Final Tribal Council: Tahiti

This was the final tribal council of season 1, Survivor: Tahiti.

The two remaining survivors took questions from the jury members one by one, in order of elimination. After that, each survivor gave one final plea as to why they should win the contest; how they fulfilled the survivor motto: outwit, outplay and outlast.

## Lucius' Question

 Lucius: Finalists, over the past weeks, you have managed to get rid of all of us and we all can only guess how you did it. To impress me and the rest of the jury, I have one question for you: which of your tactical moves was the best and why should it make us vote for you?

 Glenn: I think one of my best tactics was how we managed to vote Cian out. Me and Muzah were thinking of voting him off when Sam won the challenge, but when Miguel managed to join us we really managed to do it.

 Sam: The top 5 elimination of Cam is the move I believe was my best. I was in a vulnerable position after Cian's elimination, stuck between two two-person alliances. I used the opportunity of Miguel coming to me wanting to split up the Glenn and Muzah alliance to my advantage. Informing Muzah that Miguel was targeting them, turned their attention to Miguel and Cam, rather than on me. I was aware that Miguel was lying to me and acted like I believed him to make him think I was on his side. Meanwhile, I used Glenn and Muzah's votes to eliminate Cam, and avenge Cian. Getting rid of Cam, ultimately weakened Miguel, the strongest competitor at the time.

 Glenn: Eliminating cam also worked out in our (Muzah & me) favour as Miguel (another strong competitor) was indeed weakened. At the time, the only real alliance then standing was me and Muzah, if we had won a challenge we would have been the top 2 standing.

 Sam: But I was confident that I could beat you two in a challenge, and look what happened

 Glenn: I'm still standing as well.

 Sam: Are you sure you're still standing because you managed to outplay everyone? Or purely because you were never seen as a big enough threat to worry about? I know which one I think it is.

 Glenn: The quiz episode was the most unfair in my opinion, when you two got more questions I believe we should've gotten them as well to make things fair, we should've gotten the same questions as you two. And yes, no one never saw me as a big threat but what does that matter? I've shown myself enough throughout the challenges and managed to come here as the underdog of the season.

## Cian's Question

 Cian: Ladies, Gentlemen and esteemed members of the flop jury. Its been tense so far so I'm here to lighten the mood and bring the fun back. The final two, boldly standing where nobody else has ever stood before (maybe because its season 1 but anyway). You've both come so far, made friends and enemies along the way, and above all else, weaselled your way by hook or by crook to the final two. This is your last chance to impress me, and to save yourself from elimination. So my question is focused on how aware you are of the world outside of this bubble that we have been contained within. So using examples and reasoning if you have any (they are not essential to the answer but are of course welcomed), my question for you 2 today is: Is you a freaky gyal?

 Sam: To address this question, it is first essential to lay out what a freaky gyal really is. A freaky gyal is a person who dominates all aspects of their life. They take command of the situation and use it to get what they rightfully deserve. A freaky gyal strays from the normal, and explores all avenues that are presented to them. These are the qualities of a freaky gyal. These are qualities I possess, and have shown in this competition. There have been attempts to eliminate me, but me, a freaky gyal, has batted away all those who have attempted to suppress me. Rick felt the power of this freaky gyal when he was kicked from the camp. To put it simply, not only am I the only gyal left standing here, but me's a freaky gyal. Me's a very freaky gyal.

 Glenn: Am I freaky, IDK? Do I spend 24/7 caring about what others say, HECK NO, I do what I want and I'm fully proud of it. freaky? tell that to my weird obsession with kpop, or my love for the animal with the prettiest eyes, a cow or the random love for gifs that keep me awake at night because of how genius they are, cuz who doesnt love a good meme. So ye here is me, being freaky. https://tenor.com/view/puffer-fish-fish-bounce-tap-gif-17107260

## Cameron's Question

 Cameron: Ok hello, not gonna be able to top Cian's question but here we go. So my question is mostly directed towards Glenn, as I haven't really heard a single thing from him all game. So Glenn, I was wondering what did you experience from your side since the beginning, like with alliances and challenges and how did you think you made it to the final two.

 Glenn: I have had a hard time with alliance, definitely in the first elimination. I reached out to Rick for an alliance as I trusted Rick and thought he was one of the strongest in the team. When Bryson messaged me, it was a pure hell for me, I didn't know what to do, like at all. If I said no to him, I was most likely out, so what did I do? I played along, I didn't know what else to do to not get eliminated, because otherwise that would have been the case. It was one of the hardest decisions for me, together with eliminating Miguel in the final 4, both were decisions where I thought about a lot. Unfortunately, I had to make such hard decisions in the first elimination already, while I was totally new in the game. The challenges were very lovely, I did my fair share in the team challenges in my opinion, and did the best that I could in the individual challenges. I think I managed to get into the top two with playing it like the underdog, no one really payed any attention to me besides my teammates, so that's why I'm still standing, and I'm proud of that, that I've managed to get this far.

