Former Australian Survivor player Conner Bethune takes on the team at TTHS in a 3 way battle for power rankings glory! The results are in and we have a champion!

Conner, Tristan and Gorny have been battling it out all season for the inaugural TTHS Power Rankings title, but the time has come to finally announce the winner! A massive thank you to Season One player Conner Bethune for jumping on board to compete against us this year – it’s been an awesome ride! Conner has a fantastic Survivor brain and a lot of interesting things to say, so make sure you check him out on Twitter! So without further ado, the moment of glory awaits…

TTHS Power Rankings Championship

Final Results

3rd Place (Loser)

Tristan

FINAL SCORE: 149

Tristan decided to make a wild gamble in Round 10 in a last ditch attempt to steal the title, but unfortunately he ended up picking the exact reverse order of placings – not ideal. Ultimately his stubbornness to rank Tara at the bottom every week (despite having a strong hunch that she would make it to the final two) cost him the title. Outplayed completely by Conner and Gorny.

2nd Place

Conner

FINAL SCORE: 182 Conner led for much of the season, but in the end the title came down to a fire making tie-breaker between Jericho and Michelle. Like so many of the players in this year’s season, Conner’s shot at the title was ultimately destroyed by Tara’s presence in the game – if she hadn’t have changed her vote at the final four – the title would have been his! A brutal ending but a very well played season from Conner – thanks again for his involvement! Which leaves only one… Introducing… The 2017 TTHS Power Rankings Champion Gorny

FINAL SCORE: 189

Winning Statement:



“Seems to be tight with enough players to survive for now, also isn’t a threat. Would need to make a social misstep to get voted out anytime soon.”

That was my take on Jericho at the start of the season – I had him at #10 on the Power Rankings list. Those two sentences are vague, but not entirely wrong. Jericho was an unknown to start the season, yet as the weeks played out we saw so much more of his character and gameplay: the naughty Christian, creator of the Cookie Alliance, bromance with Luke, disturbing metaphors… And by the end of the season we even got a ‘Learn to Swim’ montage. He was never the consensus pick to win, but also never a favourite to be voted out – and in a season as unpredictable as this one with big players being taken out as quickly as they appeared, Jericho was the right type of player to win it all.

I’m very proud to be the inaugural winner of The Tribe Has Spoken Australian Survivor Power Rankings competition. Tristan and Conner are both extremely intelligent Survivor fans, but they lack my good luck and good looks that allowed me to steal the win. This season of Australian Survivor was outrageously unpredictable (due to the constantly shifting alliances and the occasional non-elimination twist), which made building an accurate ranking each week a tough challenge for all of us. We have our fingers crossed for another Australian Survivor season in 2018; if and when that happens, I look forward to defending my hard-earned title against these two competitors. Thanks for following along!

Australian Survivor Power Ranking Graphs

At the brilliant request of our good friend Andrea Wilson, we have nerded out and compiled Tristan’s, Gorny’s, and Conner’s average rankings for each player throughout the season into a series of graphs. Enjoy!

A lot to take in from this chart – our average rankings recorded each weekend give a pretty good idea of how each player was faring from week to week. For example consider Sole Survivor Jericho – he was comfortably in the middle of the pack for the first half of the season, eventually rising to the top (and staying there) as he started to take ownership of his game.

Anneliese & Tessa both plummeted in our rankings early in the game, finding themselves at the bottom of Samatau, before fighting their way out (one through a twist, one through a Tarzan). A very impressive turnaround in their fortunes, and they both saw a whole lot more time on the island as a result.

Let’s look a little closer at how the rankings changed for some key players…

Tara was consistently under-rated by our three Power Rankers, continually avoiding elimination and slowly climbing to a surprise second place (finishing with three FTC votes!). Of the Final Four, Jericho was rated the better player for almost the entirety of the season, which explains our confidence in his win as the season drew to a close. And take a look at Peter’s bounce in rankings post-mutiny – a great decision to escape the bottom of his tribe!

A big divergence in rankings for some key players can be seen at the merge – challenge beast Ziggy goes from hunter to hunted (and her misplayed idols can only buy her so much time) while Sole Survivor Jericho emerges as a real chance to win the game.

Take a look at that bounce in ranking for Michelle! The Champagne Queen clearly had the most to gain from the short-lived #ChampagneAlliance

Most of the post-merge blindsides were also blindsides to our Power Rankers sitting at home. Anneliese was trending up before she was shockingly booted after playing an idol, courtesy of Ziggy’s super-idol.

Our rankings had Ben & Michelle neck and neck, until she revealed her true form in a classic Aussie Survivor tribal council slaying session. It was the beginning of a sharp rise in fortunes for Michelle.

Also note our generally pessimistic rankings for AK – despite the entertainment factor, we never held much hope for his long-term survival in the game.

Exhibit A: Henry was his own worst enemy.

And one final piece of evidence that Tarzan’s #BigMove to give Tessa his idol was not in vain, check out her strong rebound in fortunes (only to be undone by an epic blindside). Poor Aimee, who we all would’ve liked to see more of, was the unfortunate casualty.

If nothing else, the variance and constant changes in these aggregate ranking charts should illustrate how crazy and unpredictable this season of Aussie Survivor was!

Post Season Coverage at TTHS:

An analysis of all the key moments from the Australian Survivor Finale Week with a particular focus on Final Tribal Council and Day 55 mimosas!

And finally, we will present the ultimate Survivor countdown…

A ranking of all 37 combined US and Australian seasons (including the 2002 Channel 9 version) in order from worst to first! How well do you think Jono’s second season in charge stacks up against the 34 editions from Master Jeff?

Thank you so much for following our coverage of Australian Survivor this year! A special shout out goes to Conner Bethune for jumping on board with our power rankings competition, as well as to all the people who have reached out to us with positive feedback throughout the season. Your support means a lot to us, and we have loved being able to actively contribute our words to the thriving Survivor community.

If you enjoy what we do please like our Facebook Page @TTHSau and/or follow us on Twitter @TTHSau – these are the best ways to remain up to date with any new content as soon as it is released.

We look forward to hopefully writing about another local season next year! I’m heading off to walk the Camino for the next month today, but we will back in the new year to cover the 36th US Season in comprehensive detail. Thanks again for all your support!

Tristan Kelly is a 28 year old ex-doctor turned writer, based in Perth, Western Australia. During his final year of medical school he famously watched and analysed every available episode of Survivor (all 368 of them at the time), probably making him more qualified as a Survivor commentator than he ever was a doctor. In between writing and editing short films, he now spends most of his time organising various schemes, and fantasising about one day winning the game.

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