Maria Castillo

**Maria Castillo** is the Sole Survivor of *Survivor 26*.

Coming into the game with her husband and first ever Sole Survivor, Darrell Castillo, Maria had a target on her back that forced her into playing a game of Survival. In order to survive, Maria build strong alliances with her original tribe members that protected and powered her into surviving while controlling multiple vote offs. Entering into the merge with allies to protect her, she was able to control the fate of four people before her allies forced her into a corner to lose Darrell. In order to secure her trust with her allies, Maria joined them in voting out Darrell, then work with Manu Bravo and Mandy Ramos to secure a spot in the final four before winning the final immunity challenge of the season. Not only was her survivalist game impressive to the jury, but her capability to use the people around her to control the game won her the title of Sole Survivor in a 4-3-1 vote against Manu and Mandy.

## Profile

**Age:** 37

**Current Residence:** Sacramento, Ca.

**Relationship to Significant Castaway:** Darrell's Wife

## Survivor

Maria entered the game with her husband and first ever Sole Survivor, Darrell Castillo. She was placed on the Mogok tribe with the other loved ones of the returning players. Maria formed a friendship with Randall Harris, while still remaining wary of Randall coming out of the games as a dominant force in the tribe. On Day 8, Randall created a pact to make it to the final three with Maria and Sophie Chang and integrated herself in good with Kenan Grover, Jessie Bennett and Davon Hendrix. In addition, already in a majority position, Manu Bravo confided in his Hidden Immunity Idol clue to Maria, opening trust between the two of them moving forward. Nearly working with the entire tribe when the Mogok tribe lost their second challenge, Maria spearheaded the target on Aaron Canales, rallying the tribe to unanimously vote him out of the game.

At the tribe switch, Maria remained on the Mogok tribe with four of her allies. When their tribe lost the challenge on Day 18, Maria wanted to target Naya Emerson in fear that she would come after Darrell at the merge. However, the spotlight was put onto loved ones pair Camron Harris and Randall that swayed Maria to go with the least blowback on her which was voting out Davon. Losing the following immunity challenge, Maria's name was brought up as a potential target, which put Maria back into survival mode after initially wanting to target Canyon Christensen. Maria put trust in her ally, Jessie, and went with the majority to vote out Camron.

The tribes came together on Day 21 where Maria was able to convince eleven people to name the tribe Canary in Filipino, Kanaryo. Randall blamed Manu for Camron's vote off where Maria went to battle to protect Manu, who she viewed as her closest ally. Maria rallied all the new players to vote out Zoey Cassidy, which took a massive push for Jessie to side with majority. Although Maria offered Jessie an out by throwing her vote away, Jessie proved her loyalty to Maria, by turning against her sister.

At the Reward Challenge on Day 24, the winning team chose to send Maria to the first Exile Island visit of the merge. On Exile Island, a new and ominous message led Maria to digging around for an advantage. To her benefit, Maria found an Extra Vote that could only be used until the final six. Returning from Exile Island, Maria kept her advantage a secret to everyone except Darrell. The two of them planned to play on opposite sides of the game in order to gather intel. Maria's power in the game began to grow as she once again rallied all the new-players to turn against one of their own in order to weaken the returning players, leading to Fay being voted out.

While trying to play his own game, Manu attempted to convince Maria to work with Canyon, Mandy Ramos, and Naya. But when Jessie and Kenan wanted Maria to prove that they weren't being used as numbers in her game, Maria was forced into turning her back on Manu's plan by voting out Canyon. As Maria's game started to become clearer to some of her allies, Kenan was the first to take action by trying to convince Jessie, Naya and Randall to flip against Manu. However, the news leaked to Darrell who leaked his plan to Maria. Maria would go on to tell Manu, where they were able to gather enough support to vote Kenan out.

Heading into the final eight with Darrell, Jessie, Manu and Randall as allies, Maria realized that there were still some of her biggest end game threats left. Letting her alliance do the work, they successfully voted out former winner, Naya. Sophie became the second to realize Maria's threat level and started targeting her, putting Maria to turn her focus onto Sophie. Unfortunately for Maria, Sophie won the immunity challenge, leaving her to figure out another target. The only option her allies felt comfortable with was Randall. Having a great relationship with Randall, but realizing that Randall was one of her end game threats, she put her feelings to the side to vote him out of the game, while using her Extra Vote to decrease her threat level as the game starts to wind down.

Approaching the final six with only six days left, the spotlight was put back onto Maria for her and Darrell being deemed the more threatening loved one pair remaining. To take the attention off of his loved one pair and his close ally, Maria, Manu rallied his allies to target Darrell. With the tribe against them, Maria and Darrell discussed their options for moving forward, but ultimately ended up on Darrell telling Maria that her best chance of winning was by voting him out of the game. At Tribal Council, Maria went with her alliance to vote out Darrell in order to save her game. The following day, Maria worked with Mandy and Manu to vote Sophie out of the game and secure themselves a spot in the final four. Although a risky move to go to the final four with a loved one pair, Maria's logic of being able to beat them in a challenge over Sophie prevailed as she won the Final Immunity Challenge. However, Maria knew that sitting next to Mandy and Manu was a risky, she provided Jessie with the chance to go head to head with Mandy in a fire making challenge, which Jessie would lose.

In a surprise twist, Mandy, Manu and Maria were provided with an additional challenge that gave one of them the power to remove any jury member from attending Final Tribal Council. Manu beat Maria in the challenge. Despite both Manu and Maria having a close connection with Jessie, Manu explained that removing Jessie from the jury would be the most fair option, which Maria was able to see through as an excuse for Jessie respecting Maria more than Manu for giving her the chance to compete in the fire challenge.

At Final Tribal Council, Maria explained her game as a game of survival and dominance. She reasoned that multiple people wanted to vote her out of the game, so in order for her to survive, she needed to build strong alliances with people. She continues by saying these alliances gave her a leader position that allowed her to send Zoey, Fay, Kenan, Randall and Sophie to the jury. While her game was criticized by some of the returning players (Canyon and Naya), Kenan, Randall and Zoey respected her fighting tooth and nail to make it to the end while having power in the game. With as much support and push Darrell could give, Maria became the twenty-six Sole Survivor in a 4-3-1 vote against Manu and Manu.

### Voting History

**^1**  In "", Maria used an Extra Vote advantage, allowing her to vote twice at Tribal Council.

## Trivia

* Every time Maria received a vote against her at Tribal Council, she only received one.
* Maria is the second Sole Survivor to be related to past player that had previously won the game, following Alan Nayak-Rangel.
* Maria is the only one of the Final Three in *Survivor 26* to receive a jury vote by their loved one. This was because the other two finalists were a loved one pair.