Survivor

With an impressive social game all season, Mike Turner is in the running to win $1 million as a finalist on 'Survivor'.

Mike admittedly has the “gift of gab” and loves to talk. “I come from the projects, not a very good home life, and I didn’t know how to be a father,” he admitted. “Life was always about surviving,” he told Parade. “I come from a background where we didn’t have any money or anything, and we weren’t looked upon as the echelon of our town.

Season 42 of Survivor comes to end with the season finale and a winner crowned today.

Survivor has been on the air since 2000 and has reached the season finale of season 42 today. This season has seen 12 episodes from Mamanuca Islands, Fiji, where an initial group of 18 castaways have spent 26 days on the island trying to survive. The season finale of season 42 of Survivor is all set, with everything coming down to this final show to see who will be the winner:

The season 42 finale of Survivor is set to premiere Wednesday, May 25 on CBS. Here is how you can catch the action for those who have cut the cord.

They must survive in order to win the million dollar prize. While the season finale of Survivor is set to premiere on CBS May 25, fans can watch the show on Fubo TV and Paramount+. For those who have cut the cord, here is how to tune in to the season finale and catch up on previous episodes.

See the results of our 'Survivor' 42 winner poll ahead of the three-hour finale.

The point of the game isn’t just to win physical challenges. While he’s undoubtedly one of the best physical players Survivor has seen, he’s not a savvy strategist. “We designed this specifically to give us a new game to play, and we believe there are still a lot of layers in this new game that we haven’t even begun to explore.” As part of the poll, we broke down each players’ highlights of the season, pointing out their strengths and most impressive feats. The Survivor Season 42 finale airs Wednesday, May 25 on CBS, and the three-hour episode will mimic the Season 41 finale. We asked Survivor fans who should win Season 42, and the results are in.

When the season finale of “Survivor” concludes Wednesday night, will Jonathan Young of Gulf Shores be standing tall as the winner?

If you’re in the Final Five on “Survivor” you don’t just want to be in the Final Three -- you want to be in there with two people the jury will like less than you. In a season with no real bad guys, the finale has no heroes-versus-villains overtones. The immunity winner made it; the other two were determined partly by the immunity winner, who got to pick a friend, and partly by a fire-making challenge. The thinking seemed to be that while Jonathan was clearly a rival, he was a rival who’d be easy to get rid of later, after more dangerous people were handled. For another, he’s made it to the finale -- and for a longtime student of the game, someone who has aspired to this since he competed in the show “Endurance” at age 14, that’s a big accomplishment. He has spent years working on Alabama’s beaches and playing in the Gulf of Mexico, so running on sand and swimming in a heavy surf came naturally to him.

It's time to crown the champion of “Survivor” season 42 on tonight's finale, May 25, at 8 p.m. Eastern on CBS. The final episode is titled “It Comes Down to ...

Paramount+ offers a free 7-day trial to new subscribers. FuboTV has a free trial for new subscribers. After returning to camp, Omar celebrated his blindside of Drea and looked for his next target while Mike tried to put the target on Omar’s back.

And now five players — Mike Turner, Maryanne Oketch, Romeo Escobar, Jonathan Young, and Lindsay Dolashewich — are each on the verge of winning a million dollars ...

