Christian Hubicki Called Out The Biggest Survivor 50 Threats, And I’m So Confused About One

If you asked a bunch of Survivor superfans who the smartest person ever to play the game is, I bet you’d hear more people say Christian Hubicki than anyone else. The robotics professor was a standout character on David vs Goliath, thanks to his analytical mind, fun confessionals and unique way of looking at the game and all its possibilities. Now, he’s finally returning for Survivor 50, and his breakdown of the biggest threats on the cast is fascinating (and not what we've heard from other castaways).

During a pregame interview before 50 officially began shooting, Christian broke down what he sees as the archetypes of each cast member. He thinks the producers essentially put everyone into four different broad groups: challenge beasts, narrators, drama types that make good television and normal relatable people with a high upside chance of winning. He thinks each group contains three men and three women, and the last group is occupied by the people he’s looking to target. Here’s a portion of the quote he gave Terry Terrones…

I’ll get into who fits into the other categories later, but before I get there, I need to comment on the clear WTF person in this group: Colby. Look: I’m a big Colby guy. I love The Australian Outback, and I think he probably should have beat Tina in the finals. I also like him to some extent on his other seasons, even if he seems disinterested and out of the loop. You won’t hear any Colby hate from me, but defending his place on this cast and singling him out for being such a big threat to win are two entirely different things.

The other five people on Christian’s list are consistently cited by fans as some of the strongest players to ever play the game. Dee and Kyle both won. Charlie is considered by many to be the best second place finisher of the New Era and only lost because his closest ally unexpectedly voted against him at Final Tribal. Cirie is often called the best player never to win. Genevieve is maybe the most popular winner pick for this season.

Colby is clearly the odd man out in the list, but who am I to argue with Christian Hubicki? The rest of his analysis is an incredibly thoughtful breakdown of how producers are probably looking at the season. Even if his read on Savannah underestimates her a little bit, the basic gist of what he’s saying for pretty much everyone else is spot on. Clearly producers were thinking at least somewhat about finding a balance between personality types and casting a final group that resembled a real season.

You can check out his full breakdown below…

I can’t tell you how fired up I am for Survivor 50. You could make a strong case that this is one of the three best casts of all-time alongside Winners At War and Heroes vs Villains. It’s going to be such a treat to see these players interact with each other. I can’t wait to see who makes a deep run and who gets targeted early, either because they can’t behave themselves or because the cast considers their threat level too strong.

We’ll have to check back in after the season to see how closely players fulfilled the promises of the buckets Christian assigned them to. In the meantime, you can check out the one thing I personally want to see from every cast member this season.