Searching for Our Sole Survivor
Well, this is it. 12 episodes completed, 14 castaways voted out, and we have reached finale night on this season of Survivor. Ghost Island will come to a close as three more people will be eliminated, and the ten jurors will vote for the next sole survivor. Personally? I’ve enjoyed the season, notably due to seeing some tremendous gameplay from players I’ve grown to be a fan of. I have high expectations for the end result as well, but first I’m going to attempt to predict how the finale will shake out. (Note: some people like to use Edgic (edit logic, a.k.a. reading the TV edit) to predict things. I do not. In fact, I hate it. So I’ll stick to predicting based on the gameplay itself.)
6th Place: Donathan 
After last week’s episode, where Donathan exploded both at camp and at Tribal, the patience of those around him has to be wearing thin. He’s grown more and more erratic, desperate to make a big move and shake up the game (to no avail, mind you), and Dom/Wendell surely will realize he is more of a hazard to their endgame than a potential person to beat in the end. That being said, were he to be taken to the end he’d be a surefire goat; his win equity seems to be completely out as I can’t imagine the jury is taking his ‘truth bombs’ as good gameplay. My hot take? He loses in every single F3 scenario possible, but I’d be shocked if he made it that far.
5th Place: Angela
Angela has been an absolute nonfactor for basically the entire merge, and I really don’t know what to make of her here. She voted against Wendell in the Chelsea boot, but then was looking to Wendell for guidance during the very next tribal where Kellyn went home. It seems that she’s back on the Dom/Wendell train, but I reckon they cut her here with no difficulty. I also can’t see her winning in a single F3 scenario.
4th Place: Sebastian
If you’re doing the math, it’s possible Sebastian could win this season. I would wager that the jury likes him more than Angela/Donathan and would give him the win if that were the final three. However, I’d also wager even more money that there’s no way in hell that will end up being the final three of this season. That being said, Seabass does have an extra vote that he picked up from Ghost Island, and while I’m not confident he has the tools to use it properly (and reverse the curse), it gives him some ammunition to possibly squeeze by to final four. However, the mandatory firemaking challenge will have a huge impact on this situation, and it just seems like Sebastian won’t be taken to the end without winning immunity.
Final 3: Domenick, Laurel, Wendell
So our final three consists of the alliance that’s been running the whole game. Laurel has waffled constantly on cutting the two guys, so I think it’s safe to say she’s going to ride with them until the end. With an idol each, Dom and Wendell should easily make it to FTC, although it’s very likely one of them will have to square off in the firemaking challenge. Still, they’ve been so dominant it’s hard not to believe they’ll advance to FTC.
Now, what I could do is try and predict how each juror’s vote will fall in this F3. I am not going to do that, because I am both lazy and find it a fruitless task. The reason? A lot could happen in three votes that could change the perception of each player. Idol plays, immunity wins, and firemaking wins could all make one of them look better and raise their stock. What I will say is that I fully expect Laurel to come in 3rd place (likely receiving 0 votes), and expect the battle for the win between Domenick and Wendell to be very, very tight. So tight, in fact, that I wouldn’t be shocked if we witnessed the first ever tie vote at FTC.
So that’s what I think will happen, but it’s also what I hope will happen. Dom and Wendell have ran this entire season (with the assist from Laurel, of course), and reaching FTC together would cement them as the greatest duo since JT and Stephen way back in Survivor: Tocantins. While turning on one another beforehand could potentially vault the victor to a surefire landslide victory, as a viewer I really hope that doesn’t end up the case. Instead, witnessing two friends battling it out at the very end for a million dollars would be such a beautiful ending to this season’s story, and we’d walk away with one of the more impressive winners in recent memory in terms of overall dominance. After all, what good is story without a satisfying ending?
