Does anyone think Heather could've had a fighting chance against her if she made it? Erika gave her a lot of credit for a pairing that was taking charge of the game, matched with her potential mentioning of the near-drowning.
No. The only way Heather would have won is if it was a F2 with an incredibly bitter jury towards the other finalist (think Russell Hantz's first season).
IMO the biggest insight we had into Erika's actual gameplay was Shan thinking she was a threat.
It wasn't just Shan - seemed like most of Luvu (her original tribe) wanted her out because of her strategy/'craftiness' that we weren't shown.
I am disappointed that Ricard did not get to the F3, although his extended eulogy before the vote at F5, and especially him going on and on about how great he is at the game, helped. I mean, he's not wrong, but damn.
I also think it was a mistake for him to have revealed the impeding birth of his son at that TC - what felt like a real, vulnerable moment when he was with Xander felt more like a plea in TC.
Xander, Xander, Xander..... so many mistakes this episode. I mean, he didn't make the
biggest mistake, which would have been to use the idol to save Ricard, but.... why did he tell Ricard (unprompted!) that he'd use the idol to save him? And then to get up in TC and play the idol for himself, knowing no one had voted for him? Silly showboating that got Ricard's hopes up at the final moment and ended up being a completely unnecessary broken promise. And following that up with taking Erika to the F3... made me think of Jerri's vote for Tina in S2 - that getting Colby to take her over Keith meant that Tina was truly the master of the game. I did love how freaked out he was seeing Erika's sad attempts to build fire - and yet he
still took her!
Going into the fire challenge, I thought, oh, in some ways that would be too perfect for Heather to finally have one moment in the season where she is remotely competitive. But it was so much more satisfying having a F3 of players with very different games who all had the potential to win.
I love FTC, even though in recent seasons the format has gotten a little lame. Walking in, I thought DeShawn was going to win based on his game (what we were shown), but his FTC was almost as bad as Amanda Kimmel's. Hanging his game on relationships was the worst! angle! I can see that perhaps the jury was already decided before FTC, but if DeShawn had owned his chaotic/erratic/highly reactive strategy as him taking big risks and not being afraid to switch gears to further his game, knowing that it meant that he had to eliminate allies, the jury would have respected it more. Unpredictability can be a (risky) strategy. Instead, he walked right into Ricard's reframe that he got to know people just well enough to betray them.
OTOH, Erika was masterful in her answers at FTC. Felt to me like she told us all the things we didn't get to see about her game. She was calm, owned the parts that could be perceived as weaknesses and turned them around to be positives. I'm still annoyed that we didn't get to see more of her game, but this was a satisfying end to a season with a very likeable cast.
(ps final immunity - while watching I did wonder if/how they adjusted the apparatus for things like arm length because it absolutely looked like Xander had an advantage in his ability to reach back for blocks with his long arms)
I liked the winner getting announced at the FTC, although I think it was more to do with not feeling confident in May 2021 about the ability to hold a big public live event in December 2021 than wanting to return to their roots.
Anyone else notice that Shan barely spoke in the afterparty?
She's got a better shot at making it to the F3 than Xander at this point. I can see that ending up being a FTC where no one even asks her anything (what season was it where that happened?).
when Erika said that too. Heather has actually been playing? Because accordingly to Shan, the only thing Heather was doing was working with Erika (they have voted the same every time for example).
