Survivor is a game of moments, and by the power of Coach Wade on Exile Island, we got a moment last night. One tribe delivered one of the messiest and most insane votes in the entire history of the show and in doing so, completely changed how a lot of fans see two different players, one of whom wasn’t even at said tribal council.
Let’s take off our buffs real quick and set the scene of what exactly happened before we get into how the fanbase has responded. During Episode 4 of 51, the producers, much to the annoyance of fans, randomly sorted the players out of their two starting tribes and into three new tribes. Kilby and Lewis drew the short end of the stick, as they ended up on a six person tribe with Sharonda, Erik, Christian and Linnea who were already in a not-so-secret alliance. If their tribe lost, it seemed predestined that one of Lewis or Kilby would go home. So, when that loss happened last night, everyone involved was just wondering which one of the two it would be.
A funny thing happened before Tribal Council, however. Maggie, whose tribe won the immunity challenge, was given an advantage that allowed her to visit another beach and gift someone an extra vote. She picked Kilby and Lewis’s tribe and she not only gave them the extra vote, she also gave them a second extra vote she and Brady found earlier in the season. At Tribal Council, they threw the two extra votes onto Linnea, which tied the tally at 4 to 4 between her and Lewis.
After a revote produced the same numbers, host Jeff Probst told Kilby, Sharonda, Erik and Christian that they could either unanimously agree to send Linnea or Lewis home, or if they were unable to make a decision, all four of them would draw rocks and whoever drew the odd one would go home. Kilby stood his ground and said he was willing to go to rocks. Everyone else wavered and Sharonda, Erik and Christian decided to send home their own ally Linnea rather than leave their fate to chance.
With all due respect to Brady chopping his finger off, that insane tribal council is the defining moment of Survivor 51 so far, and it has completely changed how the fanbase views both Kilby and Maggie. Most of the conversation around this past episode has involved the two of them, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. That’s a far cry from the treatment they were getting earlier in the season, and it could position both as potential returning players in the future.
Let’s talk about Maggie first. The response to her hasn’t exactly been negative from the game’s biggest fans on social media, but it has been quiet and at times, kind of dismissive. Her edit was mostly quiet through the first four episodes, and there was a consistent stream of joke tweets with her picture going around and people asking who she was. The fanbase’s collective read was that she was going to be an underdeveloped character who quietly went home sometime before the endgame without much fanfare. Not anymore. Now fans are dropping tweets of her dressed like Lady Olenna from Game Of Thrones and commenting on her big balls. Former players are even talking about how she basically hired hitmen since she told them to target Linnea.
For Kilby, screentime has not been the issue. He’s been one of the most prominent characters of the entire season, but it’s often felt like the edit has been dunking on him. The game has shown several conversations where his perception and reads on the game seemed to be way off, and his budding friendship with Erik has been widely mocked by the fanbase. A former player even called the two of them a nightmare blunt rotation. The fanbase’s read was that he couldn’t go home soon enough, at least until last night. Now every Survivor player and fan I’ve seen, myself included, is praising how hard he rode for Lewis and how much he pushed around Erik, Christian and Sharonda. He’s being treated like a war hero and someone never to be messed with.
Obviously the point of Survivor is to win the game, but for many people going on the show, the point is also to make an impact. The goal is to have your own moment and do something fans will reference and talk about for years to come. Both Kilby and Maggie got that moment last night, and in doing so, they went from being an underedited nobody and an overedited weirdo to both being badass fan favorites. Not bad for one episode.
