I think the problem is Charlie counted the votes and thought he was going to win anyways.

He likely "knew" he had Maria. Q was likely. Hunter was very likely. He just needed one of Tevin/Soda/Venus/Liz, and I think he's there most of the time.

But Maria pulled one of the bitchiest moves I've ever seen. Q is an idiot as well.

Charlie played better; Maria just did something I don't even have words for. Not only did she not vote for Charlie, she soured the jury! Compare that to what Tiff did and that's the only differece. Charlie ended up paired with Maria and not Tiff.

Double Down summed up Maria quite well last week and not voting Charlie was all the confirmation we needed.

With that said, we've seen plenty of unpredictable juries during FTC. Charlie still should have been playing to guarantee sitting next to Ben and Liz. Doesn't seem like Liz was very live during fire, but I guess theoretically, she still had a chance to eliminate Kenzie, so it still could have worked out. With that said, Ben seemed very set on putting Liz in fire, so even if Charlie pitched it, I don't think Ben would have gone for it.

Also, completely separate, I was shocked the producers actually created a new challenge. I liked it.

Editors looked like they were going to try some misdirection and pretend that ben might go out at F5 but finally just decided to quit pretending and show that Maria was too obvious a choice so why hide it.

Final challenge was awesome. Too many challenges are... do a,b,c then solve puzzle. The abc parts are mostly meaningless and the puzzle is everything. This time they had a great balance.

Liz awesomely delusional to the end. Probst missed a great chance to poll the jury and ask how many votes she would have received.

I hated Qs FTC question. Hated Hated HATED.

If Maria had been voted out earlier, I wonder if that would have given her enough time to get over her butthurt and vote Charlie.

+1 to the final challenge, I enjoyed it.

Probst will never embarrass a non-jerk by asking that kind of question and humiliating Liz in the new era of Survivor.

TBH I doubt Maria gets over it. Her most recent memory in the game was Kenzie and Liz skirting the edge of cheating to knock her out and she got over it and gave Kenzie her vote, but couldn't forgive Charlie for his "betrayal" which had happened earlier. Smart on Kenzie to manage the jury person by basically genuflecting in front of her and doing nothing but complimenting her as she booted her.

Well I got the final 3 wrong but at least I had Kenzie winning 5-3-0 so close enough.

My front runner from the final 8-9 onwards so no suprises here but happy regardless. Up there along with Michelle Fitzgerald and YamYam as one of the best social winners of all time.

Completetly deserved and will be interested to see how she does on S50 if she is cast.

Due to how intense the social media hate has got, we are starting to see everyone be super nice to the players at the end who the audience considers 'goats' by the winners and other contenders now, with some of the comments in interviews today about Liz and Ben from Kenzie in particular. Which I think is a good thing overall, but it's also a little bit of a revisionist history to a degree. I think there's plenty of zero vote finalists that the players really did respect as people and players out there, but they were never going to win the game. But it's kind of a closed shop on them a bit now. There' s a lot of younger fans who aren't really good at reading between the lines on that too, but TBF some of them are the ones sending Liz and Venus et al hateful comments so I guess if it works on them stopping that it's a net positive

I do think Q's question threw a spanner in the works of Charlie's FTC performance that was going to be hard to overcome. No matter how he spun it, he had to admit that he didn't need the money as much as Kenzie and had more earning potential long term as well. Combined with Maria's grudge, it was enough to see him lose out. Which is tough, but Kenize really formed some amazing bonds with players and he should have made a move on her and probably kept Venus in the game despite her wishy washyness.

I'm sure there is plenty of the usual 'Charlie was robbed' nonsense discourse you see every time the decoy winner loses.

But regardless of how 'bitter' one may think the jury was the fact remains he had multiple outs to win that he fumbled;

-He let Venus go at 7 who had next to no jury equity and was someone who was trying to work with him
-If you keep Venus, you then potentially have the numbers to swipe Kenzie out at 6 or 5 who at that point should have been clear as a big jury threat

Even ignoring the above he then could have at least tried to pitch to Ben to put him vs Kenzie at fire. Take her out at fire and he quite possibly wins 8-0-0

I keep seeing people say he should have wanted to go to fire, but in his mind, he likely already had things locked up.

Maria was a "sure" vote. Hunter was logical enough that was going to go Charlie nearly always. Liz, Q, and Venus all likely should have leaned towards him, and Tevin/Soda were coin flips. Kenzie had Tiff's vote in his mind and that's it.

Why go to fire when you're already the odds on favorite to win?

The difference in the game was Maria (or Qs) vote. If he knew all he had to do was win one of those two votes without going to fire, why would he ever want that?

