The hottest news following the Survivor finale is sparking heated debate among fans. The 50th season has just concluded, but the post-show drama continues to erupt.

I wrote a version of this last week, so forgive me for shamelessly plagiarizing myself, but as I was sitting on the sand tucked below the row of cameras waiting for Jeff Probst to call in the barge on day 1 of Survivor 50, I asked myself a seemingly simple question. Who among this supersized group of 24 combatants would be the most storybook winner for this epic, anniversary season? Two names immediately sprang to mind.

One was Cirie Fields. Cirie had been so close so many times and was taken out in unusually harsh and cruel ways. She lost a final four tiebreaker at fire on Panama. She would have won Micronesia, making it all the way to the final three… not realizing that because of all the evacuations, producers went down to a final two instead. Then she was eliminated on Game Changers without a single vote cast against her because she was the only person without an idol, immunity, or advantage. She is arguably the most popular Survivor player ever and was long overdue for her crowning glory. Everyone in America was pulling for her.

The other name was Jenna Lewis-Dougherty, simply because having a season 1 player who was there on day 1 of the entire franchise come back after the longest time ever between seasons (42!) and win would have been incredible. Those were the two.

But I have to say… Aubry Bracco is not too far off. I’m not going to bore you by reciting her résumé because she already did it herself many times over the course of the season. Aubry has been very open and honest about the turmoil she experienced after her crushing Kaoh Rong loss to Michele Fitzgerald, so to watch her come back and avenge that defeat — and earn twice the money in doing so — was pretty awesome.

Survivor has given Aubry so much (even before the money!), but it also at times took a huge emotional toll on her, starting with that day 2 panic attack her first time out. As if that was not bad enough, she also had to pretend to be excited to do Ron Clark’s Kama dance on Edge of Extinction, and the secondhand embarrassment I felt for her in that moment was almost more than the firsthand embarrassment I feel for myself every time I am interviewing a reality TV contestant who is half my age.

I don’t get not being excited about an Aubry win. The fact that she was even on this season was so unlikely, which I told her two days before the game began. She then had a rough first few days — clearly on the outs with her original tribe and taking the olive branch extended by Genevieve and snapping it right in front of cameras. But she bided her time and then bobbed and weaved in between alliances. She struck when Ozzy gave her an opening. She won the final immunity challenge to save herself yet again (although would anyone have lost to Rizo at fire at that point?).

Look, I’m not going to sit here and tell you Aubry should beat Todd Herzog or Parvati Shallow in our Best Survivor Winner Ever Backet, but this is a win worth applauding and celebrating. I heard a lot of chatter this past week with people being bummed about the final five heading into the finale, and I get that losing Cirie and Rick last week was a double shot of brutality, but it’s not like we were left with scraps.

Aubry is a certified gamer, Tiffany has proved time and time again to be wildly entertaining when we are allowed to see her, and Rizo is a fantastic and fascinating character in that he is extremely good at this game except for two key elements: making fire, and getting his fellow tribemates to realize how good he actually is.

I never in a million, billion, trillion years thought I would write the next few words that are about to be typed on my laptop, but, objectively, Jonathan Young played a very good and aggressive game of Survivor. Does he need to cut down on yelling “YES! YES! YES!” at the top of his lungs every time he wins something? Yes. Does that mean he should also stop doing the worm after he wins an immunity challenge? No. Am I worried that he will crush me like a bug if I write something not so nice about him? Maybe.

I will admit to rolling my inner eyes when Jonathan told me before the game that Boston Rob had shared some tips and tricks with him that he would put into play, figuring we would just see the same ol,’ same ol’, but the guy did play a much more active game. Even if you are not a fan of the man, that is worth appreciating.

And then there is Joe. This has to hurt. Just an absolute gut punch. He said he was embarrassed by Kyle and Kamilla when he made it all the way to the end of Survivor 48 and only received a single vote. He comes back a year later, gets all the way to the end again, and then this. Joe is an extremely proud man who has been given many incredible gifts lately — including a reconciliation with his wife and a job from Tyler Perry — but I know him well enough to know that having to go through this again and be rejected by a jury of his peers was not on his to-do list.

Every time I have talked with Joe, I have enjoyed our conversations immensely. I also get why players lost patience with how much managing he required during the game. My hope for Joe is that he is able to put this all in perspective and realize how rare and incredible it is to make it wire-to-wire in two straight appearances on the show. Ninety-nine percent of all Survivor competitors would kill for that result.

So don’t cry for the guy. After all, Rizo will cry for him! Rizo cries over everything! Hahaha, that’s me just razzing the Riz… which for some reason sounds way more graphic and disturbing that I intended. But we will certainly get into everything that went down on the Survivor 50 finale. Well, at least everything that happened in Fiji and was not part of the reimagined Los Angeles reunion portion of the evening. So let’s get into it.

Tiff in a tiff

I don’t know if it’s true that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but watching anyone scorned on television is usually pretty fun. And what makes it a thousand times better is when that scorned person is refusing to interact with anyone yet then does not look where they are going and falls into a hole, thereby requiring assistance from the people she is pissed at while trying to maintain a measure of angry independence.

The scene between Aubry and Tiffany was so good in so many ways. Aubry came over to make nice, essentially saying Tiffany should not be mad at her because “My name went down tonight too,” and Tiff just threw it right back in her face with “You should ask yourself why” and explaining that it was only because Aubry went behind Tiffany’s back planning to get her out before the challenge.

“Don’t come over here giving me fake sympathy,” she retorted. (I love retorts, by the way. They are like responses, only with a side-serving of sass.)

Tiffany is out here referring to her former ally as “Snake Ass Aubry” and explaining how “I have fire in my veins right now.”

I love the way producers were able to pull her aside for her confessional while she was still so hot about losing Cirie and being the original target herself. It wasn’t like anyone was doing anything wrong here, by the way. Aubry was playing the game, and Tiffany was well within her rights to be upset about it. This result was the spiciest moment of the finale.

Fishing for a win

The final five immunity challenge is usually when you get the big obstacle course build with a puzzle at the end, and that’s what we got here. I thought the new element of using a fishing pole to retrieve a machete (kind of like a vertical monkey’s fist) would be interesting, but it all seemed to happen kind of quick in the edit and didn’t appear to play much of a factor.

Even though I enjoy and actively lobby for these big obstacle courses, you all know how I always say that they are only window dressing for what actually matters, which is the puzzle. If you’re the fastest on the puzzle, you almost always win the challenge no matter how you do in the first 95% of the contest. Not true here though, as Jonathan (who was first to the puzzle) won immunity by only one piece over Tiffany in a photo finish. In fact, Jonathan almost lost the challenge and potentially altered the entire course of Survivor history by taking a time out to go puke over the side railing mid-puzzle.