I know this isn't technically edgic, but since I did this for Survivor 50, I thought it'd be fun to do for Big Brother 28, and I didn't know where else to post this.

The trust ratings in the final photo are how much each player trusts each other on a scale of 1-5; 1 is the lowest, 5 is the highest. Each column represents how much a specific player trusts all the other houseguests, while each row represents how much a specific player is trusted by all the houseguests (i.e., the sheet is how much the names on the top trust the names on the side).

General Thoughts: This has been a really fun season so far, and new-era Big Brother has kinda been cooking new-era Survivor with their seasons lately. BB26 and 27 were two really great seasons in my opinion, and 28 has a real chance of keeping the trend. Both of those seasons were better than most of anything we've gotten from Survivor's new era. Thursday night into Friday morning's feeds were some of the best I've ever seen, from Devens winning HoH to Angela convincing Devens to take a shot at Rome to Haley randomly coming at Yash to The Toolshed blocking out Rome at 4:30 AM to everything that happened at the nomination ceremony. My biggest fear is that a steamroll is looking more and more likely as The Toolshed continues to rack up competition wins, which I expect to be further exacerbated once Devens and Dee inevitably get America's powers in the next couple of weeks. As much as I'm rooting for Angela, Dee, and Devens, I do hope the other side is able to win a few powers and HoHs to even the playing field a bit. Luckily, with how hated Haley is and how much The Crossovers don't trust Drew, I have a feeling The Toolshed will turn on itself soon enough. Overall, I'm feeling really good about this season and its cast so far.

1. Dee (9): At this point, I think there are arguments for a lot of people to be number one on this list, but I'm going with Dee. Dee is the best positioned within The Toolshed at this point, and I truly believe she is Angela and Devens's number 1 in the game and is in both core alliances, The Red Corner and The Crossovers, within The Toolshed. The only person who is actively targeting her is Mallory, and even that's a bit iffy on whether she would actually follow through with that, as someone like Drew could talk her out of it. Even if she is on the block on an eviction night, I think she probably stays over pretty much everyone else in the house, so I do think Dee is in a very solid position. Dee also recently made new allies outside The Toolshed with LaTrice and Taylor, which further solidifies her positioning. She's made some blunders, especially this week where she has lost a lot of trust in Drew for no reason and got convinced to take Lyric off the block... for no reason, but overall I have enough faith in her strategic and social ability as well as her adaptability and current positioning to keep her at 1 for now.

2. Barrett (8): I know Barrett has been getting some flak recently for being in a worse position than he was last week, but I honestly think a lot of that has been overblown. Barrett has laid a bit low this week, which I see as a good thing for him since he was able to get himself into a very strong position last week. Barrett is still a key member of both The Crossovers and The Toolshed, and while his being on that side of the house has been made fairly public, that can be said for everyone in The Toolshed, potentially barring Drew. Despite Mallory's doubts about her alliance with him, I feel as though Barrett can and already sorta has reeled her back in, and she has bigger fish to fry anyway. Barrett is extremely unlikely to be nominated and very knowledgeable about the game, which gives me reason to believe that his perceived passivity this week is calculated.

3. Kamu (7): Kamu is not someone I expected to be making it to the top 3 this week after his poor showing last week, but here we are. Kamu has found himself in The Toolshed alliance and has built genuine relationships with Devens, Dee, and even Rome to an extent, making him by far the best positioned and most well-liked of the Haley-Chuk-Kamu grouping. Nobody is really after him specifically, so it's unlikely for him to be nominated in the near future. Still, he wasn't included in The Crossovers, and his association with house pariah Haley does raise some red flags. Kamu was also advocating for Devens to use the veto on Melody instead of Lyric, which is by far the better move in my opinion, leading me to believe he does have pretty decent game-sense.

4. Drew (7): Drew is one of the hardest people to rank for me because he theoretically should be in the best position in the house, but the likes of Angela have made me very doubtful about his future prospects long-term. Drew has been in good standing with just about everybody, being in The Crossovers and The Toolshed, and he has a strong relationship with a lot of people on Rome's side. He's built an alliance with Melody and is, at least in the minds of those on Rome's side, the least integrated within The Toolshed. This has put him in a position where he's been able to collect information from most people in the house and dump the info to The Crossovers, which should make them trust him, but for some reason, they don't. Angela has managed to spread her doubts about Drew to Dee and Devens and is even considering nominating him should she win an HoH, which is just ridiculous since he's been an incredibly strong ally for her. Angela is literally shooting the messenger here, and I don't blame Drew at all for this, but since there's a genuine non-zero chance he is put up on the block next week by his own allies, I can't put him higher than this. However, even if Angela goes through with her plan or convinces the rest of her alliance to go through with it, I don't see Barrett flipping on Drew, and he can jump ship completely if needed, so he does at least have options if Angela continues being Angela. At this point, Drew should be starting to realize that Angela, Dee, and Devens are starting to trust him a bit less, but he hasn't noticed it yet and has remained fully loyal to them.

5. Lyric (7): I have been extremely impressed with Lyric this week, and it shows in her now being the highest-rated player of anyone not in The Toolshed. Lyric is firmly in opposition to The Toolshed, is working closely with Melody and Mallory, and is both Jason and Rome's number 1 in the game while being in a showmance with Rome. She was nominated this week by Devens but has managed to get him to use the veto on her by staging a breakup with Rome and convincing him that he would somehow be buying trust with Rome by using the veto on Lyric despite putting Rome up as the replacement. I don't know how Lyric was actually able to convince Devens of this, and although people are now seeing through the fake breakup Lyric remains towards the bottom of the target list on Rome's side while having a lot of influence over her group. She's in by far the best position on her side of the house, but there are a couple of reasons as to why I can't put her higher. For one, she is in a very obvious showmance with Rome and is a target because of it, and she is also actively working towards a final 2 with Rome where she has stated that she would try to get the jury vote for Rome over her. It would honestly be best for her game if Rome leaves this week, as it would allow her to focus more of her energy on the game and open her up to new allies across the house.

6. Angela (6): Angela is in a very strong position in the house as she's in both The Crossovers and The Toolshed. She has strong relationships with most of the people within those alliances and is currently doing well, but there are a few issues preventing her from going any higher. Angela's paranoia has been through the roof this past week. She has lost most, if not all, trust in one of her most valuable allies, Drew, and she mistakenly thought that like 8 people were consistently meeting in the gym to target her when there were actually just 2 or 3 people in there who most of the time weren't even talking game. I do have to praise her for her influence over her alliance, though; she convinced Devens to declare war on Rome and has made most of her alliance distrust Drew, but both of these things are bad for her game. The other side of the house also believes she is a leader on her side of the house, which isn't a great look for her and is a very likely nomination should the likes of Rome, Lyric, Jason, Lala, or Melody win HoH. Her strategic ability is definitely lacking, but she's in a fine enough position to give her a 6/10 for now.

