Every remaining castaway on Survivor season 44, ranked

Who's most likely to come out on top in the CBS reality competition?

By Taylor Lomax | April 25, 2023 | 4:00pm

TV Features Survivor

Every remaining castaway on Survivor season 44, ranked

Carolyn Wiger, Heidi Lagares-Greenblatt, Kane Fritzler, Danny Massa, and Frannie Marin Photo: Robert Voets/CBS

With last week’s “Don’t Get Cocky, Kid” featuring a vote for the entire merged Va Va tribe—following a now-standard/still-baffling fake-out unification and that split-immunity challenge—we have finally reached the individual portion of Survivor’s 44th season. And thank god for that. The merge is the real meat of a Survivor season as the individual storylines of the castaways come into focus, setting the stage for the heroic narratives that define the show’s best seasons. After a few weeks of edging audiences through endless advantage quasi-merge limbo, it’s satisfying how much mileage last week’s episode gets from those exact stories.

This is also the point where the general arc of the game becomes clearer. Survivor is, as Jeff Probst is so keen to remind us, a social experiment, inherently chameleonic based on the particular dynamics of its cast. And luckily, this game is shaping up to be an especially fun one, largely due to the wide variety of personalities on display this go-around. We haven’t had this much fun watching first-time players since … Cagayan probably? In any case, this all has us wondering: Who will walk away as the winner when the season closes? Here are our power rankings, from least to most likely to come out on top.

9. Kane Fritzler

It’s never a good sign when you get a confessional like Kane’s early in an episode: “If it’s not a Ratu member winning this game, we messed that up.” Such statements making the final edit are pretty much always the setup for an episode-long joke with its punchline coming at Tribal. And what do you know: Brandon, part of Kane’s Ratu alliance, went home the same episode. Kane’s spot is a particularly damning one. Not only is he clearly out of the loop on an objective level, the show makes it a point to let you know just how clueless he is. It would have been too on-the nose—borderline cruel, even—for him to get sent home in the same episode that used him as the focal point for its dramatic irony. But this gaffe is the most prominent Kane has been in weeks. And we’d be shocked if he lasts much longer.

8. Jaime Lynn Ruiz

It’s perhaps telling that we had to consult the Survivor Wiki for details on Jaime. She seems like an absolutely lovely person, and she’ll go down in history forever as the first (and still, only) contestant to successfully play the Shot in the Dark advantage. That said, this seems to be the only thing the show is comfortable letting us know about Jaime. She might make it a while longer as she’s likely not someone the others perceive as a threat. But barring an Erika-esque rise in the endgame—and this season feels much better-produced than 41, to be clear—we don’t see a shot at Sole Survivor for her.

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7. Lauren Harpe

Let’s continue to mark off the original Ratu tribe one by one, shall we? Lauren, especially coming off her individual immunity win, is the strongest remaining member of the group. She’s more dominant in the edit, too, which is a plus, even if her tribal allegiance renders her a bit of a non-starter in the long run. Still, she’s managed to hold onto her banked vote for a significant chunk of the season now, which is no easy feat.

6. Heidi-Lagares Greenblatt

If you’d asked us last week, we would have probably said that Heidi was the next to go. Between her general paranoia and botched control-the-vote advantage play, episode seven was a pretty poor showing for her. However, she proved us wrong and then some last week, maneuvering her way into a comfortable position on the right side of the vote. We don’t see anything particularly dominant in her future, but that shift alone should buy her a good bit of time.

5. Danny Massa

Yes, Danny successfully played an idol last week. However, said idol play was also part of a larger effort to render him vulnerable by flushing his idol out of the game. Which puts Danny pretty squarely in the middle, as he successfully outplayed around half the cast. All is not lost for Danny, of course, but we’d be shocked if the power alliance wants to keep him around much longer.

4. Frannie Marin

This was always going to be a tough week for Frannie. Up until last week, her game has largely been tied to Matt’s, pretty much always to her detriment. (Sorry, Matt, you seem lovely. We’re just not sure Survivor is your thing.) So obviously she’s going to be an immediate target. But she also got to come into her own last week and smartly aligned herself with Soka in her moment of vulnerability. Frannie is clearly intelligent, and it genuinely seems like people want to keep her around. Let’s hope she doesn’t get kicked to the curb anytime soon.

3. Yamil “Yam Yam” Arocho

It’s easy to downplay Yam Yam because of all the personality and whimsy he exudes, but he’s playing a strong social game. More prevalent personalities like his tend to be cannon fodder, especially as the game shifts toward the individual. But he’s managed to hold on at every turn, having attended the most Tribal Councils of anyone in the game at five. Like Frannie, too, he’s someone people seem keen to keep around and the type of player who could smoothly make his way to a seat at the Final Tribal Council.

2. Carolyn Wiger

She’s not quite our pick to win, but Carolyn is easily the best thing that has happened to Survivor this side of Tony Vlachos. She feels like an amalgamation of everything we’ve loved about standout players in the past. Take Maryanne Oketch’s raw charisma, Parvati Shallow’s social prowess, and Debbie Warner’s unfettered zaniness, and you end up somewhere around Carolyn. She exemplifies the rare intersection between good TV and gameplay that serves as a hallmark for success in the series (and which brought Maryanne a win just two seasons ago).

1. Carson Garrett

A brilliant student of Survivor and an obvious threat since day one, it’s incredible just how much power Carson continues to have in the game. This is the same man, we remind you, who took time off from studying Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech to go on Survivor, a show he has studied meticulously and from which he 3D printed models of common puzzles for practice. Rather than fear or target Carson, however, this cast is eager to … play with him? Everyone wants to be allies with this man, and I’m sure seeing the final edit on TV has made it just as clear for the players as it is for us at home that he’s so obviously on top of this whole thing. If he doesn’t at least make it to the Final Tribal Council, we’ll be shocked. (And may whoever masterminded his elimination win.)