Everybody remembers THE Survivor lie. It happened on Survivor: Pearl Islands, episode 11. Hell, the episode itself is called “the Great Lie”. It was a moment that Jeff Probst had hyped up during the pre-season. People knew something big would eventually come up but nobody knew when. Then Jonny Fairplay’s buddy Thunder D came out, and the rest is history.

To this day, I know so many people who have long since stopped watching Survivor that can still remember the dead grandma lie. It has become the most iconic Survivor moment. People remember Fairplay for his sleaziness and dead grandma is as sleazy as it gets. It became the perfect microcosm for his game and has basically defined the lengths people might go to in order to win Survivor.

Jon lies, but he tells the truth too.

The lie is truly a masterpiece and deserves its place in the Survivor pantheon. I understand why it’s so memorable to people who were there to watch it unfold live. Still, I feel as though another lie deserves to be right up there with Jonny and his dead but-not-so dead grandmother. I think the reason this lie is not as memorable to people is that it took place right after Survivor’s heyday when people may have been their most fatigued with the show. The other reason is that I don’t think this person set out to intentionally make this statement into a lie, it just happened to turn out that way. Jonny had malicious intent the whole time. This person just had a change of heart.

Going back to Survivor: Vanuatu, there was one person whose lies ended up completely altering the fate of the game. I’m not even talking about Chris Daugherty, who may not have uttered a single truth after the first few merge votes, I’m talking about Twila Tanner and her inability to stop betraying people despite her best intentions not to.

Some people go out on Survivor and play without their emotions. Most famously, Brian Heidik knew exactly what he had to do, went out and did it, and went back home a million dollars richer. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, some people get chewed up by Survivor and its high stakes. It’s one thing to watch it on television. It’s another to experience it in person. Twila is somebody who ends up in the latter category.

That doesn’t even mean that Twila is bad at the game. In fact, she’s fairly solid as a player on paper. Despite sticking out on the original women’s tribe, Twila is able to finagle her way into a majority alliance. She does so by working hard, competing as hard as possible and being so blunt as to appear impossible of telling a lie. Sure, Twila has her fights with the people she can’t stand, most notably Mia Galeotalanza and Eliza Orlins the season’s ultimate whipping girl, but it’s never with people in her alliance.

The problems for Twila come up when she starts getting in with too many people. When the tribes swap, Twila lands on a tribe with Sarge Masters and they hit it off immediately. He pitches the idea that Twila should be in the final four with him. Twila accepts this offer and unknowingly sets-up the blindside for the men at the merge.

“Whoops”.

Feeling like she’s falling out the power cluster in the new tribe, Julie Berry, who is the only woman to swap over with Twila, has a talk with Twila. She drops a little lie on Twila that is going to change the entire dynamics of the game come merge-time. In a stroke of luck, Julie tells Twila that she was offered a final four deal by the guys. This never actually happened but because Sarge had just done that with Twila, it strikes a chord with her. Suddenly, Twila believes the men are trying to play both women and feels like she has been lied to by someone she trusted explicitly.

With all that in the background, the tribes merge. Twila and Julie suddenly become the swing votes and Twila is savvy enough to realize this, as she perfectly puts it:

The guys think we’re with them. The girls automatically think we’re with them. So, who knows. After tonight, somebody’s gonna be pissed. We gotta do what we gotta do. I feel bad because I care about every one of them, but I’m beating them to the punch. I’m cutting their throat before they’re cutting mine.

So Twila cuts the guys’ throats by flipping on the guys, voting out Rory, and blindsiding them. The problem is that while Twila thinks she was being pro-active by doing this, she was actually drawing a line in the sand that hadn’t been there before. Julie’s false information tricked Twila into siding with the women when she might have made a different move in a different situation.

This is a great move for Julie, it’s actually one of the better strategic plays of the season. She is going to be naturally closer to both Leann Slaby and Ami Cusack, relegating Twila and Scout to the back of the pecking order. The women should be poised to take over the game because of the numbers advantage. Still, Twila can’t help but get frustrated at her position and sees the logic in flipping with Scout Cloud Lee and forming a new power nucleus.

Because Ami and Leann are not stupid, they know that Twila flipping over is a possibility and they try to lock her down. In order to convince the two that she is with them 100%, Twila swears on her son’s life. This is the second lie I think should belong among the top of the lists when it comes to Survivor deceptions, whether unintentional or not.

To truly understand the impact of Twila’s words, you have to understand the bond she shares with her son. Throughout the game, Twila has always been a tough, hard-love kind of woman. She works hard, does not really get very emotional and is simply looking to get through this game with her wits about her. Then, the players have the loved one visits, Twila’s son comes out, and we see a whole other side to Twila.

Twila is constantly hugging him at every possible moment. She tells him how much she loves him. She’s in tears pretty much the whole time. It’s a completely different Twila than we have been shown and it’s very obvious that it’s also a side of Twila none of her tribemates have ever seen. In that moment, they can really see how much Twila’s son means to her.