7. Rick (6): There was a time when I thought Rick would be number 1 on this list, but a series of bold and questionable decisions have dropped him considerably. Devens won HoH this week and was in a good spot being in The Toolshed, The Red Corner, and The Crossovers while having a secret alliance with Rome that left him in good standing with almost all of the house. However, in classic Devens fashion, he decided to create chaos by blowing up his spot with Rome and declaring war on his side of the house. While some good has come out of it, like LaTrice distrusting Rome and Jason becoming a massive target, it still exposed his and his allies' position in the house. It was extremely entertaining, but not great gameplay. After winning the Veto, his plan to backdoor Rome was looking great, and one of the showmances was seemingly guaranteed to go home. However, as I already mentioned, Lyric managed to convince Devens to take her off the block, which did not make much sense for his game at all. Melody is someone who Devens could have brought over to his side, and by leaving her on the block, it creates an enemy in someone who most likely won't get evicted. Taking Lyric off also leaves the door open for both parts of the showmance to stay. Rick is now public enemy number 1 for Rome, Lyric, and Melody, and might be Jason, Mallory, and Lala's target at this point as well. Still, should he be on the block, I do expect him to have the votes to stay, but if The Toolshed starts to turn on each other, Devens could easily be one of the first casualties as the other side gains power.

8. Chuk (5): Chuk is very well insulated in the game but has played very passively. He's got really strong relationships with Kamu and Haley but doesn't have the greatest relationship with the rest of The Toolshed despite being a member of it. She had her flirtmance with Lyric, but that seems to be ending now, and he doesn't really have any connections outside of that. It does mean he's probably not going to be nominated for a very long time and could coast his way to the end, but I struggle to see how he wins a jury vote. There's not much to say about Chuk other than he is a very passive player who has few connections but stumbled into a relatively safe position.

9. Taylor (5): Taylor has been an outsider for pretty much the whole game. She got off on the wrong foot since she was a have-not that really lowered her energy and was nominated in week one. Luckily for her, Devens promised not to nominate anyone who was nominated in week one this week, which gave her a chance to build allies, and I feel like she's been doing that somewhat effectively. She has a pretty strong ride-or-die in Lala, and together they have built a bond with Dee and Angela, which has given her some footing in the game, but she doesn't have any connections outside of that. I think if given enough time, she could go far and have a shot, but she's very neutral right now, hence the 5/10 rating.

10. Mallory (5): Mallory is sort of loosely connected to Rome's side of things but is another person who doesn't really have much influence over the game. She's got a good relationship with Lyric and Angela and a recovering one with Melody and Barrett, but that's mostly it from what I've seen. She's a likely nominee but probably not the target should The Toolshed continue to steamroll, and most people don't seem to truly trust her in the game. She's a low 5, but I think she has potential and is good enough in comps for me to keep her here.

11. LaTrice (4): Lala was extremely locked in on Rome's side of the house, being in the Mama's Angels trio with Jason and Rome. However, once Devens made it public at the nomination ceremony that Rome boiled Lala off the list, she lost a lot of trust in Rome that has yet to be fully rebuilt. She still has a really good relationship with Jason and Taylor, but outside of those few people, she is generally disliked by a lot of the house, and Haley has even expressed that she wants to target Lala next week. She did create an alliance with herself, Taylor, Dee, and Angela that could help mend her connections with some of The Toolshed, but it's tough to say how strong that group really is. LaTrice is in a rough position right now, but I think this week might force her to build new connections, something she has already started to do, so hope is not lost for Lala, but as of right now, she's on a lot of people's nomination block.

12. Yash (3): Yash is another person who a lot of people don't really seem to like, and he is particularly unpopular among the women of the house. After being nominated in week one, he was really left with no allies or connections, and I don't think there is a single person in the house who I can confidently say trusts Yash right now. He's just telling everybody what they want to hear, which could easily come back to bite him in the future. If The Toolshed and the other side of the house come to some sort of a truce, Yash is probably the first victim since he's an unpopular floater, and I think he'll get sniped out of the game relatively soon. He's not in any immediate danger right now, so I won't put him any lower, but I don't have much confidence in him at the moment.

13. Haley (3): Haley is probably the most unpopular person in the house right now, with the majority of people seemingly disliking her on a personal level, including those in her alliance. I think The Crossovers would easily cut her first out of anyone in The Toolshed (except for Drew for a couple of people), and basically everybody outside of The Toolshed is planning on nominating her and possibly even targeting her. Needless to say, she's in a very rough spot, but since she's in a big alliance and at least has Kamu that will go to bat for her, I'm gonna leave her at a 3/10 for now.

14. Melody (2): We've finally reached our first person who's on the block, Melody. Melody is closely aligned with Lyric and Drew and isn't in The Toolshed, which has left her to be perceived as on Rome's side of the house. She theoretically should be safe against either Rome or Jason, but because Melody is relatively disliked and everyone's paranoid about Drew, some people like Dee and Haley have been saying they might want to take Melody out over Jason. As of right now, The Toolshed still plans to take out Jason over Melody, but a lot of the outsiders would prefer Melody to go home, and it's still very up in the air on what will happen on Thursday. I think she's the most likely to stay, and I believe she has the most strategic ability of anyone on the block, so I'm putting her above Jason and Rome.

15. Rome (2): Rome is most likely going home this week unless he wins the Blockbuster. He is the perceived leader of his side of the house, is in a public showmance with Lyric, and has lost a lot of trust with Lala, which leaves him in a really rough position. He almost definitely goes home against Jason or Melody. The reason I have him higher than Jason is that I think if enough things break his way, he can recover. If there ever is a truce between Devens and Rome, which isn't entirely out of the realm of possibility, then maybe he could survive another Toolshed HoH. Also, with the uncertainty surrounding Drew's future, it's possible he gains another ally, which could be enough to tip the scales in his favor in terms of votes in the coming weeks. If he gets through this week, maybe he has a semblance of a chance, but it's really not looking good for him. His side also needs to consolidate more for him to have a better chance. If he can lock something down with himself, Lyric, Lala, Jason, Taylor, Yash, Melody, and Mallory, he can get something going, but as of right now his "side" is looking more like a chain of connections than a solidified alliance structure.

