Review: Survivor, "The Last Stand" | Season 47, Episode 14
Raise your hand if you also forgot this wasn't a three-hour finale
Look, it’s the holidays, and I traveled a significant distance between now and last week’s weird penultimate episode, and so I never pieced together that the extra episode meant there wouldn’t be a three-hour finale. I’m not against this, to be clear, especially since we’ve switched to on-island “reunions”—which rarely fill a meaningful hour—and turned firemaking into a constant rather than a twist. When you know the structure of a finale in such a clear way, three hours of it can be a bit of a slog.
That said, I was still shocked when I tuned in a bit late to the finale (thinking I had more time to let the DVR buffer) and realized just how swiftly we would be moving into the Final Four immunity challenge. We get a brief glimpse of the post-tribal moment, as they pat themselves on the back for making it to this point, but there’s no stopping to establish the stakes. We’re right into a pretty boilerplate immunity challenge, and before too long we’re to a result that continues …