was played by another castaway—that fake idol also then went on to become a real idol in Survivor: Ghost Island. He’s the most voted-out player in Survivor history, having been eliminated 5 times in 4 seasons. And he’s the only castaway in history to compete with every player format: an all new player season, half-new player and half-returnee season, a one-returnee-per-tribe season, and an all-returnee season.
Ozzy also is the first—and so far only—player to make it to the merge four times, and he was the first player to attend Final Tribal Council four times. The list goes on, and by competing in Survivor 50, there are still more than a few ways he can add to it.
Ozzy’s Quick Stats
Survivor Career:
- Survivor: Cook Islands (2nd Place)
- Survivor: Micronesia (9th Place)
- Survivor: South Pacific (4th Place)
- Survivor: Game Changers (12th Place)
Total Days Played: 128 days
Total Votes Against: 34 votes
Individual Immunity Challenges Won: 7
Individual Reward Challenges Won: 1
Immunity Idols Played: 1
- Ozzy played his immunity idol on Whitney Duncan to play in Survivor: South Pacific—though she didn’t receive any votes
Advantages Played: 0
Survivor: Cook Islands
In a controversial season, the castaways were divided into four tribes based on race and Ozzy was a part of the Aitutaki tribe, initially made up of Hispanic-Americans. His showcasing of survival skills created a comfortable camp life for his tribemates, and he seemed to form good bonds with everyone except Billy Garcia, who Ozzy felt didn’t contribute around camp.
After winning the first immunity challenge, Ozzy suggested to his tribe that they purposefully lose the next one in order to vote Billy out. While others were hesitant, they ultimately went along with the plan, losing the challenge, and then eliminating Billy at their first Tribal Council.
A tribe reshuffle dissolved two of the tribes and left only Aitutaki and Rarotonga, now with nine members each. Ozzy remained on Aitutaki with only one other former member, both outnumbered by other tribe majorities. After their first Tribal Council, Ozzy found himself the lone original Aitutaki remaining, but his physical strength—and the majority alliance’s choice to turn on itself—spared him at the following Double Tribal Council, and once again after they lost the next immunity challenge.
On day 20, castaways were offered the chance to mutiny and publicly switch tribes. Aitutaki’s Candice Woodcock and Jonathan Penner chose to flip, going back to their original Rarotonga allies, but Ozzy’s tribe went on to win the next two immunity challenges without them. During the time away from Tribal Council, he also further developed his relationships with Yul Kwon, Sundra Oakley, and Becky Lee—creating the Aitu Four Alliance.
Entering the merge with the numbers, Ozzy and his allies voted out the Rarotonga players one-by-one with Ozzy keeping himself additionally safe by winning five of the six post-merge immunity challenges—tying the all-time challenge record. The Aitu Four eventually became the Final Four, proving them to be one of the most powerful alliances in Survivor history.
Ozzy won the Final Four immunity challenge, and with Yul possessing the hidden immunity challenge, they decided to force a tie and let a challenge decide whether Sundra or Becky would go to the end with them. Becky won the fire-making challenge and sat at the finale with the two men.
At Final Tribe Council, Ozzy was praised for his physical prowess, but only received four jury votes, earning himself second place in a 5-4-0 vote with Yul taking home the title of Sole Survivor. He did, however, find himself named the fan favorite player of the season at the Live Reunion Show and received a car.
Survivor: Micronesia
Both Fans and Favorites were cautious of Ozzy from the beginning due to his challenge strength, survival skills, and general likability featured in Cook Islands. He created a strong alliance with Amanda Kimmel, the two quickly joining forces with James Clement and his fellow Cook Islands castaway Parvati Shallow. They formed the “Malakal Couples Alliance,” but realized four people in a tribe of ten wasn’t enough and pulled in Cirie Fields after Jonny Fairplay quit the game by asking the tribe to vote him out.