16. Jason (2): Jason is in a pretty terrible position. Should Rome win the Blockbuster, which is somewhat likely, then he is tentatively going home, which obviously isn't good for him. He also made a huge target of himself at the nomination ceremony, and his mischievousness with Devens and Angela has flopped completely. He is an extremely messy player who could be entertaining down the line, but has like 2 allies in Rome and Lyric, and is a pariah to most of the rest of the house. I don't have faith in his strategic or social ability long-term, and I think he's destined to be a pre-juror. He would be a 1/10, but the fact that he does stay over Rome and potentially Melody this week is enough to bump him up to a 2.

This was way too long and it took a while to write so some of this might be a bit outdated by like a 12 hours or so but a lot can change in that time lol. idek how many bb fans are on here but hopefully it's enough for this to not be a waste of time

Everyone is always confused by this, and rightfully so. Given that this an ongoing show, there is no winners story for the editors to tell us. Still, it's fun to make the chart and see how big of an edit each player is getting each week! Great way to look back and seeh ow the cast was portrayed throughout the season. Contenders are based on my reading of the players positions as a feed follower!

Is anyone doing Edgic for BB this season? I know it’s more for fun because there is technically no winner edit possible per se but I thought for sure with Dee and Devans on here that maybe somebody would be doing it (especially since a few posters did it last year) lol I wish I had more free time right now or else I would do it!

Or maybe I just need to be patient and wait for week 1 to be over 😂

Bit of a boring end to an already boring season. I'm ranking it 13/15, and I'm ranking the winner 14/25. Edgically this season didn't go great, but I've certainly done worse. NZ2 and 3 are definitely the worst I've ever done on Traitors Edgic, and I do think that's the result of recruited traitors wins being harder to edit properly? That or the NZ franchise is just a little funky with it's editing. Congrats to the other poster here for doing much better than me! Definitely some misreads on my end this season.

I do want to say that I think Maruia may be an all time great faithful? Like maybe not top 5 or anything, but top 10 feels fair. Yes she fumbled right at the end, but she really did run so much of this game.

Either way, hoping the next few seasons are better! Before AU3 starts I will have AU1 and 2 watched and have Edgic up for them. Hoping I grab a casting spot on US Civilian 2, so if that happens... yea I will NOT be sharing Edgic publicly lol. I'll still do it (I'm insane), just share it post-season I guess. Trust that I WILL be applying.

Here are some higher quality versions of the charts, Reddit always messes them up for me.

Edgic: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1473892000804769904/1520962519030566922/image.png?ex=6a431a3a&is=6a41c8ba&hm=27f328496f98fb775ecf440e134164a731349b36876604ea23c613b2b401a984&=&format=webp&quality=lossless

Contenders: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1473892000804769904/1520962585757749269/image.png?ex=6a431a4a&is=6a41c8ca&hm=cf22433f9646ac1deaa27659cf974cb310d0c07bdf9a7998ebcb39d5a3bd695e&=&format=webp&quality=lossless

Miscellaneous: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1473892000804769904/1520962952994230453/image.png?ex=6a431aa2&is=6a41c922&hm=45f29a5cdeec3f1da0d6e64db45eb2c838af6b07e62a72190a45626c653bca79&=&format=webp&quality=lossless&width=1381&height=777

Not much to say at this point, pretty weak season, definitely in my bottom 3 of all time.

Contenders

1. Keanu (+2) - I do think it is pretty close between him and Chloe, and there is totally a world where they share a joint win. The main reason why I give the edge to Keanu is due to Violette. Violette has an edit that really resembles that of a faithful who loses at the end sitting next to a traitor. Furthermore, we know is targeting Chloe and not Keanu. Keanu has also simply just been the main character of the season. His target has been big all season, but I think he could have this still. If he can get Maruia banished, he wins.

2. Chloe (-1) - As I've said, she does have the flaws listed above. I do think her edit is pretty strong, hell I moved her up to number one last week for a season. The Violette of it all was the tiebreaker for me, thus leading to Keanu having the edge. As I said, a joint Traitor win could totally happen.

If Faithfuls Somehow Take It

1. Maruia (-1) - If there was another faithful I could see being a contender, I would absolutely consider Maruia a contender. The issue is that I just don't think anyone else has a viable winning faithful edit. I think instead, Maruia is being built up as a final boss for Keanu to overcome.

2. Debbie (=) - I guess if we get a faithful win, she would be my second pick? Her story is moreso about being wrong though I think. We saw her be wrong about her own son after all.

Nope

1. Violette (+1) - As I said above, I do think there are two routes for her. Either she loses next to Keanu, or she goes out just before or just after Chloe is banished. The second placer edit of a faithful is usually super positive (Andie, Jack) or super negative (Tranna, Lisette). Now granted, I am taking these ideas from other franchises, so NZ doesn't exactly have to conform to them. Still, it does make a lot of sense imo. Rarely is the runner-up ever toneless.

Murdered

1. Aaron (+2) - An incredibely quiet edit with absolutely no substance to it? Yea, that's the edit of someone who is being murdered.

Eliminated

1. Hannah (=) - Not a surprising banishment here, I came into the episode expecting it to be either her or Keanu. I'm glad it was her, the editing this season would be so bad if we had seen Keanu go there.

2. Maria (-3) - Her catching on to Keanu was a plot thread that instead got passed on to the likes of Hannah and Maria. That's pretty much the only role she played within the narrative of the season.

Bootlist Prediction A (Most Likely)

6th. Aaron (Murdered)

5th. Maruia (Banished) (She and Chloe get votes)

4th. Chloe (Banished)

GAME VOTED TO END

2nd. Violette + Debbie (Both fill the runner-up patterns I have outlied. The former being negative, and the latter being positive)

1st. Keanu

Bootlist Prediction B (Less Likely)

6th. Aaron (Murdered)

5th. Violette (Banished)

4th. Maruia (Banished)

3rd. Debbie (Faithful runner-up)

1st. Keanu + Chloe joint win

Closing Thoughts

Pretty much every other scenario seems quite unlikely to me. A boot or two may be shuffled around, but I do think I have the story pinned down. The next most likely scenario would be one where Keanu is banished instead of Chloe, but it would be redundant to keep going.

I feel as confident as I can be with the editing this season that at least one of Chloe and Maruia is gonna be winning this season, either as a traitor or a recruit. Chloe wins for sure if Maruia is murdered next, which I could see happening.

I don't believe Violette, Hannah, Maria, or Aaron have very high chances of winning due to their incredibly low-visibility and/or negative edits.

I don't think Keanu will win, but I don't think he will be out before Hannah next episode.

TL;DR: I built a continuously-updating model on 50 seasons of trackable Survivor data (confessional counts and confessionals-over-expected, challenges, votes, idols, demographics, even transcript text), tested only on seasons it had never seen. Findings: the "biggest edit = winner" idea is mostly survival in disguise; under-edited winners are closer to normal than anomalous; gameplay, demographics, and the literal words of confessionals all hit the same modest ceiling; and the winner is basically unpredictable from the numbers in the early game, getting readable only as the season progresses. This is NOT a takedown of Edgic. Edgic reads the qualitative story (tone, music, framing) that my numbers cannot touch, and if a real early signal exists, it probably lives there, not in the counts.

