‘Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X’ rankings: Who stands to dominate after the merge?

Want some good escapism tonight? We feel like you’re probably going to get it courtesy of an all-new episode of “Survivor” that is coming on the air. Merge episodes are typically our favorite of the entire season, mostly because you’ve got so many players and strategies colliding for the first time.

Given that this is the first time in the show’s history where we are merging from three tribes to one, you gotta imagine that this will be crazier than ever before!

So how do we rank the remaining players with this thought in mind? We’re looking at a fairly robust criteria, but one that includes gameplay to date, alliances, threat level, immunity idols, and a certain degree of editing, since we’d be stupid to ignore the role it plays in the game. We’re not going to stress too much about it, though, given that there is a certain point where you focus so much on the edit that the show stops being anywhere near as fun.

13. Taylor Lee Stocker – Who’s going to be desperate to keep Taylor? Maybe Jay and Will would like to keep him around, but he doesn’t have any super-close allies otherwise, he’s a physical threat, and there’s a certain aggressiveness that we’ve seen from him at times that suggests that he’s not going to be a Fabio and forgotten about.

12. Bret LaBelle – There are a few things going against Bret here. If the Millennials want to take out a Gen X player, he’d be an easy choice given that he’s not insanely connected to many of them — we don’t get the sense that Jay made the move on Michaela so much to keep him as he did to ensure that she left the game. Meanwhile, he’s not exactly getting a ton of air time, and we think that people like Zeke and Adam are invested in keeping around players like Chris and Ken for the time being.

11. Justin “Jay” Starrett – Jay may have an immunity idol, but he’s still on shaky ground entering the merge. We don’t know how many scenarios there are where he has the numbers on his side, and maybe his ego gets in the way of him playing it. We know that he’s got a strategic mind, but the Michaela move was impulsive. As we recently detailed, he could’ve kept her until the merge, surveyed the field, and then eliminated her around the final 11 if he wanted her booted before close to the end.

10. Will Wahl – Do we think Will is the merge boot? Absolutely not, and we could see him potentially making the top 6. However, we don’t see there being any final three upside for him whatsoever given that we didn’t get his take on Jay finding an immunity idol, or really much on the Michaela blindside. We’re not getting much of Will at all, and we just can’t get invested in him as a serious winner candidate.

9. Sunday Burquest – By the same token, it’s hard to get super-invested in Sunday’s story to date with little air time. We do think she’s got a much better chance of making it to the end than Will does; we think Sunday’s ideal game is to get a strong majority alliance and carry them down to the end. She can do that here, but we just don’t see her having a compelling-enough argument. Also, there’s nobody hated enough this season that she could easily topple.

8. Hannah Shapiro – We almost want to cement Hannah already in the final three, since she’s a perfect person to take there given that we’re not getting any evidence that she will have the votes. We do think that is slightly dangerous because she’s smart and could turn out to have a second half of the season similar to an Aubry or a Sophie; we just haven’t seen that yet, and it’s wrong to generalize that she will do that just because she’s of a similar in-game archetype.

7. Jessica Lewis – Jessica has established herself as someone willing to play the game and is capable of making moves. Our concern is that the perception we’re getting from the other players is that she is very paranoid, and they may think of her as a player who acts more impetuously as opposed to strategically.

6. Ken McNickle – On the flip side, our feeling with Ken is that he’s perhaps too inflexible for his own good, and seems to make some decisions based on the way in which he’s spoken to. He describes himself as socially awkward, and with that, we’re not sure he’s got the social game to make it to the end and win.

5. David Wright – Sure, he’s incredibly smart, knows the game, and has an idol, and all of these give him a reasonably good shot to get all the way to the end and win. The problem for David comes in that we’ve seen players like Cochran do this, and Spencer made the finale on “Cambodia,” the last season people have seen. People in this game (i.e. Chris) already know that David has a cutthroat gear to his game. He’s a threat, and we’re not sure he can win challenges if he needs to.

4. Chris Hammons – We really like Chris’ social game, his challenge strength, and his natural intelligence for playing. Even when he was on the opposite side of the numbers on Gen X, he wasn’t targeted and there wasn’t too much that he himself did wrong. Unfortunately, it’s hard to rank anyone who is such an obvious threat higher than this.

3. Michelle Schubert – In terms of precise allies, it doesn’t seem like Michelle’s got enough of them to justifiably be ranked this high on the list. We just think that, as evidenced in the Mari vote, she has an incredible ability to be persuasive, and to get players to do something even when it’s not in their best interest to do so. She should be able to get out of some messes.

2. Adam Klein – He’s smart, he’s got an alliance, and he knows “Survivor” backwards and forwards. He’s even got an alliance! Adam’s only issue at this point in the game is that we’re not sure he has a buddy who’ll ride to the end of the game with him; if he’s in danger, who is going to stick their neck out to help him?

1. Zeke Smith – Before the tribe swap, we’d say that Adam ally is Zeke, but he may now realize that he’s better suited to go with Chris and David for the time being. Zeke’s simply the most well-positioned person in the game at present given that he’s seemingly got relationships with people on all sides and he won’t be an obvious threat. Options are the best thing you can have in this game, and he’s got them in spades.

Who do you think is in the best position to dominate after the merge? Share in the comments below! (Photo: CBS.)