On his way to the finale of “Survivor’s” 42nd season, Jonathan Young was called “a beast” more than once. He got referred to as Goliath, Thor and Aquaman.
You know what he never got called? The human torch.
There’s no point in beating around the bush: Jonathan, a competitor from Gulf Shores, made it to the Final Four but no further, and it came down to a firemaking challenge between himself and an actual (retired) fireman, Mike Turner. With everything on the line, Jonathan did a very respectable job of starting a fire with a knife, a stick of magnesium and some tufts of coconut fiber. But Mike got his going a little faster, built it a little higher and burned through a string sooner, securing his spot in the Final Three.
To questioning from host Jeff Probst, Jonathan said: “You know what, Jeff, I was thinking when I got here, if I lose then I was meant to lose. I gave it what I had. Mike’s just, he beat me. Yeah. It’s that simple.”
“You lasted 25 of 26 days,” said Probst. “You went almost as far as you could go.”
Probst granted Jonathan the honor of saying the magic phrase for himself, as his torch was snuffed: “The tribe has spoken,” Jonathan intoned.
Season 42 followed an accelerated timetable used in Season 41, but it was all new to the participants because they’d been sequestered before Season 41 aired. The five who came into the finale were Jonathan, Mike, Maryanne Oketch, Lindsay Dolashewich and Romeo Escobar.
Two challenges were ahead, and the people who’d dominated the immunity challenges through the season — Jonathan and Lindsay — didn’t win either of them. Lindsay went into the first one feeling as if she was under the gun, and she had secured a slight advantage. It wasn’t quite enough.
As the players scrambled through an obstacle course to secure pieces for a puzzle they had to assemble, Jonathan and Lindsay led. But when it came to actually putting the pieces together, Mike came from behind. It wasn’t a three-way race: As Mike and Lindsay came down to a nail-biting finish, Jonathan simply stood watching, looking for all the world like he’d rather give Mike a hand than compete for himself.
As the winner, Mike got to take a friend to dinner. He picked Jonathan, on the grounds that the big guy from Alabama been suffering the most from the lack of food. Mike estimated that Jonathan had dropped from 250 pounds to 210 over the course of less than four weeks. “Dude, you’ve been weak,” he said.
Lindsay knew the writing was on the wall, and despite her best efforts to sway votes, out she went. There was no mystery about it the reason. “She is an absolute beast,” said Jonathan. “She’s somebody that you don’t want to be sitting by in the Final 3.”
The challenge in the next round was neither very physical, nor was it a puzzle: Competitors had to drop balls into a metal track with two exits, catch the balls at the end and feed them back in, gradually increasing the number of balls in play. It was all about hand-eye coordination and timing. Mike was the first to let a ball hit the ground, followed by Maryanne. Then Jonathan missed a catch, handing victory to Romeo, who hadn’t won a challenge all season.
That didn’t just mean Romeo went to the Final 3: He got to take along a friend. He picked Maryanne, sending Mike and Jonathan to the fire-making challenge.
The Final 3 made their cases to the jury of ejected players. This was partly tedious, with lots of jibber-jabber about integrity and honesty and lots of whining from people who felt they’d been lied to. As if they didn’t all know going in that deception and betrayal are key elements of the game.
Parts of it were illuminating, such as a speech from Romeo about how his appearance on the show had freed him to live his life as a gay man, without feeling he needed to hide it from family. Maryanne shone, laying out for the jury how detailed her plan had been, how she had carried it out, and what had driven her.
More than the others, she approached the jury session as if it was a challenge, and she won it. By the time Probst had counted out six votes, she had five — and the victory.
There’s been speculation that Jonathan is the kind of eye-catching player who might return in a later all-star season. For anyone feeling that way, Jonathan was shown making an intriguing comment after his ouster.
“If I get the chance, you better believe that I’m going to be right back out there,” he said. “Thank you God, thank you ‘Survivor,’ thank you for the opportunity.”
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