(Long post, sorry. The TL;DR is the gist; the rest is the receipts.)

I spent way too long building a statistical model on 50 seasons of Survivor data. Here is what the trackable numbers can and cannot tell you about the winner.

First, two things up front so nobody wastes their time arguing with a claim I am not making.

This is NOT a "gotcha" aimed at Edgic. I have a lot of respect for what edit analysts do, and I want to be precise about what they actually do, because it matters for reading this. Edgic is the analysis of how a player is PORTRAYED: their rating (INV, UTR, MOR, CP, OTT), their tone (positive, negative, mixed, the rare PP and NN), and their visibility. The good practitioners are explicit that the evidence for tone comes from things like musical cues, how Probst and other players talk about someone, scene juxtaposition, foreshadowing, and narrative precedence (who the story is built around in a scene). In other words, the heart of Edgic is qualitative and interpretive. It is closer to literary analysis of a story being told than to a spreadsheet. I am not disputing that, and I did not try to replicate it. You cannot put "the music went minor key when she lost the challenge" in a regression, and I did not pretend to.

So what IS this? It is the opposite, complementary question. Edgic deliberately does not care about votes, challenge results, or idols; it only reads the edit. I went the other way. I asked: across ALL the trackable, falsifiable, quantitative data Survivor produces (confessional counts, confessionals-over-expected, screen time where available, challenge wins, voting records, idols, demographics, placements, and the actual text of confessionals), is there a measurable statistical relationship with winning? Not "does the art of Edgic work," but "how far can the cold numbers alone get you." Those are different questions and I tried hard not to confuse them.

For the r/survivor folks who do not live in the edit world: confessionals are the talking-head interviews. "Edgic" is a fan practice of predicting winners from how the show is edited. You do not need to know any of that for the gameplay findings below, which are just about challenges, votes, and idols.

THE ONE RULE I NEVER BROKE

Every result is out-of-sample. The model is only ever tested on seasons it was NOT trained on. This is the part most "I cracked the winner formula" attempts get wrong. If you tune a model until it correctly picks all 50 past winners, you have discovered nothing. You have memorized the answer key, and it falls apart on a new season. The only honest test of a predictor is whether it works on data it has never seen. So I trained on the past and predicted the future, season by season, every time. When I quote an accuracy number, it is always on unseen seasons.

THE DATA

A public open-source dataset (the survivoR project) with per-episode confessional counts for all 50 US seasons, including a built-in confessionals-over-expected figure, plus full voting history, challenge results, idol plays, and placements. For 25 of the older seasons I also had full confessional transcripts separated and attributed by speaker.

FINDING 1: The "winner's edit" as raw confessional volume is mostly an illusion.

Across all 50 seasons, winners average 12.2 percent of a season's confessionals and everyone else averages 7.7 percent. Looks like a big signal. But here is the catch: confessionals pile up over time, and winners never get voted out, so they are present the longest to accumulate them. Once you compare a winner only against the OTHER people who lasted just as long (the finalists), that gap mostly collapses: 12.2 percent for the winner versus 10.6 percent for the co-finalists. A 1.6-point edge, not a chasm.

FINDING 2: The under-edited winner is not an exception. It is closer to the norm.

This is the finding I care about most. Among the final three, the eventual winner is the MOST-edited person (by confessional volume) only 23 times out of 50, which is 46 percent. Which means in the majority of seasons, a runner-up was edited bigger than the winner. Sandra did the quiet-winner thing in 2004. Vecepia did it in 2002. The New Era did not invent the under-edited winner. It just produced a few in a row, which made it feel like a rule change. Now, an Edgic person will rightly point out that volume is not the same as their rating system, and that a quiet winner can still be CP rather than UTR. Fair. I am only making the narrow statistical claim: if you reduce "the push" to countable confessionals, the winner often does not have the biggest one, so any model resting on raw volume will keep getting "surprised." That is a statement about the crude metric, not about the art.

A FAIR TEST OF THE "JUST KEEP UPDATING" IDEA

A common and reasonable position is that any winner-prediction system should reverse-engineer the show's changes and update after every season rather than cling to a mid-2000s template. I agree with that, so I built it in. The model retrains continuously: every prediction for a season comes from a version that has only seen prior seasons, then it updates and moves forward. No frozen template. Every new winner automatically becomes training data.

Here is the uncomfortable part, and it surprised me. The continuous-updating method is right, and it is exactly why I trust the numbers. But it revealed that stale weights were never the real problem. I expected retraining to crack it, to finally "account for" the Erikas and Gablers and start nailing winners. It did not. A perfectly-updated model that has digested every prior winner STILL hits a hard ceiling, because the limit is not an out-of-date formula. The limit is that, from the countable data alone, the endgame just is not very predictable. Updating is the correct discipline, and the correct discipline shows the thing we all want from the numbers is mostly not there.

One more thing, and this is where I think Edgic is onto something real. There is a widespread belief that production deliberately shifts the edit to keep people guessing. The data partly backs this up: the quantitative signal really did drop in the New Era versus the classic era, by roughly half. So modern Survivor genuinely is harder to read from the numbers, which is not nothing. But it does not rescue the dream, because even in the classic era, where the data is most readable, the winner among finalists was still only faintly predictable. The New Era made a hard problem harder. It did not turn an easy problem hard.

FINDING 3: I threw everything at it, not just confessionals.

I did not want to fall into the same trap of assuming confessionals are the metric. So I tested gameplay (immunity wins, voting with the majority, votes received, idols), demographics (age, gender, occupation, even personality type), social-network position from the voting data, and the actual TEXT of what people said in their confessionals.

Results, all tested out-of-sample, among finalists where survival is controlled for:

• Confessional edit features: best single signal, 45 percent (vs 33 percent chance among finalists)
• Gameplay features (immunity, votes, idols): 42 percent, close behind
• Everything combined: 42 percent, no better than edit alone
• Demographics (age, gender, occupation, personality type): 35 percent, basically the 33 percent coin flip. Who you are does not predict winning. The community's instinct here is correct.
• The text of what winners say: this is the one I had highest hopes for. When I first ran it, it looked incredible, like 80 percent. Then I stress-tested it and the whole thing collapsed. The "signal" was just confessional volume wearing a disguise. Once I stripped that out, what winners actually SAY (measured by word patterns, sentiment, agency language, strategic vocabulary) carried almost nothing beyond how MUCH they say.