## Miguel's Question

 Miguel: Hi! So my question goes for both of you: What do you regret the most in the game (if there's something you regret about)?

 Glenn: The thing I most regret is not eliminating Sam when we could, even though voting Cam off was good as well. I regret not speaking up and voting Sam off, which I was planning on doing since the merge. I've said this multiple times in the alliance chats as well, and I will continue saying it. I would have loved standing here with Muzah or Miguel but sadly this isn't the case.

 Sam: I'd say my biggest regret is how short the alliance between me, yourself, Lucius and Cian lasted. Coming out of the merge, I was excited as I thought the alliance was really quite strong and there wouldn't be much that would have gotten in our way. Unfortunately, me and Cian realised quite soon that it couldn't last very wrong without two of us trying to eliminate the other two. I didn't really get much say in what happened with eliminating Lucius, as Cian arranged it all whilst I was asleep, and I awoke to a plan that I couldn't really go against. And I understand why he did it, because Lucius's vote remover put us at risk. But I think it would have been fun for us four to last longer, because we were all great players and it would have been interesting when we were finally forced to turn on each other at final four. Also, I think it's a bit difficult to believe that Glenn would have liked to have been in the final with Miguel considering it was his betrayal that resulted in Miguel being eliminated.

## Muzah's Question

 Muzah: What a riveting supple time this game was, Sam you fought your way to the end through immunity idols and winning challenges whereas, Glenn you did probably the exact opposite, never winning a challenge but managing to vote correctly at every tribal council since the merge. So my question to you both is why is what you did (aka winning immunity/voting correctly) more impressive than what the other person did?

 Sam: There's three main aspects of this contest that affect what goes on: challenges, the social game, and strategy. Unlike my opponent, I believe that I used a balance of all three to make my way here. I've made my way here with three individual immunity challenge wins, more than any other survivor. My strategy has been adaptable and robust, always putting myself first and ensuring my own safety, but also trying to keep people in the competition who I feel like can aide me, such as yourself Muzah who I saved multiple times in the council. While Glenn may have voted correct each time, my social game has allowed me to have a significant impact on the direction these votes have gone. In the eliminations of Rick, Cam, and Muzah, I have been in total control, shaping the way the votes have gone to best suit me. I don't think it's enough to simply sit in an alliance and act as an extra vote like Glenn has been, rather you must have an impact on the game. I've effectively used the trinity of skills requires in the game to succeed, and for that I deserve to win.

 Glenn: I think when you win a challenge people start to look at you as a threat, which is what happened to Lucius, Cian and Miguel in my opinion. Staying under the radar seemed the best option for me from the very beginning as I was very new to the whole concept of this, and in the end being the underdog really made me come this far. I know it wasn't all without ups and downs, but with these alliances you get to know another side of the people on discord, and that's what I really found fascinating as well, getting to know people through alliances. When Miguel messaged me at first, I didn't know a single thing about him, and by the end he seemed like a whole new person to me, and believe me, it was such a hard decision when Muzah and Miguel were both up for elimination till the point I said to myself not to vote, which was an option as well. I was so happy when Miguel won the challenge at first so that we could've gone to the top 3 with all my closest alliances here. So coming back at what Sam said, it was never easy for me, and you don't know the full story behind my decision. Now coming back to the question, I think staying under the radar is more impressive to me just because I survived all these challenges without a win, and still made it here, and that's what I call being a survivor.

 Sam: I don't think being weak at challenges is a valid claim of a strategy really. Nor is it really showing something impressive. Nobody stood up to me and Miguel post-merge when it came to challenges, I don't think that was because of a lack of trying on the other survivor's behalves.

 Glenn: The only one really trying to eliminate me was Miguel and Lucius in the beginning and you so I don't see why not winning a single thing is not a strategy? The only challenge that really mattered to me was the final one, and at the end it really is the only challenge that matters, because this decides the winner.

 Sam: Muzah asked what about your game was impressive, I don't think it's impressive to solely rely on alliances to get you through the game. Sure it plays a part, but I think a winner has to show more than that. My alliances didn't tend to last long in this game, and thus I've had to survive on my own. And survive on my own is what I've done.

