Chronicles Era Two Top 10 Moments

 NUMBER 10: Season Seven Final Four Firemaking

We start off the top 10 list with a surprise entry I personally wasn't expecting! However, this firemaking was the penultimate moment this season had been leading up to! Patek, the lone ranger from his OG tribe, had just won immunity. This left Brennen and Garrett as two big perceived threats left in the game. Brennen was poised to head into FTC as the clear jury favorite, if it wasn't for the tribe tie between Brennen and Garrett. Despite Brennen's best efforts, Garrett's challenge prowess took down one of Chronicles' biggest strategic threats to ever play the game. This would lead to the competitive FTC, in which Patek would take the win over Garrett and Stewart.

A forgotten moment, but one with huge game implications, definitely changing the outcome of the season.

NUMBER 9: Season Six Final Eleven Stripe Idols Out Chris

To set the stage, the Final Twelve tribal experienced the first and only case of rocks in Chronicles history. Stephanie was just booted, giving control of the game to the Christopher, Kyle, Maddison, and Stripe alliance, with Andrew and David as additional numbers. However, with David feeling on the outs since the Ben blindside earlier in the season, David felt the time to flip was now, putting this power alliance in the minority 6-5.

However, an unexpected idol play from Stripe, who the majority was voting for, led to Chris's ultimate downfall, foiling David's flip, and once again creating a deadlock between two equally powerful sides of the game.

NUMBER 8: Season Five Final 10 Coin Challenge

Sometimes while hosting, you just know, even before the outcome, that an iconic moment was coming, and this was definitely one of those moments. This was a new challenge we had never done before, a simple challenge to run, with purely social elements. Meant to show some cracks in the game.... this definitely delivered, leading to the legacy Coin Challenge the grace the rest of Era 2.

To win, a player needed to get as close to 21 coins without going over, having 10 coins they can each give. The alliance of Becca, Kyle, and Patrick wanted Kelly out, and pushed to give 22 of their 30 coins onto her. However, Matt would go on to create an alliance with Gem, Kelly, and Kyle. However, Gem and Kyle would not follow a plan created by Kelly and Matt, leading to divides that would set the tone for the rest of the episode.

A last minute calculation by Becca would realize that Jared was to hit 21 coins exactly, so with some new coin math, we were awarded the random (in this case) winner of Phillip, the one person who probably did not need that immunity.

This challenge would create CHAOS, the longest episode recap I've ever written, and a 6-5 vote purely because of an extra vote advantage. Definitely one of the best moments of this era!

NUMBER 7: Season Seven Final Seven Signal Blindsided

There's two things Survivor players need to know before playing the game:

1) Alliances almost never last until the end of the game

2) Don't ever get comfortable in the game

And this moment definitely outlines both of these moments. The alliance of Brennen, Erin, Signal, and Stewart had full control this entire season. However, with Brennen feeling on the outs, and rightfully so, Brennen was ready for one of the biggest flips of the season. Shand, playing an excellent UTR middle game, was also ready for a big move, joining the outsiders of Patek and Garrett.

This however was no easy blindside, with Garrett's refusal to vote for Erin, who the group deemed the biggest threat, but ultimately would settle for Signal

Ironically, Erin, Signal, and Stewart were ready to flip on Brennen, and tried to get the numbers for the vote. Erin, confident the votes were going their way, would bank a vote for her advantage. This would ultimately prove unnecessary, as Signal would get blindsided in a 4-2 vote. This would set up Erin's blindside next episode, one of the most explosive tribals we've had, setting the tone for Brennen and Shand as the bigger players this season.

NUMBER 6: Season Eight FTC Evan Wins

After the longest and most challenging season we've ever had, we've had one of the strongest FTCs we've ever had between Evan, Garrett, and Kyle. Evan, perceived as Garrett's follower by most of the jury for most of the season, would have an uphill battle at FTC to prove his case. Garrett, making some of the biggest moves we've seen by a Chronicles player needed to solidify the votes. Kyle, who was the closest to most of the jurors, needed to prove a strong social game to take the win.