Important concession here, because this is exactly where I could be accused of strawmanning Edgic: word-frequency analysis of a transcript is NOT what Edgic reads. Edgic reads tone, music, juxtaposition, who the scene is built around, what Probst emphasizes. My text test fails to capture that, and I am not claiming it does. What my text result actually shows is narrower: the literal WORDS in winners' confessionals do not contain a hidden machine-readable tell. That leaves the door fully open for the possibility that the qualitative, presentational layer Edgic actually analyzes does carry signal my methods cannot touch. One of the show's own editors has said fans "often read more into the edit than what is actually there," but that is the editor's opinion, not my finding. My finding is only about the countable layer.

Four different countable data types, all hitting the same wall, is itself the result. When everything quantifiable converges on the same ceiling, the ceiling in the quantifiable data is real, whatever is or is not true about the art on top of it.

FINDING 4: The winner among finalists is intrinsically hard to predict. That is the actual answer.

No matter what I fed it, picking the winner among the final three lands around 42 to 45 percent against a 33 percent baseline. Better than a coin flip, but nowhere near a confident call. This is the real reason people keep getting "surprised." It is not that the winners are anomalous. It is that the final few genuinely resemble each other on every measurable dimension, so any confident pre-finale call is overreach. A model that is right 45 percent of the time WILL feel wrong more than half the time. The surprise was never evidence of weird winners. It was evidence that people were claiming more certainty than the data ever supported.

WHAT ABOUT [INSERT YOUR FAVORITE METRIC HERE]

I know this crowd, so let me get ahead of the obvious "well did you check X" questions, because most of them I did, and a couple I want to be honest that I did not.

Confessionals over expected (COE / edit percentage). Yes. The dataset I used already includes an expected-confessional figure that adjusts for how long someone lasted, the cast size, and episode length, so you can measure who was over- or under-edited relative to what their game position alone would predict. I used it as a feature. It did not rescue the prediction. Being over-edited relative to expectation is a weak, noisy signal among finalists, same as everything else. If anything, this is the cleanest refutation of the simple "winner gets the biggest push" idea, because it already controls for survival and the winner still does not reliably stand out.

The zero-confessional-episode "death sentence." This one is real and current, and I think it is the strongest single thing the community has. Since Season 41, every winner has had at least one confessional in every episode, and most recent winners had at least two every episode. But notice what that actually is: it is consistency, not volume. A steady, never-zero presence. That lines up with what my model found mattered most after survival, which was a consistent presence rather than raw loud spikes. So I would not call it wrong. I would call it a real but narrow rule that mostly tells you who is still a candidate, not which candidate wins.

The intro confessional / "introduced before the first commercial" theory. I did not isolate this one cleanly, and I want to be upfront about it. Testing "did the winner get a personal introduction in the first three episodes" properly needs the early-episode transcript text, which I only had for the older seasons, not the New Era where the theory is strongest. So consider this one untested by me. It may well hold. I just cannot claim to have checked it.

The "winner quote." Same honesty: this is a qualitative, after-the-fact pattern (a meaningful line the editors chose to plant), and a counting model cannot capture it. Not tested. Not dismissed.

The point of listing these is not to claim I covered every angle. It is that the metrics people treat as predictive mostly fall into two buckets: ones I tested that turned out weak once you control for survival (COE, volume, tone-adjacent stuff), and ones that are really "still a contender" filters rather than "this is the winner" predictors (the zero-confessional rule). Neither bucket changes the core finding.

And I am not the first person to land here. A separate analysis of 47 seasons using logistic regression on finalists found that the only statistically significant measurable gameplay variable was idols played, and concluded that the social game, the part you cannot measure, matters more than anything you can. That is my conclusion reached independently with different methods. Earlier academic attempts mostly failed for a reason I specifically avoided: they flattened everything to one row per player per season and ignored that the odds change every episode. Doing it per-episode and sequentially is exactly why my version holds up.

SO I BUILT A LIVE TRACKER INSTEAD

Picking the winner once they are a finalist is useless. The real goal is to find them as early as possible. So I built a model that, after each episode, ranks everyone still in the game by calibrated win probability, using only what was knowable by that point in the season. Then I measured how accurate it is at each STAGE of a season. Here is the honest curve, tested out-of-sample across 40 seasons:

• Early game (first quarter): top-3 catches the winner about 13 to 18 percent of the time. Basically chance. The information is not there yet. You genuinely cannot call it this early, and anyone who says they can is fooling themselves.
• Mid season: top-3 climbs to about 20 to 32 percent. Now it beats chance and starts being useful.
• Late game: about 36 to 40 percent.
• Endgame: about 58 to 65 percent. The winner is very likely in your top three, though a single confident name is still about 1 in 3.

The accuracy rises almost in a straight line as the season airs. That rising line is the whole point. It gets less noisy as you go, exactly as you'd hope, but it starts near-blind and never becomes a crystal ball.

I also calibrated the probabilities and verified the calibration out-of-sample, so when the tool says 20 percent, that group actually wins about 20 percent of the time. And I capped its confidence, because it has not earned the right to claim more than about a third on any single name.

THE BIG TAKEAWAY

The honest version of this is not "here is the formula that picks the winner." It is "here is proof, across 50 seasons, that the COUNTABLE data makes the winner only faintly predictable before the endgame, and here is exactly how faint." That is less satisfying than a magic formula, but it is true. And it suggests something I think both camps can live with: if the winner really is readable earlier than the numbers allow, that information is probably living in the qualitative layer Edgic actually works with (tone, framing, music, narrative precedence), not in the counts. The spreadsheet hits a wall. Whether the art goes further is a question the spreadsheet cannot answer, and I am not going to pretend it can.

The one thing I will assert: a model that is honestly right about its own uncertainty is more useful than one that fakes confidence. The numbers cannot confidently call a winner early. Anyone who says the numbers alone can is overreading them, and that is true whether the overreader is a casual viewer or a stats person like me.

This is also not a dunk on Edgic. Edgic and this project are asking different questions. Edgic reads the story; I measured the box score. The interesting result is that the box score quietly runs out of road, which actually makes the storytelling read MORE valuable, not less, because it implies the remaining signal lives where the art is.

Happy to share the methodology in more detail, and I have the tool itself if anyone technical wants to play with it. Caveats I want to be upfront about: the rich transcript text only covered the older seasons, the finalist-level numbers rest on a limited sample so the exact percentages have real error bars, and the whole thing runs on confessional counts that are crowd-sourced and imperfect. Direction is solid. Precise decimals, less so.

I work with statistics and data modeling for a living, and there is a massive logical flaw in how this community approaches unconventional winners.

