australian survivor sandra

‘Survivor’ Fans Are Furious Sandra’s Plan Was Ruined By Last Night’s Twist

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When it comes to Survivor, you don’t get much bigger legends than Sandra Diaz-Twine.

When news broke that Sandra would be appearing on Australian Survivor: Blood Vs. Water this year with her daughter Nina, fans couldn’t have been more thrilled. Sandra won over a legion of Survivor super fans after winning the game twice in the first two seasons she played, making her the show’s first two-time winner. She is best known for her iconic quotes, her “anyone but me” strategy — whereby she will lie and betray anyone to save herself — along with her savvy gameplay and powerful jury pitches.

Since last week’s premiere, Sandra has played her game pretty low-key, but on Sunday night’s episode she made her first big move. Sandra’s tribe Blood was heading into tribal council and it looked like David Goodchild was the obvious choice to go, as he had acted erratically at the last tribal, isolating himself in the process.

However, Sandra set her aim on someone else: Sophie Cachia. Before tribal, Sophie had been the one giving the orders, telling the majority to write down David’s name, and Sandra did not take kindly to being handed commands. She identified Sophie as the leader of a powerful alliance of challenge beasts, so decided to take out their queen. But she did so by recruiting Amy Ong to do all her dirty work, starting secret conversations with everyone outside of Sophie’s alliance to orchestrate a blindside.

It was masterful to watch and it worked a treat — Sophie was voted off at tribal. Despite Sandra being the one who first suggested voting out Sophie, her hands were left clean as it was Amy who was the one spreading Sophie’s name around camp.

It looked like Australian Survivor had started with one hell of a blindside until host Jonathan LaPaglia flipped the script, announcing that Sophie would not be leaving, but would instead be joining her sister on rival tribe Water.

Fans of Australian Survivor know this twist all too well and many have grown sick of it over the years. The Aussie version is known for dropping twist after twist, but usually the twists start about midway into the game — not during week two!

Viewers are truly baffled by this twist that undermined Sandra’s genius plan:

This isn’t the first time a twist on the reality show was slammed by fans. Last year, the show found itself in hot water for seemingly dropped twists in order to protect series faves like George Mladenov.

Some fans reckons all these twists are ruining the entire Survivor format, as contestants will become less likely to vote out massive threats out of fear they were return to the game seeking vengeance.

Former Australian Survivor castaway Matt Tarrant made an interesting argument regarding last night’s twist, suggesting that an elimination was prevented in order to make sure someone like Sandra didn’t meet an early exit. Sandra’s name was written down at the previous tribal, so it wouldn’t be that surprising if she faced a blindside last night — therefore the twist could have been there as a safety net for the Survivor all-star.

While twists can be frustrating to watch, it’s worth noting that last year’s iconic winner Hayley Leake was saved by a twist. This challenge beast and strategic genius was actually voted off on day 30, but in a twist she was sent to Redemption Rock only to return and win the whole game.

That being said, twists should be used sporadically and to save people that have proved themselves to be valuable contestants (or at the very least entertaining ones) and whether this applies to Sophie is debatable.

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Australian Survivor returns tonight at 7.30pm on Channel 10 and 10Play.