A tribe switch on day 13 sent James and Parvati to the Airai tribe and brought a slew of Fans into the original Favorites camp. Though outnumbered, Ozzy, Amanda, and Cirie found the cracks in the Fans and used it against them to vote all but one of them out, ensuring their safety to the merge.
After merging, Ozzy was sent to Exile Island where he found a hidden immunity idol and also made a fake idol—a stick—which was later, historically, found by Jason Siska and used by Eliza Orlins in an attempt at safety during the first individual Tribal Council where Ozzy’s alliance voted her out, sending her to the jury.
At the next immunity challenge, Parvati convinced Jason—the last “outsider”—to step down in order to secure food for the tribe. He agreed, but only if they all promised not to vote him out. Amanda, Ozzy, James, and Erik Reichenbach decided not to honor that agreement, though and planned to vote him out.
Cirie, however, felt that—without immunity—now was their opportunity to blindside Ozzy instead. The newly formed “Black Widow Brigade” alliance, minus Amanda, blindsided Ozzy and made him the second member of the jury—with an idol in his pocket.
Ozzy made his Final Tribal Council vote very clear from the beginning of the evening, campaigning for Amanda and highly criticizing Parvati’s game. And while he did vote for Amanda, Parvati still won $1 million and the title of Sole Survivor in a 5-3 victory.
Survivor: South Pacific
Returning as one of two veteran players—alongside Benjamin “Coach” Wade—on an otherwise fully beginner season, Ozzy started on the Savaii tribe, who didn’t immediately fall to his leadership, though they were appreciative of him showing them the ropes of camp survival.
When he wanted to vote out John Cochran after losing the first immunity challenge, the tribe showed him who was in charge by instead voting out his closest ally. He took the hint and voted with the majority at the next Tribal Council. Along the way he joined a proposed alliance of the tribe’s best physical players (3 men and 2 women) with the plan for the men to take out the women when the time came. He also found the camp’s hidden immunity idol and hoped to redeem himself from his previous blindside in Fans vs. Favorites.
But the head of his alliance, Jim Rice, felt that Ozzy was getting too close to one of the women, Elyse Umemoto, and orchestrated a blindside against her to prevent Ozzy from becoming too powerful. After this, Ozzy deemed himself a “free agent,” unaligned himself from the group, and publicly announced to the entire tribe that he had the idol. He and the tribe worked things out and went on to win the next immunity challenge.
With Redemption Island in play this season, they feared that with one member of the opposing Upolu tribe continuously dominating the duels, they might have the majority coming into the merge. Ozzy strategized a major game risk that he referred to as a “Trojan Horse” and proposed that if they lost the next immunity challenge, the tribe vote him out so that they could hope he win the duel and the returning Redemption Island player was a Savaii member.
Savaii did lose the next immunity challenge, and Ozzy gave his immunity idol to Cochran, making him promise to return it should he get back in the game, and then the tribe proceeded to vote him out. He went to Redemption Island where he won and re-entered the game as a member of the merged Te Tna tribe, winning the first individual immunity challenge.
With even numbers between the original tribe members, an anticipated 6-6 tie came to fruition between Savaii’s Keith Tollefson and Upolu’s Rick Nelson. Upon a revote, Cochran—fearing a rock draw and having already shared Savaii insight with Upolu—flipped and sent Keith to Redemption Island.
Ozzy expressed his fury at Cochran for making what he considered a cowardly move, which didn’t help when he lost the next immunity challenge, and—now idol-less after unnecessarily playing it on Whitney Duncan at the last Tribal Council—he was the next person voted out, returning to Redemption Island. He went on to beat every former member of his tribe that joined him until he re-entered the competition once more at Final Five.
Back in the game, Coach shared a desire to take Ozzy to the end, but Ozzy was suspicious. He went on to win his first immunity challenge back, but lost the Final Four challenge. He pleaded with Coach to force a tie and let him compete in a tie-breaker challenge, but Coach did not hold true to his promise and instead sent Ozzy to the jury.