Whenever we get a non-traditional winner, whether it is Tony in Cagayan, Bob in Gabon, or Erika, Maryanne, and Gabler in the New Era, the general consensus is to label them an exception, an anomaly, or a poorly edited season because they did not fit the established template.

But from a data perspective, that is a fundamentally broken methodology.

If someone wins Survivor, then by definition, the edit they received was the winning edit for that specific story. There are no flukes in a closed dataset; there is only new data. If our formulas and tracking metrics fail to account for how Erika or Gabler were presented, the editors did not fail. Our model failed.

The production team updates their editing style constantly to keep the audience guessing. If we do not reverse-engineer those changes and update our weights after every single season, we are no longer tracking reality. We are just clinging to an outdated template from the mid-2000s and getting frustrated when the show does not fit our spreadsheet.

An intellectually consistent Edgic should look backward at the full history of the show, accept every winner as a valid data point, and build a model that accounts for all of them. Why do we continue to blame the data points for breaking the rules, rather than changing our rules to fit the data?

I have to go to work soon so let's get this over with. THIS SEASON SUCKS!

Contenders

1. Maruia (+3) - I have definitely started to see a potential winer edit for her recently, but honestly I still don't think it's a very well told story. Her content this episode very well could have been mostly circumstantial, but she is the best pick atp.
2. Keanu (-1) - So many threads for a downfall for him, it will probably come any moment now. The bias towards traitors will always be here though.
3. Chloe (=) - Pretty consistent faithful, had one really good episode. Could potentially be recruited here?

Considered

1. Debbie (+1) - Had she gotten any content in episode 1, she probably would have made it onto my contender list.

No

1. Maria (+2) - Not complex enough

2. Violette (+2) - Too much negativity

3. Hannah (+3) - Not enough content

4. Aaron (+1) - So incredibely underedited

Eliminated

1. James (-3) - Not a surprise he went home here, not a horrible exit from him.

2. Samantha (-8) - Oh my god. I was 100% set on it not being her lol. Well! That sucks

Yea okay, I'm gonna swap Chloe and Keanu. Won't edit the image till next week though lol

Like NZ2, the contenders this season are a mess. I've complained enough already, but I'm just not loving this season man. I do prefer it over NZ2 though. Regardless, I think NZ is firmly my least favorite franchise. Everyone is pretty firmly set into one of a few tiers, and I think that'll be clear as I explain.

Top Contenders

1. Keanu (=) - There are totally signs for a downfall in his edit, absolutely. But there is also so much good there, and frankly everyone left has a super flawed edit. As I've said before, I do not like reading into previews, though it is still worth saying next week may not look the best for him. Still, it's hard to put anyone above him.

2. Samantha (=) - Got talked into moving her above Dave and I'm glad that happened. She is easily my favorite person on the cast, and I do think she has a good chance. On the flipside though, she is always going to be a big target for murder, especially if Keanu does actually end up getting banished soon. Still, she is the faithful main character and has gotten an insane amount of positivity, similar to Sam S and Anna in NZ1.

Contenders

1. Chloe (+2) - Both players coming into this tier were sort of dark horses for me prior to this point. Chloe is a perfect blend of on the radar enough to not be murdered, but not enough of a target to actually be banished. She had a really good episode last round, but I do think she could use a bit more complexity.

2. Maruia (+2) - Has also been one of the most consistent faithfuls. Her first episode wasn't great, and the streak of UTRs was likewise not the greatest. In the grand scheme of things though, I totally see her as someone who could win in a joint faithful win. I think it'd be really fun if we have some combination of Samantha, Chloe, Maruia, Debbie, or even all 4 of them winning by the end.

Debbie vs James

1. Debbie (+3) - This episode brought her almost into contention for me. After losing one story, she has a new one emerge right after. I do worry that maybe the first could have used a little more acknowledgement? Regardless, she fits very well into this group of players I have around this spot. Absolutely has a chance to sneak in as a faithful winner, and I would love for her to prove James wrong.

2. James (-2) - I don't dislike the guy, and it is so clear that he instantly regreted how he handled his comments to Debbie at the roundtable. Still, it was certainly not a good look. Regardless, he was still given some complexity through it and was able to to voice his regrets. I do think he is likely to be banished within the next few roundtables though.

Don't See It

1. Maria (=) - While she did catch onto Keanu from pretty early, she has otherwise been pretty aloof and often a bit of a nonfactor. This episode was especially not great for her. Still, her suspicion of Keanu is enough to put her here as Keanu's downfall is certainly possible.

2. Violette (+4) - Has been getting negative content for a while now. She is a possible murder option here, though I think Hannah is more likely. Violette could make sense to be one of the final banishments, maybe right before or right when endgame starts.

Very Quiet Edits

1. Aaron (+2) - Has been one of the quietest edits for the entire season, it is just a matter of time until he gets killed.

2. Hannah (-1) - Putting a decent amount of confidence in my read that she will be the next murder. Like Aaron, she has had a super quiet edit all season. The difference is that Hannah got a breakout here, and plenty of reasons for Keanu to kill her in particular.

Eliminated

1. Aroha (-1) - Not at all a surprise that she got banished here. I did sort of expect her edit to be bigger on her departure episode though.

2. Dave (-9) - Really grew to like Dave towards the end of his run. He had a good story and was playing quite well. Just lost out in the deathmatch unfortunately. I could see him returning one day maybe?

I'm kind of hedging all my bets that Dave will be murdered instead of Samantha next episode, wow.

This season has been incredibely underwhelming, would not be shocked if it ends up in my bottom 3 or so.

Top Contender

1. Keanu (+2) - I'm actually feeling really quite good about him at this point. I definitely underrated him for a bit earlier in the season. His episode 1 was very strong and I felt the same about this episode. I guess an issue is that the pressure might be getting to him, but everyone else has bigger flaws.

Flawed Faithful Contenders

1. Dave (=) - This is what I mean. These two are the faithful main characters of the season, and yet one of the two of them is guaranteed to be murdered next episode. Both of them are HUGE risks to have this high, clearly. One will be going. But I feel as though whoever lives may be in it to win, if we do see faithfuls take it by the end.

2. Samantha (-2) - I put her below Dave as I feel the size of her edit makes a lot more sense, even if she goes out here. Dave's edit would feel a bit strange if he goes out here, as his game doesn't read as one that would need this much of the edit. Sam on the other hand has clearly had to be a major character.

Risky

1. James (=) - I do feel like his edit could use a bit more complexity, and the preview isn't exactly great for him. Still, I usually try not to read all too much into the previews.

2. Chloe (=) - Likewise, Chloe is also in a bit of danger of potentially being banished soon. The main reason James has the edge is due to the fact that he's a traitor. Plus, I do think it's a little more likely Chloe gets clipped first. Both are greatly helped by being biggger figures in the edit.

