As of late, Ozzy has been putting together some dominant performances. He’s been consistently a strong point for his tribe since this most recent swap. He’s ran faster, balanced better, and been clutch more often. The most recent example being an epic performance at the reward challenge, where Ozzy helped untangle a set of ropes to retrieve a key at an alarming pace, then catapulted a group of balls into some baskets before Culpepper could lead another epic comeback. What was this reward you may ask? Pizza and soft drinks as host Jeff Probst would say. Ozzy can dominate even while starving, so now to imagine him full of pizza and carbonated deliciousness is quite scary.

With stomach full, Ozzy was rolling through the immunity challenge again, diving down and retrieving puzzle pieces for his team at Aquaman like levels to give Nuku a HUGE lead. Sadly, even the lead he helped build wasn’t enough, as the rest of his team couldn’t solve the puzzle and they blew it. Meaning Tribal Council.

Now, you can look at Ozzy’s performance in a few ways. For one, he literally does everything around camp. He’s catching fish, starting fires, and doing all sorts of chores. He’s helping win challenges. This is all part of his strategy to seem needed to his tribe mates. However, being a little too good at challenges can put a target on your back, as everyone is already aware of his abilities from past seasons. His name was already brought up two tribals ago, where Tai mentioned to Sandra that everyone should vote Ozzy. There was no real concern of him going that night, but last episode Varner decided to bring up Ozzy again in an attempt to save himself.

If Ozzy went home before making the merge I would have been heartbroken. This season would have been worthless had he not worn the immunity necklace at least once. And going into last episode’s tribal, it looked as if Ozzy might be going home. Varner had started to make a solid pitch, to where I was unsure if Ozzy could save himself. But the quiet warrior stayed quiet, letting Varner ramble long enough for him to make quite possibly the worst move in Survivor history. Varner actually ended up calling out Zeke for not sharing with the tribe that he is transgender. (What the fuck, Varner?) This led Jeff to not even ask the tribe to get up and vote. Varner sealed his own fate once those words left his lips.

Varner’s ignorance and a little luck saved Ozzy that night. Even still, you would think that Ozzy would be totally screwed if his tribe doesn’t win the next immunity challenge; but his tribe’s help won’t be necessary. We’re merging baby.

Once the merge hits, it’s everyone playing for themselves. And with Ozzy’s recent performances it’s safe to say that he will be in the fight for every immunity necklace here on out, as long as he stays in Fiji. His top competitors in challenges will probably be Culpepper or Aubry, but you never really know in Survivor when you’ll have an off day, or when someone will have their on day.