‘Survivor 41’ has wrapped on a history making season… quite fitting seeing as half way through the winner changed history.
Firstly, there was the whole new format with only 26 days of gameplay and more twists and advantages crammed into those 26 days than ever attempted before. One of those advantages was the Turn Back Time advantage Erika Casupanan decided to use to “change history” aka, reverse the results of the previous challenge, making the winners now up for elimination at the next tribal council, and not yet part of the merged tribe.
But more significant was the fact that CBS made true on their promise to ensure a minimum of 50% of the cast were BIPOC.
‘Survivor 41’ and Winner, Erika Casupanan Have Made All Kinds of History
The fact that the winner of the season was one of these BIPOC competitors was truly poetic, but more than that, 32 year old Erika made more history by being the first Canadian-who actually resides in Canada- to not only play the game, but bring home the $1 million. Make that $1,289,480 in Canadian dollars.
Now, Erika is not the first woman to win, but she is the first in 6 years. Her win of 7-1(DeShawn Radden) -0(Xander Hastings) means that she single-handedly secured more votes for herself and her gender than any of the women who made it to the final tribal council have made- COLLECTIVELY in 6 years.
Yes, you read that right. Over the past 6 years, the women to make it to the final three have earned 6 votes all together in comparison to the men they sat beside, earning 62 votes. Yep. 6-62.
Though 13-63 doesn’t exactly get the womens’ movement cheering “we’ve found equality”, Erika’s victorious gameplay managed to more than double the dismal stats seen of late.
Another, not exactly “history making” component, but one that had home viewers scratching their heads nonetheless was how the season was edited.
No, I’m not talking the winner’s edit which cleverly took viewers on a rollercoaster of guessing between Shan Smith, Ricard Foye, DeShawn and Xander without truly thinking of Erika much at all until the penultimate episode (a fatal flaw on Xander’s behalf in the end, also), but rather the entire edit that really messed with viewers’ minds.
Xander’s edit clearly made him a fan-favorite. It turns out the rest of the Castaways saw him as a non-entity, hence not bothering to vote him off or even flush his idol. He earned zero votes at the end of the game.
Danny McCray seemed stand offish, quiet and a lone wolf, but he promises he made strong connections and was quite the friendly guy around camp.
And here’s one for you all- Heather Aldret was clearly the goat, dragged to the final four for no other reason than to beat…or was she?
Clearly she sucked at challenges and Jeff Probst was always the first to point out the obvious, but Ricard was quoted as saying that Erika had been correct when she said that she Heather had played a truly similar game- slow and steady (and boring to watch). A game that demanded respect and ending up making Erika a winner.
Does that mean if Xander hadn’t read the jury wrong, challenged and beaten Erika at fire making to sit between Heather and DeShawn at the final tribal…Heather might have won the season?
We will never know now. Instead we know that Erika, the “lion dressed as a lamb” who made history by changing history while exiled on a beach all alone did just that…changed history.
Enjoy that million (.28), Erika…sans tax!
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