Faithful Slop

1. Maruia (=) - Most complex of those in this tier, but she really has fallen off a bit in the edit department since the second week.

2. Maria (+1) - Is suddenly a character, and is someone who could hypothetically bring Keanu down. I just don't think that's super likely. Her edit prior to now simply would have been bigger.

3. Debbie (+1) - Loses her son this episode and gets a bit of content about it by the end, but really not all that much. Need to see her edit really pop off next episode.

4. Hannah (-2) - Has just been so incredibely quiet, sort of primed to be murdered or a random wtf banishment.

Bottom Tier

1. Aroha (+1) - Her recovery was... okay? She didn't catch any votes this episode, though I simply just struggle to find a reason to bring her up much.

2. Aaron (+3) - He is my pick to be murdered next after whoever of Dave/Samantha goes. His edit is just so murder victim.

3. Violette (-2) - I feel like her edit has just been really bad the whole time, plus I wouldn't be shocked if she pushes Chloe but then gets banished instead?

Eliminated

1. Harrison (=) - Not a surprise as all, he's been in danger of being banished basically the whole season. He got one of many positives tones this episode, that challenge really made a lot of people look good.

2. Michael (-2) - Not a huge surprise, though I still did expect it to be Aaron over him. In hindsight, Michael made way more sense to murder from a game perspective, I was just reading too much into a perceived solid edit.

Overall, this season was a blast to watch. This cast was a lot of fun, especially Chloe. Girl was ICONIC. Jocie played a great game and had a near-perfect winner edit too (which did make the outcome very predictable, but I digress). 9.5/10 season.

Keeping it brief with this one. I think I just do not like the way Traitors NZ is edited? Chance I shuffle some people around before next episode airs, 7-10 are especially interchangeable right now.

Faithful Contenders

1. Samantha (+1) - I lean having a faithful win this season, and Samantha most closely aligns with the faithful winners we've seen in past NZ seasons. Her edit really does resemble Sam and Anna's quite closely.

2. Dave (-1) - His edit can go two different ways. Either he is a faithful winner/endgamer, or he gets recruited at some point.

Traitors

1. Keanu (=) - I could almost see him having a trajectory similar to Coco in Can 3. Makes it very far but is always going to be banished around the final 6.

2. James (+4) - Had a solid introduction as a traitor? Not really super confident in him as a 4th.

Upper Faithfuls

1. Chloe (+1) - Continues to be one of the most present faithfuls.

2. Maruia (+1) - Is another more present faithful, even if her edit has been a bit more quiet recently.

Mid Faithfuls

1. Hannah (+2) - Is VERY UTR, though I still think she had an okay introduction. Could definitely just be murdered at any point though.

2. Maria (+7) - Suddenly has a story, surely it amounts to something somehow. If she was someone to take seriously, we would have seen more earlier. But at least there is something now.

3. Debbie (+4) - The suspicion on her previously is pretty much just entirely gone now? Her story is heavily tied to Harrison, who is likely to go very soon.

4. Violette (+4) - Looked pretty bad this episode after she threw Aroha under the bus and was wrong. Potential lategame faithful who gets negativity? This tier is all pretty interchangeable within it.

Danger

1. Michael (-7) - Unfortunately I do think he is a very likely murder here. Either him or Aaron.

2. Aroha (-2) - Could be banished here, but she got some okay sympathetic content.

3. Harrison (-1) - My pick to be banished this next episode, the traitor on traitor argument will be made and fail.

4. Aaron (-3) - Top pick to be murdered here.

Eliminated

1. Jill (-10) - Yea okay, I probably should have been lower on her before lol.

Still just as lost as I've been for the rest of this season. I've been looking at discussions on other subs, and a lot of people don't seem to be liking the edit this season. Glad I'm not the only one. Anyway, it's probably going to be a pretty short write-up today, not too much to talk about, despite my lack of confidence. Kind of struggling to care about this season much so far.

Contenders

1. Dave (+1) - At first this episode looked poor for him due to Aroha accusing him, but by the end it honestly looked a lot worse for her. We've seen Dave building relationships, and he still remains a top two most visible faithful. Makes perfect sense to be recruited, and that very well might happen this next episode, as the remaining traitors were talking about recruiting a guy.

2. Samantha (+1) - Very good edit, but it's also one that could totally just get killed or banished midway through as a big player. For now though, she is one of the main characters. Maybe recruited later? I do fully expect a recruit traitor win at this point?

3. Jill (-2) - She is going to be catching a lot of heat next episode, but I do still sort of think there is a way she gets out of this? We'll see how much James actuallyy turns on her, but I do think she may have the ins to save herself. It also feels like the duo of Harrison and Debbie is coming to an end soon.

4. Michael (=) - Very quiet episode for him, definitely too quiet. Still, the NZ editors certainly don't mind giving a winner a quiet episode from time to time. Hell, they gave Bailey like four in a row. Michael's content in episodes 1 and 3 is good enough to have some faith in him.

Misjudged?

1. Keanu (+4) - I did start to consider that maybe I misjudged his second and third episodes, maybe they weren't as bad as I had thought. Definitely someone who could become a contender again, though it's turbulent for now.

Upper Faithfuls

1. Chloe (=) - Quiet episode, but still overall one of the better faithful edits.

2. Maruia (+4) - The suspicion on her from episode 1 has basically disappeared all together? She is definitely one of the more present players so far.

3. James (+6) - He at least has a story through Jill.

Middling Faithfuls

1. Hannah (-2) - Quiet episode, only mention as a potential murder.

2. Aroha (-2) - Her suspicions on Dave didn't go over well at all. If Dave is recruited like I'm expecting, Aroha is in a lot of danger of being murdered sometime.

3. Aaron (+4) - Another person I'm worried about being murdered eventually, though could be a while still.

Bottom Faithfuls

1. Harrison (=) - Definitely feel like his and Debbie's story is likely coming to an end soon. The gap between the two is very small. There's more set up for Debbie voting him, but she also got a lot of votes. The preview does make it seem like Harrison is the more viable pick to be banished, but I don't really include the previews too much.

2. Debbie (=) - Caught a bunch of votes this roundtable, is one of the three likely banishments options next episode (Jill, Harrison, Debbie).

3. Violette (+2) - Still fully expect her to be murdered quite soon.

4. Maria (+2) - Likewise. She is also the least edited player left.

Eliminated

1. Bradley (-6) - Had a pretty comically negative episode, though he did get a bit of positivity by the end. Wasn't a big fan of him. Glad Samantha got her way.