At Final Tribal Council, Ozzy attacked all three finalists for giving most of the jury false hope about sitting at the end, but most specifically told off Coach for breaking his “honor and integrity” code. In the end, he voted for Sophie Clarke since she beat him at the Final Four immunity and he felt she deserved it most as it was her win that led to his elimination. His vote contributed to her 6-3-0 victory.
At the Live Reunion Show, Ozzy won the Fan Favorite Award which came with a $100,000 prize. Jeff Probst also declared that Ozzy obtained the highest percentage of votes since the award began.
Survivor: Game Changers
Starting on the Nuku tribe, his skills in the water helped immensely during the marooning. He also heavily contributed to Nuku winning the first two immunity challenges before being swapped to a new third tribe, Tavua. But he also went on to win the next three immunity challenges for Tavua as well.
With 13 days of the game under his belt without Tribal Council, Ozzy took on the role of provider for his tribe, fishing and overseeing the shelter.
But after another tribe switch sent Ozzy back to the Nuku tribe, he lost his first immunity challenge and finally found himself at Tribal Council. In the minority, Sandra Diaz-Twine tried to sell Ozzy on voting out Tai Trang out of fear of a potential Kaoh Rong alliance, as both Debbie Wanner and Aubry Bracco were still in the game. But the move only confirmed Sandra’s threat level, and Ozzy joined the majority in voting her out for the first time in her Survivor career.
Nuku lost immunity again and Ozzy was joined by Jeff Varner in an attempt to blindside Zeke Smith as they entered Tribal Council. However, the plan changed drastically when Jeff outed Zeke for being transgender in an offensive manner, horrifying Ozzy and the rest of his tribe. They proceeded to unanimously, verbally, eliminate Jeff from the game.
The merge came the next day, securing Ozzy in the Survivor history books as the first—and still to this day, only—player to make it to the merge four times. With a strong alliance, he made it through the first vote and then found himself competing in an immunity challenge that he had previously won in Cook Islands. It came down to him and Tai, but he couldn't hold on and he wasn’t able to obtain safety, leading to his blindside, becoming the second member of the jury for the second time in his Survivor career.
At Final Tribal Council, he campaigned for Brad Culpepper’s physical and honest game—having won 5 individual immunity challenges, tying the record—and criticized Sarah Lacina for playing deceitfully. He voted for Brad who came in second to Sarah in a 7-3-0 vote for the title of Sole Survivor.
Survivor 50 Predictions: How far will Ozzy go?
After the Survivor 50 cast was revealed, I initially theorized that this could finally—potentially—be Ozzy’s best chance to win. A lot of the new era players he’s up against seem to value relationships and loyalty over concern for physical threat, which is kind of his M.O. Do I think Ozzy will win? Probably not. He’s one of those players that’s just too good to ever win, unfortunately. But if he’s ever going to win, this would be the season he does.
Ozzy Lusth Survivor 50 Player Score
Ozzy has played this game four times already, with essentially the same approach each time, and seen drastically different results every season. That’s because of all the variables of other players and production twist interjections. This season with the fan-voted twists truly creating so many unknown factors, Ozzy’s best strategy would be to turn himself into just as much of a chaos machine, approaching the game with a completely different strategy than anyone expects. That would give him the best chance of getting to the end and proving he can adapt to make the game work for him, since we’ve seen four times now, his approach hasn’t worked to win the game…yet.
Outwit (Social Game): 7/15
Outplay (Physical Game): 13/15
Outlast (Strategic Game): 11/15
Wildcard Factor: 1/5
Total Player Score: 32/50
Ozzy’s made a lot of history in this game and simply being a part of this season adds to the list for him. But knowing the kind of player Ozzy is, I’m excited to discover what he comes out of this season with when Survivor 50 premieres Wednesday, February 25 at 8 p.m. ET on CBS and Paramount +!