‘Survivor 47’ crowns its ‘underdog’ champion: Did the right person win? [Poll]

In the final episode of Survivor 47, only four players remained in the running to win the $1 million prize: Rachel LaMont, Sam Phalen, Sue Smey, and Teeny Chirichillo. The night’s two-hour climax included one last immunity battle, a fire-making challenge, and a final tribal council in which the jurors voted for the winner. After a 7-1-0 decision, Rachel was named the newest Survivor champion over Sam and Sue, as chosen by the eight people she had a hand in eliminating from the game.

So, did the right person win Survivor 47? Vote in our poll below and then sound off in our reality TV forums.

Rachel’s landslide victory is a return to a trend that defines five of the seven “new era” seasons — dominating victories with collective thinking juries all supporting a single candidate in an overwhelming majority. It also marks the first time since the run of Sophie Clarke, Kim Spradlin, and Denise Stapley winning Seasons 23-25 that three women win in a row: Rachel, Kenzie Petty, and Dee Valladares. Kim, like Rachel, is also part of the five women to win four individual immunity challenges and, like Rachel, one of three of them that also won the game (the third being Jenna Morasca). Needless to say, Rachel has cemented herself as one of the great winners.

But the 7-1 tally in Rachel’s favor over Sam doesn’t tell the full story of what felt like a much more competitive final tribal council. For most of the session in front of the jury, Sam managed to tell his story of a “scrappy” game of “resilience” and “creative” thinking, all while cunningly undermining Rachel’s advantages as just luck, forcing her to speak to the jury in defense and from the back foot. Still, Rachel was able to impress upon them the importance of “perfect” use of the post-merge advantages she “controlled” and succinctly summed her game up as going from “a super underdog to a big dog” over the course of the season.

Rachel and Sam began on the same tribe of six at the start of the game, but on opposing sides of a shared ally in Sierra Wright. When Sierra became the first juror early in the merge, Rachel told the jury she was left without anyone she trusted in the game and that’s what forced her to make new connections with people like zero-vote finalist Sue and jurors Teeny Chirichillo and Caroline Vidmar. Once Kyle Ostwald was voted out as a challenge threat, that’s when Rachel stepped into the role herself, inevitably elevating her own threat level to critical. But she kept winning exactly when she needed to — and when she didn’t, she used her advantages to secure her own safety.

Perhaps Rachel’s biggest threat the whole season came in the form of Genevieve Mushaluk. They recognized early on that they’d never be able to work together because they were playing similar style games. In what the audience would deem a “mother off,” Genevieve won the final six immunity challenge, forcing Rachel to use her hidden idol to take out Andy Rueda, who Genevieve worked with in “Operation: Italy” to take out Caroline in the previous week. Rachel got the best of Genevieve in the next immunity challenge, securing her own place in the final four and ultimately calling Genevieve’s bluff on the fake idol that had fooled Rachel’s allies in prior votes. Once Genevieve was on the sidelines, the game seemed all but secured in Rachel’s favor.

After finding out from host Jeff Probst that she had won, Rachel described an “out of body experience” feeling like she knew what her strengths in the game would be and then managing to adapt to a game that was nothing like what she expected it would be. She also gave Sam props for what she called “an incredible final” that made her “very nervous.” In the end, she had no reason to be nervous, “underdog” or not.

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