I was hoping that I would be able to get some of my clothes dry, but the rain never let up and we were unable to get a fire going. JONATHAN YOUNG: I would have to say out of the six on the jury, Omar would be the biggest threat to win the game. LINDSAY DOLASHEWICH: The lowest moment I had in the game was losing the Do or Die challenge. MIKE TURNER: The lowest moment in the game for me was when it had rained for 3 straight days and was very cold and we had to go perform at an immunity challenge. There was non-stop rain on the island, and all of my clothes were wet, and I had about 30 minutes of sleep that night. At this point in the game, I did not get a true opportunity to bond with Rocks. The two of us went out into the ocean searching for clams, and we had to have gone out at least 100 yards out into the ocean. I was proud of myself for continuing to fight, and I was proud of myself for thinking of a move that ended up being successful and looked at as a great power move. Rocks tricked me into picking up the second clam and right as I took it out of the water and looked at it, it spit right in my eye! The first was every moment that I spent with Tori! Tori was my best friend on that island, and we would always crack laughs, and reference vines! Mike, Maryanne, and I decided to put two votes on Romeo in case Lindsay played her idol for Omar. I used the knowledge not only of the idol nullifier, but of all the advantages that each player had, to make the move to get Omar voted out. I knew even if we had been decimated in challenges, I would have still been okay and made it to the merge. For pre-merge, it was definitely running Ika and being the only member of the tribe to never be in danger of being voted out.

The final four is a pivotal moment for new-era Survivor castaways. It is the penultimate tribal council, which determines which contestants get to make their ...

The Survivor 42 finale airs this week, and two of the remaining castaways will battle it out in a fire-making challenge for a spot at the final tribal council. The fire-making challenge gives the castaways a final chance to take their fates in the game into their own hands, and earn spots at the final tribal council. The fire-making challenge gives the biggest perceived threat a chance to make it into the final tribal council, without a unanimous vote-out at the final four if they didn't win the immunity challenge. Now, there is no vote, and the castaway who wins the final immunity challenge decides who will join them at the final tribal council. It is the penultimate tribal council, which determines which contestants get to make their cases to the jury for a shot at the million dollar prize and Sole Survivor title. The reality hit Survivor is full of twists and turns, and in season 35, the show introduced one of the most controversial and exciting twists: the final four fire-making challenge.

Warning: This article contains spoilers about Wednesday's series finale of Survivor 42. Five people — Lindsay Dolashewich, Romeo Escobar, Maryanne Oketch, ...

Stay tuned for plenty of Survivor 42 finale coverage, including our full episode recap and interviews with the final five. He chose Maryanne, which meant the island's two best fire-makers in Mike and Jonathan would have to face off against each other, with one moving on to the final three and the other to the jury. Maryanne makes the second straight Canadian woman of color to win Survivor after Erika Casupanan was crowned the champion of Survivor 41.

'Survivor 42' finale: Who became the series' latest Sole Survivor and how did it all go down? Find out in our recap.

She then says she kept the season’s only secret, and pulls out the merge idol for all to see, which seems to impress the jury. Mike is, indeed, the target, and Romeo makes it official: Maryanne is in the Final 3, and Mike and Jonathan are battling it out in fire. From there, she reeled it in and was able to make more strategic plays like the one to boot Omar. The challenge begins, and Mike is first to get a flame. Jonathan and Lindsay both retrieve all of their bags, and are the first two to start the puzzle. I don’t love to pout, but this semi-recent change to Survivor irks me beyond belief.) The general consensus: Maryanne and Romeo do not want Mike sitting in the finals with them. He drops his second ball and becomes the first person out of this challenge. Lindsay then makes a heartfelt plea to Mike, who once said he’d love to see her get to the end. She rips the package open and it says she’ll have a “slight advantage” in the immunity challenge. Lindsay is the only person to crack the code: “Good fortune is tucked in the toes of the sleeping giant.” She treks all over the island until she finally figures out what the “toes” are and finds the game’s final goodie. The next morning, Mike tells Romeo they need Lindsay out, only to then tell Lindsay that he’d be willing to use his idol on her. Lindsay demands to know why she was left out of the vote, but since she voted for Jonathan, he wants no part of their “alliance” anymore.

Survivor 42 had its jam-packed finale. Spoiler alert: Find out which contestant won the season and who was eliminated.

