Survivor - 5th Season Anniversary Special

Chapter 2 - Emperors vs Knights

It's me yet again lol. Time for the next chapter where we'll go over season two.

I'll admit it though. The theme was a little... whacky... Like, come on. Super cringe. And the final nine boot wasn't the best because "production" made a fatal flaw with handling Freddy's elimination, but other than that, I think most people have this as the best season so far. I personally love Caribbean more because of its storytelling, but I also understand why people have season two as the best because I feel this season had the most game savvy cast.

So since it's apparently the best season for most people, I know people are gonna get excited when they see a few of their favorite players going over the season. Enjoy.

~KF


SURVIVOR - HEROES VS VILLAINS


Time to move onto season two.

"Alright." ROB was once again seen interacting with Master Hand. "So let's move onto season two's Emperors vs Knights. ...And I gotta say, this was the season that really kicked the series into gear."

"Stole the words out of my mouth." The Survivor host laughed. "When we were planning for the second season, our main priority was to recognize what went well and what didn't from Kodai Island. We needed to fix those mistakes and try to make it better for both players and fans alike. And I feel like we've accomplished that. And now it's being regarded as the best season of Survivor we've ever done so far."

"The story behind that season is what I call, David vs Goliath."

Hmm... Now where in the world did Master Hand get that from...?

"We had ten people who had to struggle to get what they want, conquer personal obstacles, while still maintaining their spirits. Those people against ten others who are used to getting what they want and always being on top no matter what, makes an interesting theme of the season."

As he just stated, basically David vs Goliath... But that name made much more sense than something like Emperors vs Knights. What was next? Greek Gods vs Pheasants? ...That was a reference to one of the real seasons of Survivor in case one was unable to pick up on it.

"However, what really made the season was... the cast." Master Hand pointed out. "There were a lot of interesting players out there to watch, such as Shadow, Foxy, Sheik, Marth, and even pre-merge boots such as Mega Man and Rouge."

"And you know, in the end, the winner was rather unexpected."

"Marth's win was unexpected." That was something the hand agreed with him on. "Marth winning by itself was shocking enough, because you could say that you were expecting Zelda to win. Luigi even had some fans on his side and actually wanted him to win. But when Marth won, it was something the audience didn't really expect at all. And then to add on to it, he became the first and currently only winner to score votes from every single person on the jury. Now that has gone down to actually one of the most controversial moments of the show. But people were most surprised that Shovel Knight voted for Marth over Luigi."

"Yeah..." ROB slowly bobbed his head. "Some Luigi fans were a little confused and upset about that. But hey, Shovel Knight voted for Marth for a reason."

"Yes. He did vote for Marth for a reason... Sure, Luigi was his number one ally since the early days of that season, but that doesn't mean that it's an automatic vote Luigi was supposed to get from the jury. Shovel Knight didn't vote for Luigi simply because he felt that Luigi didn't play a good game. He received criticism from the jury for pretty much not doing anything for thirty-nine days. Other words, he had no resume in their eyes. But getting back to Marth, the jury respected him for the game he played. Not a perfect game you could say, but it was one hell of a ride for him to say the least."

The Altea hero, Marth Lowell himself, was now on screen for the first time since season two wrapped up.

"So what was the reaction back in Altea when everyone found out you won Survivor?"

The original, blue-haired, Fire Emblem warrior grinned from ear to ear. "I received praise quite a bit after seeing and hearing about what I was able to accomplish. ...I'd just like to say this... Survivor is anything but an easy game. The survival aspect on its own is not a simple walk on the battlefield."

Or a walk in the ballpark, but based off Marth's background, his wording was surprising to no one.

"But as for the game itself, it..." His mind was scrambling to find the words to describe his overall experience, only to come up with nothing. He found himself lost in his own thoughts. As a result, he ended up laughing a little at the memory of it all. "It was really something. ...I was honestly surprised myself that I have earned the votes to win from the jury. ...But I've explained to them of everything I had to endure out there. I've been on Exile Island, I've found an idol, I've found an... 'advantage', I've won challenges, have been on the bottom, was the decision maker, having my vote taken away and still making it the whole way... It was insane!"

"I can't believe you've gone through all that and still won!" Even ROB was amazed of his winning journey. "You are pretty much a unique winner. None of the other three have gone through as much as you did. And you actually related to the theme rather well. I think that's why the jury voted for you."

"After all I've been through, I was still able to make it to the Final Tribal Council. ...But at the end of the day, based on the results,... I'd say it was all worth it."

"Would you play again if you were given another opportunity?" The robot cocked his head to his left.

"...I would." Lowell nodded. "If I get informed someday that I am wanted back on the show, it is another opportunity that I cannot pass up. ...I just personally wonder how would I fare against the other competitors."

