Fan-favorite Christian Hubicki has a lot of thoughts about the big Jimmy Fallon twist and the role it played in his Survivor 50 downfall, but it’s pretty clear from all of his exit press he’s a lot more frustrated about a gameplay mistake than his decision to go on the journey. In many of his interviews, he’s pointed to one conversation he thinks was the catalyst that sent him home.
During this past episode, the show gave us a scene where Christian was talking to Rick Devens and Cirie. During that conversation, he talked about Ozzy playing both sides and said, given he also has an idol, he’d be an ideal person to go home. Cirie, of course, immediately told Ozzy, who is her close ally, and from that point forward, there was a big cloud of smoke around Christian.
Of course, that smoke only got bigger and smellier when Christian won a series of rock, paper, scissors games and got to go on a journey. During the journey, he, of course, didn’t complete the puzzle in time and had to read a note to the entire tribe saying he’d lost and as punishment, would be forced to vote for himself at Tribal Council. The fanbase has been screaming at each other about the twist and whether it was fair in the days since.
To be clear, Christian has some negative feelings about it too, but it’s the Cirie conversation that really bothers him. He told TV Line throwing Ozzy’s name out was the “original sin” and then explained why…
Certainly, pitching the Ozzy vote was the most obvious, by a country mile I think, the biggest error I made in the game. And I think that for obvious reasons, that's how it played out. I was aware that there was a relationship there. I think I just lost sight of it.
Christian said similar things during his interview with Mike Bloom over at Parade, too. He talked about how he’s not going to say he was screwed by the twist because he was the one who threw Ozzy’s name out. He said he should have known better because there had been rumblings throughout the game that Ozzy and Cirie were close, but he “lost track” of how close they really were.
Here’s the portion of the interview where he once again admits the mistake…
I made myself a target specifically by telling Cirie the name of Ozzy. That was just a pure mistake. And on Survivor, you’re kind of only as good as your worst day. I think that was my worst day by far in the 18 days I was in the game. So it put me on the target.
It’s been refreshing to see how honest and willing to own that mistake Christian has been during his post-game interviews, but from his perspective, the twist definitely played a role in him going home, as well. He told Survivor legend Rob Cesternino during a Rob Has A Podcast interview that he only went on the journey because he wanted to make sure other players didn’t get an advantage. Obviously, it resulted in him getting a big disadvantage, but it’s not the losing his vote or voting for himself part that bothers him. It’s having to tell everyone at camp part.
Obviously, not finishing the puzzle and having to vote for himself was a disadvantage, but having to tell everyone else exactly what happened without a chance to lie is what sealed his fate. If he’d been able to maneuver, things may have been different, especially because there was another target.
Christian said in several interviews that judging by what we saw in the show and conversations he’s had with other players, there was some legitimate momentum around swinging the numbers to Emily instead of him. That still would have put him in a less than advantageous position for a long-term run in the game, but sometimes Survivor is just about making it past one vote because you never know whether someone will pop up as a bigger target next. Because everyone knew he had one vote against him, however, it was too easy to just pick him.
Regardless, Christian will go down as one of the biggest standouts of Survivor 50. He was clearly the main character of several episodes and the leading confessionalist (at least to this point in the season) by a wide margin, which is no small feat given the larger than life personalities on this epic cast. It definitely wouldn’t be a shock to see him play again at some point in the future.
