By Kim
The episode opens with an extended recap of the season. The guys were cocky. The women tried to cooperate but couldn't win any challenges. Then the women turned it around and the men imploded, helped along by Colton's casual racism and classism. Then Colton got medically evacuated and the men got picked off one-by-one (except Tarzan). And now it's Alicia and Christina versus Chelsea and Sabrina, and Kim is in the middle.
The morning after Tarzan leaves, Kim and Sabrina talk about their endgame. Kim floats the idea of dumping Chelsea and taking Christina to the finals. Sabrina is shocked (really?).
Immunity Challenge: Untie ropes to open a gate and then run across a balance beam maze without falling off. Run across a rope net and gather puzzle pieces. The puzzle, when assembled, gives clues to three numbers. Run up a ladder and use the numbers to raise a flag and win. It's the typical endgame immunity challenge. Kim is the first to make an attempt at the combination, but she gets the numbers wrong. Alicia also makes an attempt and gets it wrong. Chelsea also tries and fails. Finally, Kim gets the right numbers in the right order and wins. That was pretty intense.
Kim gets it set up so that Alicia and Christina are voting for Chelsea and Chelsea and Sabrina are voting for Alicia. So Kim will be the deciding vote. The complicating factor is, since Kim has immunity, Chelsea wants her Idol. At Tribal Council, Kim gives a big speech about how she's tried to play the game with her head, but her heart gets in the way. Everyone seems to know that Kim is the deciding vote, including Probst. Chelsea tells her that her vote tonight could earn her respect from the jury. Nobody plays an Immunity Idol. And then Kim votes out Alicia. Holy shit. I did not see that coming. I was thinking it would be funny if Kim voted for Christina and let Alicia and Chelsea draw rocks.
Then they do the walk of the Dead Survivors.
The final immunity challenge involves using a pole to move a bowl through a metal structure and then stacking the bowls on top of the structure. BUT, the structure is on a spring, so hitting it makes it wobble and the bowls could potentially fall. The first person to stack ten bowls wins. Despite a challenge from Christina, Kim wins immunity AGAIN. She really deserves to win this thing.
Then they tell Christina that she's going home and she's like, "Okay." At Tribal Council, Probst can't figure out why Christina would just roll over. Also, Christina doesn't seem to understand the game, since she thinks it's about who deserves to go to the finals, and not convincing people that they could beat you if they take you. All Christina had to say was, "You know you can beat me. No one on the jury likes me. You won't beat the other two." So Christina is voted out. She was such a waste of a slot.
Finally, it's time for the final jury. Chelsea says in her speech that she was partners with Kim all along, but she checked her emotions at the merge, so some people might have seen her as cold or aloof as a result. Kim says that she loves the game and she does see it as a game, and despite the friendships she made, she had to prioritize her family and the help that she could give them over the people on the island. Sabrina says that she tried to play the middle and not go to extremes: she didn't win challenges and she didn't engage is heavy strategizing. She adds that she got laid off two weeks before the game started, so she needs to win.
I will detail the jury questions in detail in the full recap, but as with every season, they're pretty dumb. Jonas is funny. Tarzan is weird/sentimental. Hardly anyone asks questions; they mostly just give speeches. Kat wears way too much makeup and explains that she was really angry with the finalists at first, but she has had health issues including open-heart surgeries, and it's shown her that it's not worth holding onto anger because life's too short. She begs the jury not to vote out of anger. Wow. I did not expect that.
Everyone votes. The ones we see are Troy for Sabrina and Kat for Kim. Then we head to the reunion where we find out that Kim won. Sabrina got two votes and Chelsea got none.