"Let's talk about blindsides." ROB suggested, him talking to the Master Hand again. "There were quite a few of them in Emperors vs Knights. We had the Cloud blindside of how the Knights tribe decided to get rid of their strongest member at their first tribal, Ghirahim didn't know he was going home, but then we get to the Mega Man boot, the Krystal boot, Shulk... Now I have a feeling you know who I'm talking about with those last three."

"Shadow the Hedgehog."

"Correct!" ROB was pleased with his answer. "Shadow was obviously a highlight character from his season. So unsurprisingly, he is coming back for Heroes vs Villains. He's one of the biggest villains the show's ever had."

"Villains make the game rather interesting." said the host of the show. "That I can say. And Shadow pretty much was a villain from the get go. I mean, Mega Man, the one person who was willing to work with Shadow and he flips on him... Talk about no good deed goes unpunished, I suppose."

"That's exactly the case here." ROB agreed. "Mega Man didn't say a word when he found out he was going home. And I believe that was just how devastated he was. Long story short, his plan was to use Shadow as a shield for the long run, and it really did backfire... all just so he could work with Knuckles."

"Haha, he really just threw the guy away. One of the few positives people could say about Shadow at that point was that in a game of Survivor, he really did not come to make friends."

So, what did the cut throat player have to say for himself?

"You really did not come on the show to make friends."

"Because that was not what I signed up for." Shadow shook his head at ROB. "My only intention was to test myself to see how would I perform... and to hopefully,... maybe find myself of who I really am."

Oh. That last part was rather unexpected.

"Hmm... Interesting." The interviewer blinked. "So it wasn't just because you wanted to backstab people left and right... You know, you did mention something about this apparent... identity crisis you have..."

"I was pretty close to coming to terms with that while I was on the island. Am I a real life hero or a villain? Based off my profession it is rather difficult to explain..."

"You think you found yourself yet?"

"...Kind of. I'm still learning as we speak." The different colored hedgehog admitted. "But I suppose things are a bit easier nowadays."

"Let's get to the Mega Man blindside." That was something fans were most curious about when it came to Shadow. "Do you have any regrets? Even after everything played out?"

"Do I have any regrets?" He sat still and blinked. "Well, Mega Man was not targeted because I actually wanted him out. I had trust in him, but after hearing Knuckles explain the dynamics of his old tribe, I figured I had more reasons to work with him then Mega. I had to make a choice. Getting rid of Krystal weakened his game, and at that point I thought that I was not going to just stick with the Emperors for the rest of the game. So I cut Mega loose as a sacrifice."

"...But do you have any regrets, though?" ROB figured that he never really answered his question. Like, 'yes' or 'no'? Come on.

"...Yes and no." ...Huh? "Surely, I could have played it safe and helped the tribe get rid of Krystal while increasing the number of the old Emperors, but you can't just think about the next Tribal Council. What about even later down the line? You have to explore your options in this game. What if my tribe had to go to tribal again? Knuckles had no more original tribe allies on his side. Unless I had the opportunity to somehow convince Mega Man to get rid of Marth with an idol in his pocket... Even so, what if he turned it down? There are a number of ways I could have handled the whole situation, but I chose to handle it in a different way."

Well, that explained his 'yes' and 'no' response. "And you do realize that it is one of the most iconic blindsides of the show, but whether or not that was the best move to make, you do know that people are still debating about it..."

He simply shrugged. "Everybody has their own opinion. That's all I have to say."

"Okay, so would you change anything on this season, then? This is your second chance after all."

"Meh..." That was the main question that actually had Shadow thinking. "Perhaps I could be a little more cautious when it comes to my decision making, especially since the competition is going to get more intense due to it being a returning player season..."

Perhaps that was satisfactory enough to some extent.

"Let's talk more about the cast as a whole." Master Hand was now talking once more. "As said before, this season had a very game savvy cast and I think that was what made Emperors vs Knights so great. When it comes to basically any reality show, the cast could make or break a season. It is what makes a season colorful and it is what makes the season fun and enjoyable to watch. But you know who was also a highlight character from that season? Name starts with an 'F'."

"...Foxy."

"Correct." He had a winner. What was ROB's prize, Master Hand? "I think he's one of the smartest to play so far. And even though he didn't win his season and got to sixth place, I don't think he could have fought any harder out there. I think he gives an example of what playing behind the scenes is like. He knew exactly where he stood on his tribe early on, knew the flaws of having a divided tribe in the swap, so he decided to convince the group to get rid of Rouge over Knuckles for his own best interest since he found him to be more trustworthy. He and Bonnie were buddy-buddy, and then when he realized he wanted to work with Freddy Fazbear in the swap, he literally wrote his name down at the merge vote to avoid their secret relationship being exposed."

"Yeah I remember that. That merge vote was a vote split between him and Shulk and Shulk got the majority of the votes." ROB recalled. "It was an interesting voting result."

