Georgia Tech folks remain incredibly successful on Survivor
Two years and four seasons of Survivor after Georgia Tech’s Carson Garrett finished fourth place in season 44, the next Jacket to take on the show has also made the finale. Eva Erickson, a 2022 graduate from Tech and club hockey alum reached the finale of Survivor 48 after a dominant season of gameplay with a powerful social game.
SURVIVOR 48 EPISODE 13 SPOILERS AHEAD
Heading into the final five (Eva, Joe, Mitch, Kyle, Kamilla), Eva was guaranteed to make the final four no matter what as her hidden immunity idol had to be played at final five before expiring, so at worst Eva would have to make fire at final four to advance to final tribal council.
But, even though the path to final four was clear, her path to claiming the title of sole survivor was going to take more than just getting there. Last week, Kyle and Kamilla engineered a very good blindside of Shauhin without compromising their alliance, setting either of them up well to potentially win if they can get to final tribal.
The final five challenge was a rare individual immunity challenge to include a puzzle this season. Despite Joe and Kyle getting to the puzzle first well ahead of Kamilla, she raced through it to gaurantee at least a seat in fire making and making Joe vulnerable.
Or so we thought.
After weeks and weeks of talk about needing to get Joe out, Kamilla and Kyle realized that they both can beat Joe (and Eva by extension), so their actual best move was to vote Mitch out, who was very gracefully let down at a straightforward tribal council sending him to the jury while Eva used her idol on herself.
This never came up in the edit, but I think Eva’s best strategic move was to use the idol on Mitch to take out Kyle or Joe. At that point, there isn’t much differentiation in her game from Joe’s. Yes they were playing in team mode and played a highly relational game, but in the quest for a million dollars where you have to stick out in the end, a shock move like that to take out a potential favorite to win the game could’ve rocked the scales in her direction.
At four, it left Eva and Joe squared off against the other major power duo in the season, but one they weren’t aware was a duo the entire time. Eva’s best chance now to differentiate is to win the final four challenge, which this season is the most famous challenge in show history, Simmotion.
Eva drops her ball first and Kyle wins immunity, guaranteeing his seat at final three. With Kyle and Kamilla knowing neither are good for each other at final tribal, Kamilla knows she’s making fire. Kyle then decides to take Joe to final tribal, likely his best move considering the jury is not exactly his biggest fan.
That means Eva and Kamilla will face off at final four fire making. They both spend the afternoon after the challenge practicing, and we get a scene of Eva mightly struggling to spark a flame. The emotion coming over her is very similar to what we saw in episode five when she had a panic attack. Joe helps ground her back to the moment, earnestly offering to take her place in fire, but she refuses and eventually starts building sustaintable fires.
At fire making, Eva raced to a very large lead on Kamilla, who could not get anything to catch. Eva’s fire had reached the rope it needed to burn before running out of fuel, coming back down but not extingushing. The stress of the moment was clearly getting to Eva, but she recouperated and came away with the win, sending Kamilla to the jury and earning her seat at final tribal council along with Kyle and Joe.
By winning fire making, she officially passed Carson Garrett as the only Yellow Jacket to make it to final tribal council in Survivor.
At final tribal, Eva’s chances at winning hinged on her ability to sell her story better than Kyle could detail how he worked in the shadows to essentially control the game. On the upside Eva was able to tell a very clear story about how she used her alliances to push her forward in the game nearly unscathed, including winning an immunity challenge and playing a social game so strong that she didn’t need to use all of her advantages.
What she didn’t have though was the element of surprise. After Mary asked the trio what they thought the jury’s impressions of them were, which led to an extensive conversation about the Shauhin vote, teeing up Kyle to explain how him and Kamilla engineered that vote from start to finish, unbeknownst to everyone else at tribal council.
That revelation was the trump card Kyle needed to play, and he played it perfectly, winning the final vote 5-2-1, Eva finishing in second place.
Eva’s accomplishment is one of the most admiriable in show history. As the first openly autistic person to play Survivor, the exposure she provided to the world of people on the spectrum is one of the best things the show has ever done. Playing Survivor takes everything out of you physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And that’s just for a normal person who plays out there. Now add on a medical condition that can heavily impact her performance in the game physically and socially. It doesn’t make it any easier.
What Eva did though is exactly what any player should do before they start: understand themselves and what they need to stay grounded and survive in the game. Eva hit the ground running doing just that with forming a quick, deep bond with Joe, who doubled as a safety valve when she had autistic episodes and as a strategic partner in the game. She did have some luck come her way with advantages, which helped deflect potential danger coming her way early in the merge, but by that point she had done so well on her social game that she was walled off from any potential vote out the rest of the game.
This is partly what Mary cited as her reason for voting Eva at final tribal council. Eva knew herself and did nothing but be herself out there. What set her apart was doing that while simultaneously making her game about an authentic, trustworthy group that could stick together. I’m sure if you Shauhin, Joe, or Kyle were asked about her, they’d say she was the glue that held that group together. Sometimes, that can be incredibly dangerous on Survivor, Eva though was one of the few to turn that into a winning strategy.