It’s too early in the game to start talking about who is likely to win Survivor 50 based on the edit. We’ve had a grand total of two episodes, and there are still twenty-one players remaining on the season. A lot can and will happen over the next few months, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t notice castaways getting particularly good edits or castaways getting zero confessionals. The former is definitely a far better sign, and powerhouse Jonathan Young falls into that camp.
The only cast member from the first four seasons of the New Era to make 50, Jonathan is widely praised as the greatest challenge performer in the history of the show, but he wasn’t considered much of a winner threat coming into the season because his strategic game was only middling and his occasional grumpiness as he got hangrier on his original season rubbed many the wrong way. The general assumption was he’d be an early merge boot after giving us some fun challenge performances. Maybe that’ll still be the case, but there are reasons to believe we could be watching something more.
Let’s start with the Boston Rob connection. During the pregame, Jonathan talked in many of his interviews about how close he is to the former winner and multi-show legend and how much advice he’d gotten. The two hang out on the regular and actually watched last week’s episode together. There’s clearly a personal connection, but to be honest, most fans didn’t really take the advice seriously. They thought Jonathan would be the same guy we saw last time, but not so fast.
Jonathan told People heading into the season that Rob gave him three pointers: 1) smile and have fun because other people like working with and playing alongside people who are in a good mood, 2) look out for yourself because you’re the only player who wants you to win and 3) only worry about the things you can control, not the production wrinkles you can’t. We don’t know if he’ll be able to follow all those rules throughout the season, but four and a half hours of content in, it’s worth noting the show is treating him like so much more than a challenge beast.
Prior to this week’s merge, Jonathan has been a member of the teal tribe, which is far and away the most under-edited of the three. Yet, he’s still gotten six confessionals, despite not going to tribal council or going on any journeys. We’ve also heard him talk about his number one ally (Coach) and heard him talk about trying to play the game in a more strategic manner this season. With a twenty-four person megacast filled with many all-time legends and limited screentime, it’s hard to imagine they’d be giving Jonathan this much time to explain himself if he wasn’t going to be a big character on the show this season.
Is he going to win? I don’t know. I’m not really sold on that. It’s unclear if people would vote for him at the final tribal council against some of these other OG legends probably playing for the last time. Is he going to make a deep run though? I think it’s looking very likely. He seems to have taken Boston Rob’s advice to heart, and the show is clearly telling us he’s a main character we should care about. Expect to see a lot more from him, both in Survivor 50 and potentially in other returnee seasons down the road.