He played that fine.

(But, yes, going Venus instead of Kenzie was very dumb)

Part of it comes down to whether he thought he could beat Kenzie at fire. If he was sure of it, then putting himself in a spot where he was likely going to win 8-0-0 is way better than being in a spot where he's probably going to win 5-3-0.

If he doesn't think he can beat her at fire then its a different story.

Very underrated part of social gameplay imo, which is reading the room. Feeding into people’s egos, telling them what they want to hear, etc.
Kenzie not only did a great job of that throughout the season, but I also think her ability to still be so relatable and likable while explaining her strategy at FTC is why she won. As someone else mentioned, Charlie explained himself “too well”, or at least did it in a much more clinical and dry way that didn’t connect the way she did.

Was Kenzie talking about her work history the whole time or was that a surprise to everyone hearing it?

I recall her talking about it at least once, but not sure whether it was with a large or small group of players.

Maria and Charlie played a similar game except Maria got voted out and Charlie didn't. So I can only assume, had Maria made the finale vs. Kenzie, she would not expect to get the votes. She apparently thinks Kenzie's game was better than the one she and Charlie played.

I’d doubt that she thinks that she and Charlie played the same game.

I think Charlie and Kenzie both played really good games. But Kenzie's story was very compelling. She survived the pathetic purple tribe. She made super meaningful connections with the people she played with...she is tremendously talented in this area, but you people tend to drastically undervalue the impact of this ability (there's no score card, people, the jury is going to pick someone they like and want to give a million dollars to). She was in on the vote most of the time. She won the key immunity which allowed Maria to be voted out...she had help from Liz, but that's not nothing...you have to have social capital and trust for another opponent to abandon her own game to help you win. She won the fire challenge. She made a good showing at FTC. And, sorry, but her lowly salon owner story was part of it. I was leaning towards I thought Charlie should win...they damn sure should have tied the initial vote...but I can't be mad Kenzie won. If you're sitting next to someone like her at the end, you did something wrong somewhere. She's a fing Mermaid/Dragon. You didn't notice?

To be fair, they didn't. She got voted out and he didn't. I didn't say same. I said similar. They were in step with each other for most of the game. They both won some challenges. They both had good relationships with people. I think Charlie's were a little better than hers...which you're right, she probably doesn't realize (just like she didn't realize getting Q stink on herself might be a mistake). She and Charlie were playing together. On the same path. He made it and she didn't. She thought Kenzie played a better game. Or at least, that's what her vote seemed to indicate. Her choice annoys me*. But it's her choice.

*Because I know she damn sure would have thought she should win had she made it to the end. But maybe not. Maybe that's why she latched onto Q. She thought she needed to get to the end vs someone everyone was hella pissed off at in order to be sure of the votes.

I got spoiled on the winner on Thursday but just going thru and watching now.

Liz helping Kenzie in the final 5 challenge is absolutely ridiculous. How is that legit and how does Probst let it stand? I'm not even a Maria fan. They might as well allow you to go and throw an opponents puzzle piece into the jungle.

Would have been the perfect moment to correct Jeff on Kenzie winning "individual" immunity.

Final 5 tribal was one of the more slappy things in a while. I knew they'd applaud her like some sort of Mother Teresa after drowning her in compliments.

Ben wins final immunity because of course. Great to see a fresh challenge.

Kenzie runs funny.

Ben with a terrible decision that ended predictably. Charlie should have done more to convince him to take Liz.

FTC seemed reasonable. Maria not voting Charlie is pretty eye opening.

Oh I totally agree, I was only making the point that SHE wouldn’t think they had the same game, because reasons.

In her mind, her game was vastly superior and distinct to everyone else. Of course, the way they sent her off with a standing ovation only fed that.

If my 1-hour memory serves me well, they didn't even show Liz or Maria's FTC question to the finalists. What gives there -- did they ask such a lame question or something that generated discourse that the editors didn't want in the finale? Like those are the two questions I was looking forward to hearing.

I am unsure how much I like or dislike Q's FTC question, it definitely blew up Charlie's spot a bit but I'm not going to lie that hearing answers to that question wouldn't influence how I'd vote.

In general while this one seemed okay to me, the "panel" style FTC is definitely worse than each juror getting to stand up and get their 15 seconds of fame, ideally with harder questions and no other jurors piping in.

The only downside to each juror getting to stand up and ask questions like they used to, is that some of them would use it as their soapbox vendetta. And they either didn’t even ask a question or it really wasn’t even relevant.

I never cared for that. I’m pretty sure I read that’s one reason they switched it to more of a group panel. But I agree on wanting to see at least one question from everyone.