‘Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X’ finale review: Was Hannah Shapiro, Ken McNickle, or Adam Klein season 33 winner?
There were six contestants entering the finale for “Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X” on Wednesday night, and it was pretty darn clear that this is the point in the game where one simple mistake could make or break you in terms of your chance to stick around.
For Jay tonight, it was one simple mistake that doomed him at the final six immunity challenge. He forgot to cover up the combination lock, which led to every other player getting to look at it and figure out how to catch up. Because of this, David was able to catch up and beat him, giving him safety moving into the next tribal council. Because Ken’s Legacy Advantage ensured him immunity, this narrowed the field of candidates even further — and left Jay scrambling to do just about anything and everything that he could in order to stick around. He tried to convince everyone to vote for Bret, discussing how he had friends sitting over on the jury. Then, he tried to tell David that keeping a threat like him around would be valuable for his game.
The big twist in all of this was that Jay had found what he believed to be an immunity idol while out searching, only for it to actually be something that David created the night before. He used that to trick Jay, and when he played it, Jeff then told him it wasn’t real. His plan didn’t work, and he was sent home. To make matters worse, Jay voted for Ken, who ended up being immune. This was all amazing, especially Jay’s reaction to the end — so great! So charismatic! It’s a real bummer to see him go home at this spot.
Final Five – Now, the opportunity finally arose to potentially get rid of David, given the fact that Ken managed to get safety yet again by solving the most ridiculous puzzle arguably in the history of the show: A reminder that this season, there are no participation trophies. Infuriating. Yet, kudos to him, and this is where we get to arguably the most controversial move of the entire season to date: Hannah deciding to get rid of Bret rather than David. It was clear that David was the bigger threat of the two, and we have a feeling that she knew that. Yet, she also knew that Bret didn’t want to go to the end with her, so she took the gamble that either Adam or Ken would be able to win over David at the final four.
With that, she flipped on Adam — who found an immunity idol and probably shouldn’t have told her. That’s not so controversial; he just shouldn’t have done it. We don’t know every conversation out there, but that could’ve allowed him to potentially get out David without any help.
Poor Bret was unfortunately collateral damage. We love him, mostly in the way that we love players who are cranky and have no problem showing it. He was visibly upset about getting blindsided, and he called out on it right away. Is the prophecy of Dan Foley coming true on Hannah? We’re starting to think that…
Final Four – Hannah’s gamble (partially) paid off, as Ken won immunity. Here’s the problem: It’s Ken. He’s so much about loyalty that he could’ve taken David to the end simply out of principle, even if he’d be writing him a million-dollar check. Or, maybe we get Adam versus David in a fire-making challenge. Ken is completely baffling as a player, especially since you would think that somewhere in his mind, the desire to win a million dollars would start to come into play.
Let’s give Ken a little bit of credit now as a player for making the move and getting rid of who was, without a doubt, the biggest threat to win. Maybe David made that a little too clear, but we don’t ultimately think there was too much he could do. Ken had to think of this family more than he had to think of his friend.
The final Tribal Council – After losing both Jay and David — two very huge personalities and great players — we weren’t quite sure how the rest of this was going to play out with Ken, Hannah, and Adam in the final three. With that being said, this was a pretty interesting Tribal just because of seeing the near-constant bickering from both Adam and Hannah. We give Ken some credit for making the move that he did, but it still felt like some of the Millennials were outright ignoring him.
Eventually, Adam did give his speech at the end of the episode about his mother battling cancer, and for the most part, the jury did well. The one issue that we had was at times, it felt like it all got a little too meta and while we’re a huge “Survivor” fan also, we prefer things to be a little bit more insular at this stage.
Your winner is… Adam! It was a clean sweep, which honestly shocked us, but we do think that his story at the end likely moved many of the jurors. The big surprise to us was that David, who was so close to Ken for most of the game, didn’t give him his vote. What a big end to a big, wonderful season. Episode Grade: A.
Next season – Head over here to read up! There’s obviously going to be a lot more to say about this season, and we’ll be talking further about that tomorrow with interviews with the final six!
For more news on “Survivor,” including talk concerning next season, be sure to head over to the link here right now. (Photo: CBS.)