Elena Rigatoni

***Elena*** was a castaway on Essential Survivor: Scotland

## Scotland

A beloved castaway, Elena looked like she was going deep from the start of the season. Great social game, good strategic mind, and was rarely mentioned by anyone throughout the entire season. But when we reached the endgame, she was taken out by her own best ally in Jacob by default. Leaving a sour taste in people’s mouths for the season.

Starting on the Adhair tribe, Elena was clearly the most active one out of the bunch. She was the main person helping out in challenges and trying to make bonds with people. Resulting in her soon-to-be great friendship with Jacob and her off-and-on working relationship with Antony. And while the tribe banded together to boot Evelyn, it seemed as if that had Adhair gone to Tribal again, it’d be a weird outcome. Due to Jacob having an idol and telling her, yet admitting to having a stronger connection with Antony. But before they could head to Tribal Council again as a three-person tribe, a tribe swap occurred and threw that scenario in the dumpster.

From beige buff to red buff, Elena was now with Antony on the new Teine 2.0 tribe. Her relationship was Antony began to struggle here, due to her erratic gameplay several times throughout the day. But even though she wasn’t getting the best vibes from… anyone on her new tribe. She got herself into a majority alliance off-rip, managing to boot off Chloe without issue. But as the next Tribal came things weren’t so easy. See, it seemed as if the vote would be an easy Contessa vote. But when Logic got caught throwing the challenge by Bee and reported it to Contessa. It left Elena in the middle of the two duos. Oddly enough, she sided with the guys and booted Contessa. Giving the spectators one of the best blindsides this season. Luckily for her, this was the last pre-merge Tribal she’d go to before the merge.

At the merge, Elena continued to have a fairly strong game. Staying in a good position with everyone while also remaining under-the-radar. She had also wanted to branch out and make an all-female alliance with Rachel, but despite her being the one to suggest it, Rachel seemed fairly reluctant to the idea. Sometimes ghosting Elena as a whole. And with Bee clearly not trusting Elena a great amount, she latched onto Jacob and strengthened her relationship with him quite a bit. And with Logic being a threat and Calvin trashing his own game, it wasn’t too hard of a feat to name it to the Final Seven.

Now with only four Tribal Councils left in the game, voting people off began to get harder and harder. When Bee won immunity, the plan seemed like it would be an easy Robby vote. Everyone knew that he’d be a huge threat heading into these last few challenges, plus would be a shoe-in to win the entire game if he made the Final Tribal Council. But meanwhile, Elena heard news that Rachel may be targeting her for no apparent reason. So when her and Bee flipped, Rachel was blindsided 4-3 and Robby was left in the game, despite everyone’s annoyance save Antony.

At the Final 6, everyone knew that it was officially Robby’s game to lose. So heading into the reward challenge, most people were trying to make sure that anyone won except Robby. Thankfully for them, Jacob won. Also winning immunity by a small margin of one point. Adding insult to injury for Robby. But then, things start to go south from here. Once again, the plan was to cut Robby. The numbers they should’ve had were Bee, Jacob, Alex, and obviously herself. But Jacob, for whatever reason, was itching to use his idol. So he informed people thatno matter what, he’d be using his idol on Alex, a very detrimental move by him. So knowing that an idol would be used on Alex, Robby and Antony’s only choice was to vote for one another. But then, a great plan arose.

Behind the scenes, Robby knew that in a tie vote scenario, the people in the tie become safe and everyone instantly goes to rocks. So in an attempt to cause rocks, he campaigned to Bee about voting Antony and causing a tie. But there were two issues here. 1. Bee was gonna be drawing a rock as well, and 2. They’d only have two votes on Antony. Thankfully for Robby, Bee had an idol she was planning to use, and Antony manipulated the system into self-voting. At the Council, Jacob had also played his idol on Alex, which meant that Jacob, Bee and Alex were all immune, Robby and Antony were immune in the tie vote scenario, causing Elena to be the 2nd ever Cirie in Essential Survivor history.