Then the finalists and jury came together to debrief about the season. Though she found a clutch challenge advantage, she lost out at safety by one puzzle piece to Mike. Not giving up, she attempted to pitch herself to the idol holders to protect her. In the last two days, he attempted to take the game by the reins, making a fake idol and winning the final Immunity Challenge. But it was unfortunately too little too late in the eyes of the jury, who shut him out. Through that she was able to craft an unassuming perception, until it was the right time to strike. Romeo had two very different games, going from the top premerge to the bottom postmerge. It’s been a season that some players called “unpredictable” and “apocalyptic.” But all good things must come to an end.

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Survivor Season 42, Episode 13 finale, “It Comes Down to This.”] After 26 days and 13 episodes, ...

As for Romeo, Mike, and Maryanne, they look back on their game and look forward to the future. And he made it all the way to the end with pride. The first vote goes to Mike, the second two to Maryanne. The rest of the votes go to… And she says the merge made her realize her mistakes and changed everything. “Goliath” says the famous elimination line as Jeff snuffs out his flame, and then tells Mike, Romeo, and Maryanne it’s all love. As Romeo basks in his glory, Mike asks him to chat about the fire challenge. Maryanne is out next, and the mental exhaustion on her and Mike’s faces are clear. To begin, the players run over the net and make the round to their bags. Earlier in the finale, Mike implied he may use it for Lindsay in conversation with her, but he also tells Jonathan he’ll protect him. Through tears, he says, “My kids are gonna be proud.” Mike chooses Jonathan to join him in the food reward, and Jeff says no when he asks to bring one more. While Mike and Jonathan enjoy their meal, Maryanne, Lindsay, and Romeo talk about the offers Mike has made with his idol. Lindsay and Jonathan immediately get into it, with Lindsay telling Jonathan she feels betrayed because he didn’t tell her to vote for Omar. Meanwhile, Lindsay voted for Jonathan, and he calls her out for that.

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.

More than the others, she approached the jury session as if it was a challenge, and she won it. He picked Maryanne, sending Mike and Jonathan to the fire-making challenge. As the winner, Mike got to take a friend to dinner. As the players scrambled through an obstacle course to secure pieces for a puzzle they had to assemble, Jonathan and Lindsay led. Lindsay went into the first one feeling as if she was under the gun, and she had secured a slight advantage. 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.

At long last, the finale of Season 42 is upon us, with the Final 5 castaways competing for the title of Sole Survivor.

10:02 p.m. – At the end, Romeo got emotional because he never wanted to play the game he played but it was what was dealt to him and so he did what he had to do in the position he was put in by other people and that his story is about not giving up. At that point Mike acknowledged that maybe he didn’t play with as much integrity as he thought he was and so he owned exactly what a lot of them wanted him to own. 9:30 p.m. – In the fire making challenge, Mike was the first to get a flame in his coconut husk and as he was building it up Jonathan got his flame. Mike continued to add husk and sticks in order to raise the flame of the fire while Jonathan remained organized in his structure-building. 9:50 p.m. – Omar opened the final tribal council by saying that there are many possibilities to selecting a winner and told the finalists that the jury is looking for the best argument about the survival of the fittest. 8:38 p.m. – Upon his return, Lindsay talked to Mike about his sense of honor and loyalty in the game and appealed to that sensibility while asking for him to play his idol for her. Mike made a big public show of “knowing” that he’s the biggest target and that he thinks Romeo will put him against Jonathan because Jonathan is the best at building fire and can beat Mike. Romeo said that his decision comes down to his gut, but it wasn’t an easy decision. Back at camp, Mike was having the rest of them work together in order to beat Lindsay to the advantage, but Maryanne wanted Lindsay to find it so she “sandbagged” that attempt to solve it as a group so that Lindsay would have more time. 9:17 p.m. – Maryanne thought that Romeo would bring her to the end and so she got to work helping Jonathan with tips on making fire. Meanwhile, Maryanne told Lindsay that she wants to go to final three with her and that Mike told her she’d give her his idol at final five. Having already built the outer rim of the circular puzzle, Mike got stuck on one piece in the middle, but managed to get it in and keep his lead as Lindsay ran into the same problem. Later, Mike told Lindsay that he wants to keep her around and that if he wins immunity he might give her his idol to play.