Which is why when Twila swears on her son’s life to Ami and Leann, it calms their worries. It’s probably bad timing that she makes this promise just after they have had the loved ones challenge and Twila’s intense love for her son is fresh on their minds. It isn’t shown on the show at this point but this is all compounded by the fact that Ami lost her brother not long before going on Survivor. This is something Twila knows and Ami knows that Twila knows.

All is well good except that the more she thinks about it, the more flipping on Ami and Leann sounds like a good idea. When Twila realizes that the lone remaining man, Chris, holds the key to the flip, she has to at least talk to him about it. To upset the trio if Ami, Leann, and Julie, Twila and Scout need four people. Chris is obviously going to agree to this because he’s looking for any way to survive. The problem is that the fourth person is Eliza.

Had it been Scout or Twila approaching Eliza with this plan, she would have shot it down immediately. They had both taken turns antagonizing her for everything Eliza ever did. They did not get along. Twila was smart enough to see that while they could never convince her, Chris might. Chris had a good bond with Eliza and he could use that to show her the logic in turning on who she thought were her closest allies. Never mind the fact that her supposed alliance was set to vote her off instead of Chris.

When Chris is able to talk Eliza into flipping, it becomes a reality for Twila. She is going to have to break her word to Ami and Leann and vote out Leann. She knows it’s going to hurt them but she also hopes that they can see why she has to do it with another great couple of confessionals:

I swore to Ami and Leann on my sons name that I was with them 100%. But maybe if I win a million dollars, God’ll forgive me. I don’t know. I hope. I swore on my son’s name. May god forgive me for saying that, because it’s not the right thing to do, but it’s time for something to change. Ami and Leann just act like they’re so much better than everybody else and they got this all wrapped up in the back pocket, and it just frickin pisses me off.

This is my argument for why this lie is so great. Jonny’s lie was flashy and entertaining but in terms of the game, it didn’t amount to much. Sure, it gave Jon something extra he could lie on but by this point in Pearl Islands, the cast should have realized that Jon was willing to swear on anything and break it if need be.

With Twila’s lie, the game completely turned upside down. Up until that point, it seemed inevitable that we would be heading towards an Ami and Leann final two unless Julie could win final immunity. Twila flipped that completely around and put a brand new group in power. Her words were also never forgotten by those she had done wrong by.

Going back to camp immediately after Leann is voted out, Ami and Twila go at it. They debate the merits of using Eliza for their means and the move Twila just did. The argument ends when Ami drops a bomb on Twila, “I’m just glad I didn’t swear on my little brother or my family, cause that would be real yucky”. Which of course would be really cutting for Twila who knows what Ami went through with her brother.

The lie keeps coming back in one form or another. Ami harps on it until her exit. Eliza being Eliza keeps bringing it up around Twila, not realizing Twila might feel pretty bad about her lie. This causes more than one argument between the two of them. Still, by this point Twila does not have to worry about her position in the game. Everybody is willing to go the distance with her given how she’s angered Sarge, Leann, and Ami with her words.

Of course the worst thing, in Twila’s shoes, about this entire predicament is that Twila had to make this move. If she doesn’t flip on Ami and Leann, she goes home 5th or 6th. She read the tea leaves perfectly and with Scout, made the correct decision. Had she never sworn on her son and simply backstabbed Ami and Leann, there’s a distinct possibility Twila could have won that million dollar grand prize.

Instead, she gets to final tribal council where everybody is looking to rip her a new one. Twila goes through jury questioning with a bit of a cagey attitude. When Eliza asks for an apology, she is unwilling to do so. As she has done the entire game, Twila can’t help but be Twila. The more the questioning goes on, the more shit gets thrown at her. It all comes down to Twila’s final statement which I believe will always be the rawest and most real statement anybody will ever make on Survivor.

I didn’t come into this game intentionally wanting to deceive or to lie to anyone. I don’t do that back home, and anybody that knows me knows that my word is good. Whether you believe that or not, it is good. All I thought about since I’ve been here is bettering my life. That’s all I thought about, and how I could do it. I didn’t worry about your feelings, I didn’t worry about your feelings, none of you. That was selfish and self-centred of me. People kill for less that what we’re playing for now. Maybe that sounds hard or cold, and it actually turned me into somebody I don’t like. Sarge you don’t have to rub it in. You don’t have to make me feel any lower than what I already feel for doing what I did. You don’t understand how that’s bothered me. I highly respect you, and to hear you say that just kills me. I apologise to each and every one of you. It wasn’t the game I intended to play, it was the game that ended up playing me, and if I could do right again I would, and for that I apologise. And if you can forgive me, maybe I can forgive myself.

I mean… fuck, how can you not feel moved by these words. All fueled by a simple swear on her son that had to be broken. Maybe Twila didn’t set out to lie to Ami and Leann but by doing so, she put forth one of the best post-merge storylines any character has ever gone through. I feel sad that it tore her up on a personal level and that had to be heavy but I’ll be damned if Twila’s Vanuatu storyline isn’t one of the most compelling story arcs the show has ever crafted.

One of the best parts about all of this is that after the show, Twila would end up doing a reality themed Fear Factor episode. Her partner for that episode? None other than Jonny Fairplay. Sometimes in life, things come full circle.