"So Foxy waited for just the right time to finally blindside his own tribe. He had Bonnie, Knuckles, Freddy, and Shadow with him, and Marth and Zelda were two more votes he felt he needed. It was the perfect set up to be a big blindside, and it turned out to be a big blindside... only on Shadow. His plan completely backfired because Marth and Zelda didn't trust Shadow anymore due to his antics."

"I know he was furious about that."

"He was probably screaming on the inside." Master Hand assumed. "And the thing was that it really was the perfect time to change the game. But things happened beyond his control and his alliance paid the price for it causing them to start getting picked up. Though what officially made him a villain was when he decided to take advantage of another vote split by sacrificing his best friend in Bonnie causing him to accidentally go home."

"That was something else." ROB personally find it to be a wild moment for him. "And then Bonnie was really quick to forgive Foxy about that. He clearly didn't take it personal."

It was all about Foxy saving his own ass. And if it had to come down to killing his best friend, in his mind it had to be done.

"Survivor is all about having that perfect balance." Everyone's favorite pirate fox stated. "I mean, it's all about balancing relationships and gameplay... Damn. That sounds something like Caribbean, doesn't it?"

"Well,..." ROB blinked. "obviously you should have been on that season. That was the main thing Val was talking about the entire time."

"Yeah..." His eyes turned to the side for a bit. Now, due to the Heroes vs Villains cast reveal taking place right after Caribbean's reunion show, since Foxy was on that cast, it was the only reason why he was not in the live audience to talk about his pirate friend, Valery Ramos's game and journey with the Master Hand. And so, people were finally hearing a bit about his thoughts on that.

"But hey, I already played and she needed her own chance to shine, and I think she did really well."

...

That was it? Okay. Supposedly people were going to dive deeper into his thoughts regarding that during the official showing of Heroes vs Villains.

"But yeah, friendship and strategy needs to be balanced out perfectly." Michaels went on. "Now I was in fact getting along with my tribe. The problem was that I knew what the obvious divisions were. After Cloud left, Knuckles and Rouge ended up being on the bottom because they voted with him. You vote with the minority early on, you're not seen as trustworthy for the long run. However, there was an obvious four person alliance on that tribe. Sheik, Shovel Knight, Luigi, and Greninja. They themselves didn't even realize how strong they were as a four early on, but they were obviously a big tight group. I explained that to Bonnie and he agreed."

"Now when we lost our second challenge, if a big move was in play, it would have been myself, Bonnie, Knuckles, and Rouge voting together against those four, and we would have tried to swing vote Krystal to take out one of those four... Probably anyone one of them but Luigi, since he was not going to be a threat and we needed to flush their idol. We knew one of them had it."

"Wow..." Quite interesting to hear to say the least. "That would have been a massive blindside."

"It definitely would have. I was really itching to do that, haha." Foxy, like most players were in fact hungry for blindsiding people. "But,... I had to be smart. Greninja and Sheik were right. The team was already divided, so making our team even more divided was not going to help anything. There's a time and a place to really start playing the individual game. I would have had a target on my back and Chatan Four would have been itching to get rid of me. That's why you gotta blindside people at the right place and the right time. And even I can say in Survivor, it's hard to know what's right..."

"I mean, the game is complicated." Now ROB was never going to actually compete on the show, but even he understood. "That's why it's so hard to win. Like,... you should have won that season."

"But I didn't." Captain Foxy kept his smirk on his face. "I didn't even make it to the finale episode. Val did though, so maybe that did me justice. Hahaha!"

"But it was such a shame that things didn't work out for you the one time you did try to make a flashy move."

"I know..." All the memories came back again. "I was like, god damn it! Hahaha! It was the right time to do it, too. But Marth and Zelda just decided that they did not want to work with Shadow anymore. There wasn't really much I could have done to prevent that. I died in Survivor, but you can't say that I didn't trying to fight my way to the end."

"And that includes slitting your friend's throat..."

"Oh, Bonnie is like an older brother to me. We love each other regardless."

Back to Master Hand.

"Now... other than Marth's unanimous win, there was really only one major controversial moment throughout the season... And it's the final nine again."

"Wow..." ROB chuckled in reply. "Second time in a row."

"It was all because of two advantages being played at the same time." said Master Hand. "Now, early in the game, Sheik found this advantage, but then she found another. One of the advantages she had was the ability to block someone's vote at Tribal Council, preventing them from writing someone's name down. So she decided to block Marth's vote because she felt like he was the most likely Emperor to have an idol due to him being on Exile Island."

"But then she had another advantage, which was a Steal-A-Vote. She had the power to take someone's vote making her vote for not once, twice. And so a the final nine, knowing that she decided to block Marth's vote at that tribal, decides to stand up and take Marth's vote away. Marth then gets up to open up his previously unopened advantage, only to find out that it was rather a disadvantage on his part because he found out his vote was being blocked."