In the end, Evan, having the most impressive FTC performance, with almost every juror changing their minds at some point at FTC, would end up taking the win! He would go on to be the THIRD winner from Season One, proving the OG season clearly had the most potential! A chaotic FTC for a chaotic season, definitely had to add this moment to the list!

NUMBER 5: Season Eight Final Nine Stripe Idols out Shand

So this was a wild tribal oh my god. To set the stage, Mel, who was blamed for everything except things she actually did all season, had just been blindsided. Christopher, Day, and Shand had been left on the outs, and this left question marks in the Christopher and Stripe relationship.

Our season power duo, Evan and Garrett had been playing the middle, but wanted to take a shot at flushing the idol, going for the Kyle and Stripe alliance. To do this, they pulled in the three players just left out of the Mel vote. And pretended to be with Kyle, Melissa, Stripe, and Victoria.

Victoria begins to grow suspicious of everyone and that something was happening. Shand, who had the safety without power, felt he was at risk, and gave his advantage to Christopher right before tribal.

HOWEVER, BECAUSE OF THE RULE I HAD TO MAKE BECAUSE SEASON FIVE WENT TRANSFER CRAZY, MELISSA OF ALL PEOPLE FOUND OUT ABOUT THE TRANSFER

This led to last minute CHAOS as no one could figure out what to do. The Kyle-Stripe alliance decided to stay on Shand but the majority of the votes were switched from Kyle to Stripe.

However, STRIPE KNEW SHE WAS IN DANGER AND IDOLED, and so Shand went arguably because Season Five couldn't hold onto an advantage for longer than an episode.

NUMBER 4: Season Seven Night One Jeanine Goes Crazy

See, normally, night one in the game, literally nothing happens. Whelp, Season Seven decided this was NOT going to be the case, and decided to live up to Chronicles' Chaos.

Jeanine, who was in a European time zone, had missed the marooning, and wasn't particularly active the first few hours until after most of the Americans had gone to sleep, INCLUDING MYSELF.

Note to self to never sleep during a season, Jeanine went crazy in such a short period of time. Despite NO SEARCHING and LITTLE TO NO CONVERSATIONS, Jeanine was convinced Ben was coming after her.

Okay, strange, but we've seen worse right?

WRONG

Jeanine goes on in TRIBAL COUNCIL CHAT, a PUBLIC chat and goes on about how she needs Ben out the game, when neither knew of each other's existence just hours beforehand. Miraculously, not a single person on the tribe would ever see the messages before she realized it was in a public chat. But this would start a strange one-sided rivalry between Jeanine and Ben

To make this moment even sweeter, when searching did open, Ben had to write a "love" letter to Jeanine, which convinces her Ben isn't a threat, but GETS BEN THE IDOL

Imagine my surprise waking up after marooning night to screenshots of the most wild public voting confessional I've ever seen..... and we hadn't even released the challenge yet-

NUMBER 3: Season Five Final Sixteen Marbles Idols Out Collin

Jeez this was a wild tribal reading back on....

Becca was the center of the ill-fated Muromachi tribe and more or less kept everyone sane and calm. Clearly, without her presence, the tribe would go crazy, as they would at the Final Sixteen.....

Collin had been unable to submit for the challenge, and knew he was a potential target for this tribal. So, he made an alliance with Kyle, LP, and Phillip, some of the closest people to him this season. With most of the tribe really liking him socially, a new alliance, the Shiny Gem of Gem, Kyle, and Phillip was made in order to protect Collin, who they liked.

The other name proposed was Marbles, who was pitched due to their relative inactivity compared to the others. Ironically, as we'll see, this was pitched first by LP. However, LP REALLY wanted Collin out of the season, badly. Apparently they have a really bad history I was unaware of before the season started. LP was completely dead set on getting Collin out, despite having pitched Marbles. But literally not a single person in the game wanted Marbles in the game because they had absolutely zero connection to Marbles.

