I wanted to write a little piece on the pros and cons of each winner and the impact they’d have on the franchise, the fanbase, and the season it would be contained to. At this point I can’t say any winner would be downright awful, even Kass. But I do think with so many strong, one-directional views going around I’d dig in a bit to see what a world with each winner would be like.

This season has been interesting in that all the presumed “pre-packaged” winners that you could see lasting longterm and winning the game really cleanly went out in various ways, whether they got a bad start, an inescapable doom, or just blew up hardcore. Brice, Sarah, LJ, and Tasha seem like people who could be textbook winning characters but for some reason fell out. This leaves us with five people who would be unique winners but certainly not perfect ones. That’s why I think that they’re worth dissecting.

Let’s get this done.

Kassandra McQuillen

Pros: Aside from her powerful cult following, no one would expect this. While each character has flaws in their edit, Kass’ are the most powerful and contain the most textbook failures of basic Survivor, especially in the social game. If she came out the winner, it would require a massive overhaul of what makes a winner.

Kass is not playing a textbook winner’s game as even the most fluent students have learned it but some are insanely convinced that she can.pull it off. And maybe I’m just getting brainwashed, but even I think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell.

Cons: The world would explode. While each character has flaws in their edit, Kass’ are the most powerful and contain the most textbook failures of basic Survivor, especially in the social game. I’m of the mindset that whoever wins Survivor deserves it, but I don’t know how one justifies Kass’ win. The editors certainly haven’t, and the argument from the pro-Kass camp is “ignore literally all the bad stuff and just focus on the good stuff.” I’m sorry but that just doesn’t work.

If Kass wins, after all the shit talked about her by the jury members and all the negativity surrounding her, then I just don’t think her story worked. It’ll hurt the season for sure, and I’m not usually in the camp of “the ending makes the story worse or better”, but the idea that we were supposed to be respecting Kass throughout her game for falling in the same pratfalls as Russell and co is worse than the screwjob the editors threw at Jenna Morasca.

Spencer Bledsoe

Pros: A Spencer win would be pretty satisfying. The underdog who wound up on the crazy tribe as the One Sane Man and never once got a true position of power scrapping his way to the end after 5 incorrect votes and the insanity of Tony, Kass, and Luzon at large, that’d be a pretty satisfying concept. And Spencer is an interesting character. He has a lot of funny moments and a pretty good head on his shoulders for a 21-year-old. Most 21 year olds are the Fabio and Angie Layton types on Survivor so it’d be nice to have a pretty intelligent and respectable kid represent the youngins on Survivor.

The more I talk about it, the more I can see a Spencer victory as a pretty decent end to the story: the underdog becomes a true free agent and sneaks into a win.

Cons: …I don’t buy Spencer as a compelling winner. I’m sorry, but I don’t. What I appreciate about him is his legitimate normalcy as a person and how he comes across as an awkward but intelligent young lad. He’s pretty relatable, but in the same token he is not as big as his storyline. He has a really strong storyline, a cross between Malcolm being on the underdog tribe and Fabio being the targeted underdog all post-merge, but Spencer himself doesn’t have the natural hilarity that Fabio does or the charisma and narration skill that Malcolm possesses.

Most winners are really big, powerful characters that fit the role of respectable winner. I just don’t think Spencer is that much of a true legend to fill it. A great guy, but I wouldn’t really put him in my top 50 characters and I don’t think it’d be as epic in theory as it would be in action.

In addition, I think that as far as the storytelling goes, Spencer winning would be predictable. Not the path he took to get there, goodness no. I mean this in that the storytelling has backed Spencer up almost without fail. He has a few moments every now and again and his game has been relatively sloppy, but the edit has been doing its best to buy Spencer as someone who makes big moves all the time when he’s more of an under-the-radar Vecepia-esque player. I don’t really have problems with predictable wins, but I think a predictable win would be a disappointing way to close out a wild and unpredictable season.

Tony Vlachos

Pros: Say what you will about overexposure: Tony is a huge character. Unlike the people who usually are swimming dick-deep in confessionals, Tony has such a natural charisma, an infectious energy, and is both a unique and engaging character that has never really ceased to entertain. Unlike the Russell Hantzes of the world who are nothing but conceited and mean-spirited, or the Cochrans of the world who have a character manufactured both by the edit and by the person’s own intents, Tony is a very real star that has a lot of depth to him and is definitely an imperfect character but one that, if we give it some time, can look back in retrospect and appreciate.

