Survivor: Tocantins – Why Stephen Lost

Stephen shared a brain with J.T. for almost the entire game, joining him in their strategy and planning, making almost every move together. But when it came time for the vote, he didn’t lose by a small margin of, say, three votes to four – he didn’t get even a single vote! What happened? Why did Stephen lose?

Normally, we just address why a player lost in this column, not necessarily why they lost by a certain margin. But a unanimous decision deserves a bit more attention, so we’ll discuss that as well as our usual questions as we go through What Tocantins Survivors Should Have Learned for the last time in light of a loss (we still have to look at why J.T. won, of course, but we’ll be looking at that from the other viewpoint).

Stephen certainly knew, understood, and could handle the first rule, which speaks to the overarching importance of scheming and plotting. He formed an alliance on Day 2 that took him all the way to the end. Along the way, he was part of other alliances, such as his tight bond with Taj and his participation in the Exile alliance, plus the Warrior alliance and whatever other ones might have popped up along the way. We saw him helping with or, indeed, making a number of the decisions that we implemented by him and J.T. together. And they made the right moves along the way to deal with the obstacles that faced them. I have no complaints with Stephen in terms of the first rule.

For the second, he also did well. I didn’t feel he schemed and plotted too much – indeed, people voted for J.T., who was his partner in voting them all out. The reason they failed to vote for Stephen had nothing to do with him being seen as more of a backstabber than J.T. If anything, it was quite the opposite, as Debbie told me she (and presumably the others) didn’t give Stephen enough credit for the scheming and plotting he did, which they only later saw on television.

Stephen might have been able to squeeze one vote out, from Taj, if he had not backstabbed her in the way he did. But he probably didn’t figure she’d hold it against him more than she did against J.T. And with all the blindsiding, why change at that point?

The third rule says players need to be flexible rather than just following one alliance the whole way through. As it turned out, Stephen did stick to his main alliance, but he also had the others mentioned above along the way. That gave him flexibility. If things hadn’t gone a certain way, he could have switched paths. He didn’t need to, but he was smart to have the options that he had.

He also did well in terms of the fourth rule, in that he didn’t allow himself to be controlled by his emotions. We saw the whole way that when somebody needed to be voted out, he and J.T. made the best strategic decision and got rid of them. That even went for the most difficult vote, getting rid of Taj.

Plus, from what we saw, it did look like Stephen would have voted out J.T. if he had won the final immunity challenge. It obviously tore him apart to even think about having to make that decision, but in the end, he probably would have done it. He never had the opportunity to do so, though.

He did, however, have the chance to put aside emotion in front of the jury – and he failed. I believe one of his problems in being unable to argue well against J.T. was that he didn’t want to say anything to hurt his friend. Even when Erinn asked him for a reason not to vote for J.T., he couldn’t give her a good answer (and she had planned to vote for Stephen until that point!). He even said at one point that their friendship was worth more than winning. Well, I certainly hope so, because he didn’t win, in part due to feelings like that!

The fifth rule tells players they need to pretend to be nice. Again, Stephen had this covered. Indeed, the person he probably least expected to bond with became his friend for life and ally for the whole game. Plus, Stephen stayed out of the drama that kept cropping up around camp, just having his secretive discussions rather than the big pontificating ones we saw from the likes of Coach, Debbie, and Sierra.

Stephen also managed to be a strong player while somehow not being viewed as too big a threat, in keeping with the sixth rule. We heard all about how nobody thought to vote out J.T., but the same was true of Stephen – at least until final three time. He really should have been targeted by Taj and Erinn when they have the vote for who would go to the final three, but it apparently never occurred to Taj to do that.

He did almost manage to not make it in front of the jury due to this rule, as J.T. certainly thought Stephen was more of a threat to win than Erinn was. I wasn’t sure, and am still not convinced, and the unanimous pro-J.T. vote would seem to support me, but the fact is that J.T. believed it and that’s what counted.