2. Elliott (-12) - Oh so I should have just left him down here. Whoops! With his elim, we've now had a boot with each variation of a MOR overall tone.

I do want to start this by saying I found out something really funny, to me at least. I was looking up Traitors New Zealand Edgic to see if anyone else had done it, and I got a link to a podcast clip. One of the hosts was explaining Edgic, and I swear they were talking about my opening charts to US4, as she specifically mentioned someone with Johnny at number 1 on r/edgic. So uh... shoutout the Game of Roses podcast!

Now onto ep3 of NZ3 :)

To be honest, there were some BIG shakeups this episode, like real big. Am I confident in my contenders at all? Still no, but I do think there's more intrigue now than there was prior to this episode.

Contenders

1. Jill (=) - Does have some suspicion on her, but that's necessary for any Traitor's edit, even if they do win. They need to have some suspense. To counter the suspicion, we have seen her build up connections to other players. Also given how Traitors naturally have bigger edits, there is a bias towards her.

2. Dave (+2) - Has been easily the most edited faithful, so that alone really helps him. I think it is very likely he is recruited at some point down the road.

3. Samantha (+2) - Was shown to be right with all of her reads. She was also shown to be super liked. There is a bit of suspicion on her, but she shouldn't struggle to deflect it.

4. Michael (+17) - Before he was "eliminated" in Episode 1, I honestly thought his content was pretty good! Now that he is back in the game, I can now consider this content again. Upon re-entering he got good content too. The only issue is that he is sort of a prime candidate for murder. That would tank him on most seasons, but once again this episode we are not seeing discussion in the conclave. Given that, it's much harder to predict who gets murdered.

5. Elliott (+13) - I felt like he had a very strong recovery from the first episode. He is also simply just helped by the fact that he has one of the more present edits on the board.

Dark Horse Potential

1. Chloe (=) - These three players all sort of have the same edit, basic narrational content that could go to anyone, but it seems to go to them the most. If we have a faithful win, a player like this is someone to watch.

2. Hannah (=) - Reasons outlined above, edit a bit quieter than Chloe's.

3. Aroha (=) - Quietest edit of the three.

Divisive Traitors

1. Keanu (-7) - Despite a really good episode 1, Episodes 2 and 3 really set him up as someone to get an eventual downfall. I do suspect Bradley will be going first, but I just can't imagine Keanu is long for this game. His connection to Jill does definitely help give him the edge over Bradley.

2. Bradley (-7) - Lots of suspicion on Bradley, honestly sort of surprised by how well Samantha clocked him. I probably would have written that interaction off, but she read into it perfectly. Expecting Bradley to be banished within a few episodes.

Divisive Faithfuls

1. Maruia (+1) - Another one of the more complex faithfuls, though the early suspicion on her wasn't a great look. I do expect her to rise in the coming episodes though.

2. Harrison (+2) - Of the two, his mother definitely has more suspicion on her now, so Harrison naturally rises up a bit.

3. Debbie (=) - She is a potential target for banishment soon, so I absolutely wouldn't be surprised if we lose her soon. Still, at least she has a story.

Quiet Faithfuls

1. James (-4) - I did feel a bit weird having him this low, given he has a relationship established with Jill, but his edit is just a bit too quiet at this point.

2. Aaron (=) - Works both as someone to be banished or someone to be murdered. I do lean towards the latter though.

3. Violette (+1) - Definitely got a bit of a visibility spike this episode, though it kind of felt like the spike a quiet faithful gets before being murdered. Could totally be wrong, but she is probably my pick to be killed this next episode.

4. Maria (=) - So she's just hardly on the show at all.

Eliminated

1. Kate (-8) - Was a bit disappointed by her going so soon, I quite liked her in episode 1. Really quiet episode for someone who was banished in it. Definitely expected her to do better than she did.

2. Jannaia (-7) - I was right that he would be murdered eventually, just didn't expect it to be this soon. If we had seen discussion in the conclave last episode, he probably would have been on my radar.

3. Ryan (=) - Not as all surprised he was booted here, he was who I was expecting to see go out. I did sort of like him during his brief stay.

we do tend to complain about the bad edits contestants receive (and rightfully so), but whose edits do you think are particularly well done and why?

(1) cirie: micronesia - it might be because micronesia was the first season i watched, but i was hooked. this edit felt complete - we get a ton of character and strategic moments with a perfect level of visibility throughout the season. personally i thought she was a lock to win come final 3, but i was wrong

(2) shan: 41 - this might be the best and well rounded female villain edit we ever received. shan could have easily been an OTT caricature, but instead she gets a well crafted edit with her highs and lows focused on equally. great character moments, strategy, and theme music too

(3) todd: china - there's not much to say except that i think we got to see all the facets of his winning game and personality; he could have been reduced to a gamebot. it's a crime he's never been asked back, hopefully he will in the future

(4) chrissy: HvHvH - i truly think this was the season that showed us why chrissy lost instead of how ben won, which is the inverse of how seasons with male winners tends to be. not to suggest that ben got a weak edit (he didn't), but i feel that much of the action in the season was told through chrissy's POV, hence the feeling that some feel she was robbed (although she actually wasn't)

(5) erika: 41 - hot take alert i know, but i liked how they crafted this edit because i think it fooled mostly everyone, including me. but upon rewatch, you see the crafting and nuance - start with a season-long theme lamb to lion and have the events of the season unfold accordingly. start UTR-to-INV and then graduate to CP powerhouse by the end of the game. it obviously didn't land for most viewers, but few players / winners actually get season long themes like that, so i found it to be very interesting and one of my favorite overall edits. not saying it's the best edit, but it's a personal favorite

---

HM: rob c (amazon), spencer (cagayan), kass (cagayan), angelina (DvG), rizo (50), q (46), crystal (gabon), kenny (gabon), sandra (game changers)

I never really paid much attention to prediciting who was gonna win a season when I did my 50 Season Survivor binge, and always just enjoyed the content.

But holy hell now coming into doing edgics, I never realized just how misogynistic the editing was in the early seasons. Like I knew it was prevalent but not to this extent.

I would dare say every woman so far has been absolutely underedited in comparison to the men, and I'm only on episode 3! Right now Jerry is the only one that has had a consistent edit for the women, and even the likes of Parvati is just now getting some content.

Right now as of episode 3, leaving hindsight aside, my top winner picks would be:

1.) Rob

2.) Russel

3.) Rupert

4.) JT

5.) Coach

6.) Tom

7.) Jerry

I would have never guessed Sandra would be the winner of the season, she would be dead in the water. Now ofc I understand this was in the middle of Russelmania. He had just stole another woman's winner edit. But to purple Sandra, your first ever 2-time winner?? And not only that but someone as entertaining as Sandra? So disappointing.