The finale provides a feel-good ending to a stellar season of Survivor. A recap of 'Survivor,' season 42, episode 13, “It Comes Down to This.”

She says she took out Omar with the assurance that Mike would use his idol on her at five — and if he didn’t, she had her own idol as a failsafe. Once Lindsay was out, she had promises from both Mike and Romeo to take her to the end and knew that Jonathan would want Mike out as a big move on his resume. But she ultimately made the selfish move, giving herself the chance to lose or win on her own merit. If Mike plays his idol for her, she could use her secret idol to save Lindsay and blindside Jonathan. Not only would she be protecting a friend, but she’d be making a flashy move in front of the jury. Romeo wins the season’s final challenge and earns the power to decide who sits next to him and who has to fight it out in fire-making. He had to scrape by, constantly making new alliances and even crafting a fake idol at the final five to increase his odds of making it one more vote. However, he never gave up, and that perseverance paid off at the final four when he won the most important immunity challenge of the season. However, Mike tells her that he already promised Maryanne that he’d play the idol for her during the discussion of the Omar vote. With a secret idol in her back pocket and assurances from Mike that he would play his idol for her at the final four, Maryanne has the opportunity to make a monumental move that she could claim entirely for her own. As I said last week, making a move is all about timing — there’s no point in just making a big move for the sake of it. She earns the game’s final advantage, giving her a head start in the challenge. But her goal was to show that you can be weird and a winner, proving that you can succeed without compromising who you are.

The finale began with the five surviving contestants, Lindsay Dolashewich, Romeo Escobar, Maryanne Oketch, Mike Turner, and Jonathan Young, competing for the ...

And figuring out that there's more in life than just Survivor was very helpful. She said: "The thing that I'm really actually thankful for is because I had to sit on it for 11 months. Like, when I came back from Survivor, I was an emotional wreck crying every day, just sleeping on the floor, just a mess having that time to reintegrate into regular life, and then also to see what's next? She reflected: "It's so wild that it's exactly almost 20 years since a Black woman won, and I'm the second one to do so. I really had time to go and reflect. Romeo, I believe, would have been the first LGBTQ male winner since season 15.

With seven votes, 24-year-old seminary student Maryanne Oketch was crowned the winner, beating out firefighter Mike Turner and pageant coach Romeo Escobar, who ...

Mike Turner, a 58-year-old retired firefighter from Hoboken, NJ, talks with Parade.com about his second-place finish in Survivor 42.

It was so believable because that was the way it was going. But I also wanted to make sure that my kids and my wife were proud of me. I did feel Jonathan was the guy that was going to vote for me. And I saw that in Jonathan was a very good heart, a very good soul. So I threw it out, and they said yes, and it was great. And he says, “I want to apologize for telling you to vote for Lydia,” because he had told me to vote for Lydia. I went, “Why would you do that to me? Hai has Lydia and he’s going to rally Daniel and Chanelle for him.” And the first thing I hear him say back at camp is, “I need to go because I really do need to talk to Mike. I’m like, “Oh, crap, why do you want to talk to me?” (Laughs.) We go down to the beach. The funny thing is when I saw Jonathan, obviously, Jonathan is a guy that I would look at when I was younger. I relate it to when you’re in a dirty room and don’t know the room is dirty until you step outside and look. So going into the merge, I felt I could connect with him because he was the type of guy that I might hang out with and goof around with. And the truth is I probably didn’t come across in a way that I could make them understand that it was all a game. And I did realize I burned some of the jury members throughout the game.

Instead, Jonathan went over to the jury, giving Mike his only vote against eventual winner Maryanne Oketch. How would Jonathan have done had it made it to the ...