Alright so... if you're LP.... you probably just cut your losses right? Like everyone on the tribe wants Marbles gone.... there's not much you can do right?

WRONG

LP decided to GIVE HIS IDOL TO MARBLES and then create a parchment exposing the entire tribe's alliances. Marbles then pretends that Kyle would give him the advantage, but everyone knew LP had something.

Everyone gets blindsided at the most unecessary move in Chronicles history, everyone leaves exposed, LP pretends to have not voted Collin, but Collin calls him out for it in his final words. And poor Becca is left to figure out what the hell happened while she was at exile.

Number 2: Season Eight Final 16 (Kinda) Christopher Idols Out Garrett

The Heroes tribe this season were.... a wild and sometimes quite frustrating bunch. Heading into the swap, Christopher had just survived the previous tribal as he had won immunity, but this time, on a swap tribe of Evan, Garrett, Melissa, and Patrick, alone with himself.... he knew he was in danger.

Those four had made an alliance, making Christopher the group target. However, after a VC with Patrick, left Patrick thinking Christopher would be shield and number for him in his quest to get out Kyle (Christopher was bluffing hard here).

Patrick made a new plan with Christopher and Evan to vote out Melissa. Evan kind of has a wtf moment, realizing he cannot escape chaos this season, as any trust between Christopher and Evan was long gone at this point. Patrick gets annoyed with Evan. On top of this plan, Melissa considers voting for Evan, just in case Christopher had an idol.

Well guess what happens??

Christopher had the idol! And because all the votes were stacked on him, Christopher had the sole deciding vote here, and would send Garrett out.

Ironically, Garrett would win redemption and his way back into the game, making this big move not as influential, but one of the craziest plays seen in Chronicles history.

Alright....

The number one moment.....

I think everyone knows what this is

Number 1: Season Six Final 12 Stephanie Gets Rocked Out

Alright, let's set the stage.

We enter the merge of Kemet. Ben, who was blindsided by former Menkaure tribe members Christopher, Kyle, Maddison, Stephanie and Stripe earlier in the season.

Somehow, despite a bad premerge, these Menkaures seemed to have the majority. They had their five from pre-swap, plys Andrew, who wanted to flip on his OG tribe, David who decided against flipping on his OG tribe, and Collin, who felt really good about Stephanie. This left Chris, Kelly, and Omrialk in the minority.

Kelly had just won immunity and so the majority decided to target her number one, Chris. Chris knew he was in danger and made a controversial speech in tribal chat, which seemed to seal his fate....

...or so we thought....

Collin wasn't comfortable with his positioning in the game. So, Collin approached Ben, who was in a weird spot with the OG Menkaures. They decided that a vote flip against a Menkaure, with Maddison the most likely name, was the best move for them. So, we have five votes against Maddison now, Ben, Chris, Collin, Kelly, and Omrialk. With seven votes on Chris in Andrew, Christopher, David, Kyle, Maddison, Stephanie and Stripe.

So who was next on the outs of the Menkaure alliance? David, who was close with Ben and was also blindsided by his alliance earlier in the season, and Stephanie, who had stronger connections to the Khafres than the rest of her OG tribe. David was not convinced of this plan and would tell Stripe a flip was occuring.

So, we get CHAOS.... and it comes down to Stephanie

Stephanie's closer allies were now the Khafres, but she had better alliances with the OG Menkaure group.... but, her closeness to Chris and Collin would set her to vote for Maddison

Uh oh.... 6-6 vote... WE HAVE A TIE!

The first, and so far only tie in Chronicles history, would go on to not get resolved in a revote (despite waiting hours for Omrialk to wake up)

In a cruel twist of fate, the rocks bot would unceremoniously give Stephanie the purple rock, sending the cause of the tie to the jury.....