Starting on a season that kicked off with a series of quits, Dee Valladares managed to make it memorable for a much stronger reason. Her incredible ability to build and maintain powerful beginning alliances while working with a shifting strategic landscape made her an incredibly dangerous, yet often unassuming player.
But once her adversaries realized she was a threat, it was too late. She was playing levels ahead of everyone and the move had already been made to snuff their torch before they even had a chance to organize a strike against her. Because of this, she’s widely regarded as one of the best new era players and everyone is very interested to find out just how she plans to approach her return to the game.
Dee’s quick Survivor stats
Survivor Career:
- Survivor 45 (Sole Survivor)
Total Days Played: 26 days
Total Votes Against: 2 votes
Individual Immunity Challenges Won: 3
Individual Reward Challenges Won: 1
- Before a split Tribal Council on Day 14, Dee won immunity for herself and reward for her team as the last person standing in this challenge, which is included as an immunity win above, as well.
Immunity Idols Played: 0
Advantages Played: 0
Dee Valladares' Survivor 45 game recap
Dee started off strong from the start as a member of the winning Reba tribe where she made a Day 1 alliance with Julia Alley. Dee also found her tribemate Austin Li Coon was heavily gravitating towards her alongside his ally, Drew Basile. Together, they became known as the Reba Four, creating a tight majority that dominated in challenges—even finding the Reba camp immunity idol from Austin’s Beware Advantage clues—up to the first tribe swap.
Dee and Julie stayed on Reba, but were separated from the guys during the first shakeup of the game on Day 5 when the remaining 15 castaways were redistributed amongst the three tribes. After losing immunity, with only one non-original Reba member, it seemed like they had a solid plan, but J. Maya worried Sifu Alsup had the Reba camp idol and wanted to blindside him to flush it. However, when the time came to vote, the non-original Reba member unexpectedly requested everyone vote him out instead, ready to go home.
Everyone else honored his request, sending him home, but Dee stuck to the plan to flush out the idol, voting for Sifu. Back at camp, Sifu was angry that one of the women had written his name down. They all denied it, but eventually J. Maya decided to claim she voted for him to end the suspicion. Reba won the next immunity challenge and all four members moved on to the individual portion of the game.
In the Earn the Merge challenge, Dee ended up on the losing team which left her at risk for the next vote. But the Reba Four had already decided J. Maya should be the next to go home, worried she was the least trustworthy and likely to flip at this point in the game. The members of the still fully in-tact Belo tribe, however, pushed for Kaleb Gebrewold—one of the only two Lulu players left—to go instead. His original tribemate and ally Emily Flippen learned of this plan and warned him, advising him to play his shot in the dark at Tribal Council.
Dee ended up joining the majority and voting for Kaleb who successfully played his shot in the dark, negating all 11 votes cast that night and forcing a new vote. This allowed Dee to push the target back onto J. Maya, who went home on a 10-1 vote.
The next immunity challenge once again split up our players into two teams for a Split Tribal Council. The last player standing on each team would be granted immunity at their respective Tribal Councils and the last player standing overall would win reward for their team. Dee won individual immunity and reward, using her power to finally orchestrate Kaleb’s elimination.
Tree mail announcing the return of the Survivor Auction came with a challenge to collect their spending money around the jungle at camp. Dee entered the auction with $900, the most of her tribe. However, when host Jeff Probst revealed that the player with the most money left at the end of the auction would lose their vote at the next Tribal Council, Dee spent it all on a milkshake in order to guarantee her vote.
Dee’s sights were set on eliminating Bruce Perreault next as he had a known idol, but when he won back-to-back immunity challenges, she was forced to shift gears and helped to blindside Kellie Nalbandian (moving to activate her ally Austin’s Advantage Amulet into a full immunity idol) followed by Kendra McQuarrie (Bruce’s closest ally).
When Bruce finally lost the next immunity challenge, Dee planned for everyone to split the votes in case he played his idol, but Emily convinced him he didn’t have to, sending him to the jury. However, Dee’s threat alert went off when Emily took ownership of the move right after Tribal Council. So when Drew won the next immunity challenge and decided it was time to flip on the Reba Four to take out Dee’s closest ally Julie, he made it abundantly clear no one could tell Dee about the plan. Austin, however, valued his (now extremely flirtatious) relationship with Dee and gave her a heads up that Julie would be going home out of courtesy.
Dee immediately went to Julie and told her to play her idol and vote for Emily. The plan worked, blindsiding the entire tribe and sending Emily to the jury. Back at camp when Austin asked, Dee said she never told Julie about the plan, which Austin believed due to his trust in Dee. She went on to win her second individual immunity at the next challenge, securing herself in the Final Five.
Drew and Austin once again wanted to target Julie, but their other numbers instead felt Drew was becoming too powerful and turned to Dee and Julie to blindside him. Whereas Austin warned Dee about her closest ally’s blindside, she did not warn him in return which caused Austin to misplay his idol for himself, sending Drew to the jury.
After a chaos of miscommunication caused her closest ally Julie to go home at the next Tribal Council in a 2-1-1-0 vote, Dee won the Final Four immunity challenge and scored her spot at the end. She chose to bring Austin to Final Tribal Council with her and Jake O’Kane joined them after winning the fire making challenge.
Dee’s pitch to the jury was as straightforward as her game: she made relationships that led to her receiving valuable information that she used to make moves to get herself to the end. She also emphasized how she was playing to support her family who had worked so hard for her. Receiving a majority 5 votes, Dee walked away with $1 million and the title of Sole Survivor.
Survivor 50 predictions: How far will Dee go?
Dee will likely either be one of the first to go or will make it to the end stage of the game. Heading into the game, everyone knows the power of her charm and ability to befriend others, which is very dangerous. If they don’t get her out first, it’s likely she will find herself with a tight early alliance and maneuver her way through the game as she did before.
She’s the type of threat you either need to get rid of right away or know how to manage during the long game. But for the players who think they’re the ones manipulating her—as many of her Survivor 45 tribe mates thought—she tends to be three steps ahead. So unless our returning players for Survivor 50 are ready to be four or five steps ahead of Dee, she might just run away with it. Especially after what our AI scenario predicted for this season…
Dee Valladares Survivor 50 player score
Dee’s original strength comes from the fact that she’s very unassuming. Unfortunately, now that everyone knows what she’s capable of, her ability to surprise has diminished greatly. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that she’s still an extremely smart player who knows how to build relationships and use them to her advantage while also winning the necessary challenges to advance.
Outwit (Social Game): 11/15
Outplay (Physical Game): 10/15
Outlast (Strategic Game): 11/15
Wildcard Factor: 2/5
Total Player Score: 34/50
Will Dee’s past win be the hurdle she needs to overcome this time around? Or will we see a new side of the strong, social strategist that might just be the angle she needs to maneuver her way to the end? Survivor 50 premieres Wednesday, February 25 at 8/7c on CBS and Paramount +!