20 fought for their lives in search of the Galapagos grown…and after 20 evictions and 18 actual eliminations, 2 remain! Give a hand for Owee13 and DarkTyphoon23!

It’s fair to say that the two took juxtaposed, polar opposite approaches in the game and both are deserving candidates for the title of Sole Survivor. But before we discuss those 2 candidates, let’s recap the season that we just witnessed.

It started with four tribes: Darwin, Isabela, Fernandina, and Bartolome. The first challenge was a doozy—a staggering amount of players were involved and were working deals in a challenge based off of inter-tribe coalitions. In the end, Fernandina suffered the first defeat. When they voted out Tall_dude, a tribal unity formed that carried them through the early stages of the game, and they changed their name to “Nipplerina” when lead by the boisterous MinsiKid and TheGoodMan.

The next few challenges continued, and it became clear that the Darwin Tribe was the strongest. Lead by challenge dominating DarkTyphoon, along with a number of dedicated challenge players, Darwin did not lose a member or challenge for a long period of time. This also allowed their players to accrue crucial idol clues.

After 4 people were voted out, the tribes were merged into 2. The most vocal player in the game, perhaps, TheGoodMan, was stunningly voted out by a tribe that didn’t appreciate his antics. Later, Lemonface was voted out by the new Darwin tribe while holding an idol in her possession—she ended up trusting her instincts and handed the idol over to Owee13 before the vote to keep safe in case she was voted out. After 3 straight losses for the new Darwin tribe, they finally pulled out a victory and were able to send Fernandina into tribal, where they voted out Survivorguy92, who had been tightly allied with Rocker4 throughout the game.

It was then that a huge move happened in the game—by vote of the players in the game, Hwest14 and TheGoodMan were revived from the dead and brought back. Fascinatingly, they were able to ascertain enough numbers to be kept around even on new tribes and eventually, both made the final 4.

TheGoodman, placed in a tribe unfamiliar and unappreciative of his humor and spirit, was saved in part by a gamechanging move by TheKid28, who played an idol to flip the numbers and evict Froodsbag in a stunning blindside, to which Froodsbag respectfully succumbed.

Then, the jury began, and the game heated up for some. BBlover was the first jury member voted out as his alliance turned on him, and he was eliminated. Then, the second big move of the game was enacted—Owee13 played an immunity idol, and overcame a close vote (for which the final vote count was not revealed) and blindsided Taylor112399 much to the chagrin of DarkTyphoon23, whose closest idol was voted out.

Starting a trend that would continue for the rest of the post-merge period, DarkTyphoon wore an immunity necklace to the first individual tribal council, where Peetah32 was voted out in a close vote where his rival, Owee13, called the shots for his eviction. From that point on, a clearly defined alliance had formed and was dominating the Tortuga Tribe, voting out player after player as DarkTyphoon23 continued to win immunity challenges. Rocker was a victim of this dominating alliance, too, but then a stunning upset occurred when ThatMistahMatt won immunity and Minsikid was blindsided by an idol played by DarkTyphoon23 that saved Dark in the game, and Minsi was voted out by a clear minority. TheGoodMan, shedding a few tears, vowed to avenge this elimination, but Dark never provided an opportunity for eviction after Matt won the immunity challenges. Matt fell victim to the dominating alliance, where nobody wanted to make a bold move, and Vike, who kept the dominant alliance strong, sheepishly went out in 6th place. It was then that the only intrigue of the game was whether Dark would continue to win every challenge to keep himself in the game—and he