Furthermore, I think that while he isn’t really like Russell Hantz, the similarities drawn are pretty noticeable. However, I think Tony is a decent evolution of the character both in entertainment value and gameplay ability. He’s much more sociable and gets along pretty well with the tribe, whereas Russell was a hermit who was only focused around himself. As of Tyson, the editors have been comfortable with showing the winner having some flaws in their game, which is probably the case of any winner. Tony’s game would be very flawed but it’d be understandable, and he’d be a nice addition to dominating winners.

Cons: My cons for Tony are a lighter mix of my cons for Kassandra and Spencer. Like Kass, he has a pretty sharp negative edit, albeit more sporadically. We’re shown in detail why Tony potentially wouldn’t win, and occasionally are made to not like him. It wouldn’t be as severe as Kass flipping on an alliance, fighting with all the post-jury people, and then suddenly getting all their votes, but if Tony left this game winning something would definitely not feel right about it.

The second point feels weird to say with that in mind, but I also feel that Tony’s win would feel pretty predictable. Less predictable than Spencer’s hero edit, because of his very visible flaws, but still very predictable as you’d imagine 69 confessionals and counting to be. We get a lot of Tony’s perspective, a lot of the time, so it’s like the show is trying to convince us Spencer is his only real threat when if you look closely enough, Trish and Woo are pretty decent at the game. Tony winning would not only be predictable, but feel awkward and incorrect to the story.

Trish Hegarty

Pros: I feel that Trish fills out a very unique winner archetype. She’d be the oldest female winner and no one would ever expect it. She has a very unique role to the story, however. If you look, she’s had a big impact on it. She led the blindside against Cliff. She got Kass to flip. She got Jefra to stay with them. When Tony turned on Jefra, Trish stayed levelheaded and forced the counteralliance to split their votes. I imagine next week Tony, having only that time to play his idols, would play one on Trish. She’s been building the bonds that, with the right jury, probably get her votes. Trish would definitely go down as one of the strongest social players to win the game and the story would clearly, if discreetly, detail why.

In addition, and this is more subjective, Trish is a fun character. She isn’t as fun as Woo, but she always gets a good, funny line every now and again. She’s a solid narrator and seems to be enjoying herself out there. Trish isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but she has a pretty decently sized fanbase and I think she fits the bill of being a truly, truly unique winner while still being palatable.

Cons: I fear that the reaction to her win would be incredibly negative and she’d join the line of reviled female winners who beat a strong, strategic male in the finals despite not backstabbing him or getting all the airtime. There’s no way Trish finishes the season with even half of the confessionals Tony gets, and I fear her win will always be accredited to “bitter jury” or “Tony doing all the work” or all the other excuses used against the Natalies and Sophies and Ambers of the world that, frankly, I think is a pile of dog shit.

On a lesser note, I think that in a season full of big and explosive characters, Trish is definitely on the subtle end even with her quirks. If she wins, it won’t be the grand finish that’d befall a Tony or an LJ or even a Spencer. It’d be relatively quiet and muted, and I don’t think she’d be the instant legend I feel she deserves to be.

Yung “Woo” Hwang

Pros: Very rarely do we get the super de duper fun characters in the winners’ circle. Yeah, we got Fabio and Fabio is awesome, but usually the winners are the ones who have their shit on lock and totally controlled. Woo is not. Woo is just out there in the rain having fun and loving life and not really caring about the strategy. We’d have a winner that gives us a lot of awesome moments, a lot of really funny scenes, and who was a really big part to why we enjoyed the season.

I would be happy for weeks, much like I was when people like Fabio, Chris, Denise, Bob, and Sandra win. It’s just so insanely awesome and unexpected that the most unique character walked away with a win when you’d never know during at least one point in the show that they had any business winning.

Cons: Definitely the weakest winners’ edit out of the five, and yes, that’s including Kass. I imagine that at least in the pre-merge, we’d get at least one or two confessionals that we could say “yeah, I guess we should have seen that coming.” Woo, I don’t think he cares about the game, and the edit has barely reflected on him playing the game at all, just doing craaaaaaaaaazy Woo things. He’d definitely be thrown under the bus, because even Fabio had confessionals about playing dumb and how much his family drove him, especially towards the end. Woo’s had nice scenes, but going back I don’t think they sold him right as a winner. Whereas Kass was utterly destroyed by the edit before winning, Woo was not even sold.

Regardless of the pros and cons, I’m ultimately relatively happy with whoever wins. I really loved all the characters this season. I even had a bit of love for LJ and Jeremiah, and Lindsey and J’tia were at least entertaining for the time we had them. Most importantly, I think whoever wins will be a pretty unique winner for a pretty unique season.