‘Survivor 45’: How a last-minute vote at the Final 5 led to the winner

Christopher Tsang
·6 min read
2

We finally have a winner for “Survivor 45.” For those who have been keeping up with the season, it was not a shocker of a victory, unlike past New Era champs like Mike Gabler in “Survivor 43” or Erika Casupanan in “Survivor 41,” which many viewers did not see coming. And while nothing extremely unpredictable happened in terms of the winner reveal, similar to recent episodes of the season, everything leading up to the ending was eye-opening to say the least, particularly with one last-minute vote at the Final 5 that changed everything. Let’s break down the events of this intense finale “Living the Survivor Dream” and the shaky buildups.

Austin Li Coon was quite forgiving of Dee Valladares for not telling him about her plan to blindside his ally Drew Basile last week. In fact, one could say it brought them closer together, to the point where the other three remaining players Jake O’Kane, Julie Alley and especially Katurah Topps realized they had to break them up before the Final Tribal Council. But Austin did not have to worry about being the next vote out, winning the next immunity/reward challenge over Jake, who made a number of mistakes (despite winning an advantage) and overall, had an up-and-down roller coaster of a finale episode that will be addressed later.

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In what was the most confounding vote of the entire season, especially with most of the post-merge votes being overwhelmingly united this season, we had everyone who was vulnerable at the Final 5 get votes, and no one seemed to have a definitive plan or knew who was really going home. To simplify, Julie voted for Jake, Jake voted for Dee, Dee voted for Katurah, and Katurah and Austin voted for Julie, sending her home in a 2-1-1-1 vote, with Jake playing an idol for Katurah, negating Dee’s vote.

SEEEverything to know about ‘Survivor 46’: Watch the preview trailer

But there was almost no strategy behind any of these votes. Dee and Julie originally wanted to vote Jake, but when they found out about his idol after he strangely told Austin when he took him on reward, Dee switched to Katurah. Julie still pushed for Jake, willing to risk that he was bluffing, even though this vote was the last time an idol could be played. Then there’s Austin, who also wanted to go for Katurah, but later shifted toward Julie, making Dee not have the numbers — yet she still threw a vote on Katurah anyway, because she morally could not write down Julie’s name. The only two with a laid-out strategic plan was Katurah and Jake, the latter of whom was steadfast on voting for Julie, but after he told Katurah about his idol, she proposed for them to take out Dee instead with the idol — since she told the girls she would vote Jake with them — something that Jake was considering.

And it would’ve worked if they stuck to it. But Katurah flipped on her own plan and changed her vote at the last second to Julie out of fear that everyone else would vote her out, and didn’t know that Jake decided to play his idol on her to make a big move for himself. For those keeping track, this is the third time this season a move by Jake was ruined by Katurah. The whole thing was a messy jumble!

Jake was also not happy with Katurah because he swore on his grandmother (“Nana”) that they would vote together. To be fair, Jake didn’t tell Katurah that he would play his idol for her, but she did say to him earlier in her persuasion that if Dee survives this vote, she would win the next immunity challenge and take Austin to the Final 3, forcing her and Jake to go to fire, with Jake likely winning against her.

And that’s exactly what happened. Beat by beat. Dee ended up winning over Jake, who had an even more embarrassing blunder in this one when he disqualified himself after breaking a part of the challenge out of frustration and rush. He was so upset with himself that he begged Dee to make him go to fire, a request that she granted, since she didn’t want Austin to have a flashy move by beating Katurah in fire, something that he could do easily. Despite Austin making Dee recognize Jake wasn’t as good in fire as him and wanting to eliminate any risk to take out Katurah, Dee stuck to her guns and Jake beat Katurah at the firemaking challenge, sending her to the jury, and finally having a move that he could own.

SEE‘Survivor’ deaths: Full list of castaways we’ve lost

It was comforting to see Jake celebrate a win after being on the bottom this entire game, and having such a chaotic journey, specifically in this finale that was a wild chain of events of him being crushed by something hopeful. Before the first immunity challenge, he was able to win an advantage by figuring out a lock combination by counting objects at certain stations. He incorporated a smart method by connecting the numbers to past “Survivor” winners to remember. However, while that advantage helped him in the challenge, he blew his lead when he forgot to bring his keys to the puzzle and then overlooked a puzzle piece that was right in front of him. Then there was his plan to use his idol to make a big move against Dee, but that didn’t work. And then in the next immunity challenge, similar to the last one, he had a real shot to win, but dropped his large stack of cups late in the run, and shattered his chances entirely when he was disqualified seconds later for accidentally breaking the walking rope grid. You couldn’t help but feel for the guy, so it was liberating to see him catch some kind of break at the end and make the Final 3, even though his chances for winning the game were slim.

Final Tribal Council ultimately came down to the showmance couple Dee and Austin, who both did not let their feelings for each other affect their pitches as they both tried to maintain control when talking about their roles in the dominant Reba four alliance and the individual moves they made. But once Dee told Austin for the first time that she did tell Julie about his plan to originally vote her out two episodes ago, leading to their blindside of Emily Flippen when Julie played Austin’s idol, that seemed to seal his fate and solidify Dee for the win.

At the end, the vote was very close as Drew, Kendra McQuarrie and Bruce Perreault all voted for Austin, but Emily, Julie, Katurah, Kaleb Gebrewold and Kellie Nalbandian voted for Dee, making her the winner of Sole Survivor and the million dollar prize.

It just goes to show that “Survivor” does come down to a little bit of chance and timing, but Dee is a satisfying winner who had a stellar social game that informed her strategic moves when needed, while also winning three immunity challenges. It is a fitting end to a great season of “Survivor” and fans can look forward to “Survivor 46”  when it debuts February 28, 2024.

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