"And that was where a lot of people say that it was when things went wrong." ROB pointed out. "Some people went on to say that it shouldn't have happened that way."

"I ended up saying that because Sheik used her advantage first, Marth's advantage was basically useless and there was nothing he could have done about it. Sheik takes Marth's vote and she put two votes on Freddy, causing him to go home... That was a mistake." The hand stated simply. "I honestly think I could have handled that better."

Oh, cool. Master Hand took constructive criticism.

"First of all, I shouldn't have told everyone that Sheik's advantage was already used... I mean, no one actually voted at the time. No one came up to the voting urn. How was it already used? I feel if anything, Marth played his advantage first. His vote should have actually been blocked. So Sheik wouldn't have been able to take Marth's vote away. She would have had to take somebody else's. She even got some criticism herself because the audience felt like she shouldn't have used her advantage in that way. So because of all this, that was how Freddy ended up being the only contestant in our show's history to have been eliminated in an unfair way. I apologized to him personally, and I want the public to know that."

"What was his response?"

"He appeared to be fine after I apologized to him. Of course he wishes he made it further, but he was telling me that he would love to play again... And he was actually in the running for Survivor - Heroes vs Villains. But then we decided,... 'Look, he should come back, but he's not really a hero nor a villain.' ...Shovel Knight of all people actually took his spot because we wanted two heroes from that season to be on the Heroes tribe."

Now how did Freddy Fazbear actually feel about all this? Time to find out.

"Haha, I mean, Sheik honestly thought the same way Master Hand did." The bear himself was giving his honest opinion on the matter. "So she kinda fueled his thought process on that. I, in particular at the time wasn't really thinking as if I'm a hundred percent going home. There was a possibility, but Marth was scared the most out of all of us because that was his vote that was in jeopardy, not mine. So I didn't give the whole thing much thought at first. Foxy was the one guy who questioned that because he was confused himself."

"Does he feel like things should have been different?"

"He didn't really say after that night according to him, probably because he was simply upset that I got voted out in the first place, giving him more reasons to get rid of Sheik for being the strategic player that she was." The pizza man informed. "But like I said, I didn't think too much of it until I actually had enough vote to send me out of the game. But then me and the other jurors at Ponderosa talked about the whole thing, and Shadow felt that it didn't really make much sense to why Sheik would take away Marth's vote that was already blocked. And when Foxy and Bonnie both got sent to Ponderosa they said the same thing."

"Oh, wow..."

"Foxy even said he should have continued to speak up at that tribal because he sounded rather confused by it. ...None of that made any of the Ponderosa videos, though..."

"Really?" His words caught him by surprise a little bit.

"Most likely because at the time production still thought they were in the right. Sheik taking Marth's vote away came up at the reunion show, but nothing of the whole 'production is wrong' or... 'she shouldn't have done that' kinda thing ever came up. They were probably trying to avoid it. But then over time, Master Hand realized he made a big mistake."

"Did you feel bitter about it in any way?"

"I wasn't really super bitter about it, but I just felt like it things should have been a little different. But I have no hard feelings to Master Hand at all. Besides, I think if Sheik couldn't take Marth's vote, she would have took mine anyway." Oh, good. The host and the contestant appeared to be on good terms. "It would have been my vote she would have stolen and I would have been out of the game anyway. She would have whispered to Marth that if he did not flip back to her side, I would have been out of the game. ...I was probably going home no matter what happened, but I guess it was more of the principle of the matter that rubbed people the wrong way. And I don't blame them, but because of what would have actually happened,... maybe that's why I'm not too angry about it."

"The master has even said that he really wants you to have a second shot at the game."

"He apologized to me multiple times, and I think he genuinely felt bad." Fazbear gave a small grin. "I mean, two advantages at one tribal? It never happened before. Maybe I don't really fit in with the Heroes-Villains cast, but I would not mind to play the game again. Not everyone gets a second chance though, so I'll hope and pray all the while."


Okay. Two down, two to go.

So this one only took me a couple days. I'm gonna finish this off and then go to bed lol.

But yeah, I remember Emperors vs Knights from start to finish. And I gotta says, even though for me personally it's my second favorite season right behind Caribbean, it's still pretty great! The players, the theme (even though the name should've been David vs Goliath... but then again even with that, my unpopular opinion on that is that the theme is pretty unbalanced... Like, you're asking the audience to blindly root against the Goliaths? But that's another topic in itself, because it is one of the reasons why David vs Goliath is not a top ten season for me regarding real Survivor), the cast, it was pretty fun to write.

So anyway, tell me what you all think and I'll see you in the next chapter where we go over Mexico... *Insert 'Luigi wins by doing absolutely nothing' memes here*