Survivor 41In December, the event was overshadowed by several shocking surprises. Jeff Probst read the last vote at tribal and Erika Casupanan, the winner, was declared the winner. The reunion was also held live. But it was Casupanan’s achievement that was principally upsetting to many fans who’d assumed Xander Hastings was bound to take home the title of Sole Survivor. (One fan tried to compensate Hastings by setting up a GoFundMe page. As a result of all the debate, jury member Evvie Jagoda opened up and explained why she herself didn’t vote for Hastings, despite being much closer to him during the game.
The final vote was a 7-1-1 split with Erika Casupanan winning the majority vote and Deshawn Radden getting one vote from Danny McCray. Prior to the vote, it was speculated that Evvie Jaguaroda might be split over past allegiances. She was very close to Xander Hastings. Survivor 41’s Yase tribe, which was complicated by her later decision to spill trade secrets to Radden in the hope of working with him. So, what factored into Jagoda’s decision-making on the jury? This is what the Harvard graduate seemed to have considered, stating that he also thought about two other things. The Specialists podcast:
My logic as a juror was, in general. ‘I want to vote for the person who I think played the best game’ — right? So, I think [with]Many people are @-ing me. ‘You and Xander went through everything together,’I never voted based on my best friend. I wanted to vote only for the best player. Fundamentally, Erika was the best player. It was really not hard for me to choose who to vote.
Fans continue to debate this question: Who had the better game? Erika Casupanan or Xander Hastings? A lot of criticism aimed at Casupanan posits that if she didn’t get that controversial hourglass twist, she would’ve most likely been eliminated that night. The Survivor 41The winner shared her perspective on this point. However, Evvie Jagoda had a different perspective as she was a member of the jury. She continued:
I do also think there’s something to be said when you have seen someone’s whole game…you see a lot. I felt that I saw a lot about Xander’s game, but I didn’t see all the good. Especially on Yase, I felt like there was so much of the time where he – from what I saw – didn’t know what was going on…I feel like there was an uphill battle that he had to achieve for me to think of him as a good player because for so long I felt like he didn’t know what was going on in the game.
Xander hastings actually admitted that he is not the best Survivor 41The jury manager is an essential part of the game. Evvie Jagoda stated that Erika Casupanan was a good friend. “extremely intentional”She stated in her strategy that there was “almost no error you could point to,”Deshawn Radden, Hastings and others made “huge mistakes.”(But, to be fair, they had to play larger because the targets were higher.
Evidently, Erika Casupanan’s game really shined through to the jury during Danny McCray’s vote-off. That was the night of Deshawn Radden’s “truth bomb” about Casupanan’s schemes, in a somewhat confusing effort to save himself. When Radden simultaneously said he didn’t view Casupanan as a threat and, later on finale night, when Xander Hastings also presumptively said that the jury didn’t respect Casupanan, it affected Evvie Jagoda. She stated that every time a male expressed that opinion, it made Casupananan more respectable. Casupanan didn’t flip the vote on Radden because of his tirade. This showed that the jury was in more control. Jagoda added,
That’s what you’re looking for, who is the power player in the game? And even if it didn’t necessarily always show on TV, Erika was, for a lot of the game, really the deciding factor.
The debate is over Survivor 41’s outcome will likely continue on for some time, like those from many previous seasons. For proof, just ask Amber Mariano and Michele Fitzgerald. Season 42 is slated for a March premiere on CBS and will again have many of the new twists and advantages that complicated many players’ games last year. But fans now might want to keep a closer eye on the lambs disguised as lions when the time comes…