## Final Speeches

 Glenn: This season has been an extremely challenging but fun season for me and I didn't expect to stand here today. I've made so many new friends this season and I have gotten to known y'all better because I basically didn't know a thing about everyone. This season had a lot of ups and downs for me, from the elimination of Bryson in Papara to the elimination of the two people I was the closest with: Miguel and Muzah. Was it all a plan? I don't know, I've always told myself to be the underdog of this season, and go with the flow. I know I haven't won many things, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm the weakest one of us two. I've proven that I'm capable of doing a lot of things, things I didn't even know I could do (aka the first letters puzzles, building a tower, design, etc..). I don't really know what else to say besides that I had so much fun this edition with everyone, from the fun messages in the alliance chats, to the group challenges, to the amazing nature here in Tahiti and I just wanna say, thank u, thank you all for being here with us, the decision is yours now, make sure to vote for the right person. ;)

 Sam: Now that we’ve reached the end, it’s time for you all to decide who deserves to win survivor. It might be easy to vote based on who you were friends with during the season, but I believe the winner should be the person who has performed the best throughout the season, in terms of strategy, challenges, and the social game. And I believe that person is me. Pre-merge and post-merge are two completely different games I feel like, so my strategy differed. I didn’t start off as strongly as I liked in the Mahina tribe, mainly because I was, I guess, arrogant enough to assume people would approach me for alliances. But alas I was left without solid allies for the majority of pre-merge. Getting two votes immediately in the first tribal council definitely made me realise that I wasn’t as safe as I thought I might be. Thankfully, Mahina tribe was strong at challenges and the majority of the time we received immunity. I was also fortunate enough to find the immunity idol pretty early in the game with helped me a lot in the final tribal council where I made a massive play. I knew from the first elimination that Muzah, Glenn and Rick were in an alliance and Muzah had let me know that they were planning to vote Cam out in the final council. But I knew I couldn’t rely on what Muzah told me 100% and I couldn’t allow myself to not make it to the merge. So I utilised my idol to get rid of my biggest competition:Rick, and made sure I was guaranteed to be safe. In a pretty genius plan if I do say so myself, I let slip to Muzah that I was going to vote for Rick, knowing that it would draw their attention away from Cam and move their votes to me. The idol negated all the votes for me, and Me and Cam’s votes eliminated Rick and gave us this pretty iconic moment.

Following the merge, I think it was pretty much expected by everyone that I would ally with Cian. He also invited me to the alliance with Miguel and Lucius he had been apart of in his former tribe however that didn’t exactly last long after Cian miraculously managed to contact everyone and get them to switch their votes to Lucius at the last minute - a feat which I slept through entirely and was only made aware of when I woke up five minutes before the voting deadline. Me and Cian thought bringing Cam into the fold would secure us a path to final 3. Cam’s betrayal and Cian’s subsequent elimination put a nail in that plan pretty quickly. Without Cian, I was pretty vulnerable stuck between the Muzah-Glenn alliance and the Cam-Miguel alliance. I knew my only way to survive was to redirect the attention off me and have the two alliances turn on each other. And that’s what I did. Miguel helpfully came to me with a plan to eliminate Muzah which I used to get Muzah and Glenn to see Cam as a threat. With the two alliances gunning for each other, I was out of the crossfire, and even better, had the deciding vote as to who would go home, (well it would have but I assume Cam missed the deadline and voted for himself???). I quite boldly told Cam he was ‘destined for 5th place’ after he turned on Cian so had to follow through with my threat and vote for him lmao. I won immunity in the following two challenges and thus made it here to the final. What I detailed may seem like I manipulated my way to get here, but I don’t believe my social game has been defined by treachery. The same people I may have lied to, I’ve also helped out throughout the season. I was a great team player in the Mahina tribe and was strong in the challenges that helped us win immunity three times. Muzah served as a useful channel to his allies, and helped me influence some of the voting, but I also strived to protect Muzah throughout the season. Eliminating Cam ultimately defended Muzah from elimination. And in top 4 he was aware that I was attempting to pit Miguel and Glenn against each other to keep him out of the crossfire. As for Cam, if it weren’t for my idol play in the final Mahina tribal council, he would have been eliminated then. I only ever voted for him after he betrayed me and Cian. Miguel did his fair share of lying to me in the time we were communicating together. I’ve already expressed that I had little to do with the elimination of his ally, Lucius. And my manipulation of him in top 5 never put him in harm’s way, with Cam being the target instead. In top 4, I offered him hope at surviving by forcing a tie with both our votes for Glenn. Unfortunately for him, he decided to trust Glenn over me, and we saw how that turned out for him. I’ve somehow given you all an entire essay to read, but I think everything in there shows why I deserve to win. Every action I have carried out, has been carried out with what will happen afterwards in mind. I’ve been playing two steps ahead and it’s been successful. Two of the biggest plays this season, the eliminations of Rick and Cam, have been orchestrated by myself and I deserve props for that. I’ve won the challenges that I’ve needed to win in order to get here, and frankly, I’ve outplayed my competitors. You all have the final decision on who deserves to win, and I urge you to keep that word in mind when making that decision, deserves. Because between me and my opponent, it is pretty clear to me that I am the one who deserves it.