Now that you've seen what this show is about and what it does to you physically going out there and not eating for 26 days, would you do it again? It was disappointing, but there's a place in Survivor that you reach and all you can do is all you can do. I liked the Taku memories, honestly, when we all got to work together. I got to fight the good fight that I wanted. What's the biggest memory that you take out of this experience? I think that going to the jury and them asking me questions and answering questions will be great. Maryanne mentioned in the finale that you weren't treating the women on the tribe well. Man, I hate that they felt that way. The respect is due to Mr. Jeff. I got to give him respect because I've been watching him for years and he's worked hard. I went into it going like, "I'm going to leave this island on empty. Were you upset that whole piece of the puzzle never made it to air? And I guess it just didn't quite fit the bill.

Jonathan Young, a 29-year-old beach service company owner from Gulf Shores, AL, talks with Parade.com about last night's elimination from Survivor 42's ...

As soon as that Tribal was over, I went and talked to Drea. Drea and I were fine. Then Mike and I go to Maryanne and talk about how Omar needs to go and is not being honest. But I knew that Drea was hardcore, and she was very smart. I thought that I had a good shot because of how I played. I knew that I was going to be in trouble when the merge happened. I knew that it wasn’t helping that much. And once the merge happened, I tried to dumb down everything that I did. I knew that I definitely had to do something differently. And I knew that there weren’t many people that could provide like I could. I knew that I was going to have a massive target on my back. Every step that I took, I knew people would know that I was taking a step. I want to give him a shot to convince me.

Survivor 42 ended after Lindsay, Jonathan, Maryanne, Mike, and Romeo faced two challenges and then the jury, and ended the season with a winner as ...

With Romeo deciding who made fire, he realized that he’d be sitting next to “the two most likable people in the final three” if Mike and Maryanne were there. “Lots of kids watching could do this,” Probst said, jabbing the knife into Maryanne and pandering to kids since he can’t do that during live reunions any more. “I want it more than a million dollars.” She added, “Sadness doesn’t take you anywhere. This momentarily freaked out the jury, but it ultimately fell flatter than his game as he said, “Jeff, I will not be playing this for myself because it’s a fake idol that I made at camp,” and threw it in the fire. “I want it more than a million dollars, Jeff,” she said, crying. “I was so, so close to playing my idol,” Maryanne told Lindsay and the jury about the final-five vote. The most-interesting part was a discussion of whether to keep good players (Lindsay) versus keeping goats around (Romeo and Jonathan). Jeff Probst read that as “you being on Survivor could bring your family back.” Cue “something” from the producers: an advantage in the immunity challenge, solved with a riddle. From there, we went directly to the final immunity challenge, which was another familiar one: balls on metal tracks. One of the benefits of more-diverse casting is that we get to see the diversity of people within groups. Romeo did make an interesting and emotional case about how he fought to survive from the bottom of the pack, always getting votes as the back-up.

With hidden idols, shifting alliances, and tough challenges, the finale had unexpected moments but was ultimately a satisfying cap to the season.

That's what Survivor is about at the end of the day: seeing how people react to the most extreme situations, and how they can push themselves to grow even in an environment as unfamiliar as this game. The Jury is left to vote, and just like Season 41, Jeff reads the final votes at that Tribal Council instead of waiting for the live reunion. She even outlines how the move to take out Omar and keeping her idol instead of giving it to Lindsay was what got her to the end, as every choice she made was an intentional move to make it as far in the game as she could. He now has to choose who to take with him to the end and who is going to compete in the fire-making competition. He is faced with the dilemma of deciding whether he wants to play the idol he still has in his pocket for Jonathan, Maryanne, or Lindsay, because he gave his word to so many people that he would save them. The episode starts with one of those threads, namely, the growing animosity between Jonathan and Lindsay. Lindsay feels that Jonathan is acting too righteous and condescending, and she's starting to worry that if she doesn't win the next Immunity Challenge, they'll send her home, and she's not ready to go out like that yet.