The Worst Survivor Winners Ranked

"Survivor" has been airing since 2000, and in the years since Richard Hatch outwitted, outlasted, and outplayed his competitors in the wilds of Borneo, more winners have joined the fray after each difficult season. Some of those winners — like fan favorites Parvati Shallow, "Boston" Rob Mariano, or John Cochran, just to name a few — definitely deserved their victories after playing fierce games and ousting their competitors. "Survivor" is tricky for so many reasons, but chief among them is the fact that after screwing over all of your competitors for either 39 or 26 days (depending on the season), you have to convince them to vote for you to win a million dollars and the title of "Sole Survivor."

Sometimes, a deserving victor loses a game to someone who played a meeker, feebler game simply because the jury is mad. Sometimes, they win by being a "goat," which doesn't mean "greatest of all time" in "Survivor" speak, but refers to a player who's simply dragged to the finish line by a stronger, craftier player and ends up winning. Whatever the case may be, some "Survivor" winners just absolutely stink. Here are five of the worst.

Nick Wilson stinks. The winner of the 37th season of "Survivor," titled "David v. Goliath," played a relatively decent game — after all, he was on the "underdog" David team and managed to eke out a win over two Goliaths in the final three. Unfortunately for Nick's legacy on "Survivor," there are two problems here. One is that the runner-up and second-runner up — Mike White and Angelina Keeley, respectively — played far better games overall than Nick did, and the other is what Nick did after "Survivor" ended.

Nick, to his credit, won three immunity challenges right in a row at a crucial time in the game, which is precisely why he sat alongside Angelina and Mike when all was said and done ... but at the final council, even the jury acknowledged that Angelina and Mike both played incredibly strong games. The jury also had their feelings hurt, repeatedly, by Angelina and Mike, and though Mike definitely deserved to win for his incredibly shrewd social game, Nick won with 7 votes (Mike earned 3, and nobody voted for Angelina). 

These days, Nick Wilson is a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives (serving the state's 82nd district), and he's come under fire for supporting bills that would curb transgender rights and embarrassed himself by filing a bill that would have made relations between first cousins legal in Kentucky. At least we ended up getting "The White Lotus" out of this whole ordeal, thanks to Mike (and Season 2 even has a cameo from Angelina).

After the 40th season of "Survivor" — "Winners at War," which brought on an all-star cast of previous victors — the show floundered for a little while as it stocked its casts with newbies, and that issue was definitely evident in Season 43 when Mike Gabler won the title of Sole Survivor. Put simply, Gabler, whose nickname is his surname, is a total "goat," but let's go back a bit and investigate some of the larger issues with the modern version of the competition.

Thanks to the pandemic, "Survivor" decided to officially cut the competition from 39 to 26 days — largely because the players needed to quarantine for a full two weeks before filming could begin — and during "Survivor 43," Gabler did very little during those 26 days. During the final tribal council, other players criticized his fellow finalists Cassidy Clark and Owen Knight for being shady (Cassidy) and never actually swaying the game in any real way (Owen). Thanks to the squabbling, Gabler was crowned the victor, which feels ridiculous when you consider that he was such an inconsequential player throughout. At least he donated all of his winnings to charity when all was said and done.

There's nothing particularly terrible about Jud "Fabio" Birza, who won the 21st season of "Survivor" — which took place in Nicaragua — but based on his performance on the show, he's just not that bright. In fact, throughout his season, it really seemed like the hapless guy, who earned the nickname "Fabio" based on his physique and long blonde hair, had very little clue what was going on at any given moment. To be fair to Fabio, he was pretty solid in physical challenges, but that doesn't really carry all the weight on a show like "Survivor" — it's actually primarily a social game, and brute strength doesn't bring anyone across the finish line when all is said and done — and it honestly feels like the rest of the players kept forgetting to vote him out because he was just sort of a lovable doof.

"Lovable doof" does not a great winner make. Yeah, there are a ton of "Survivor" winners, but Fabio's win came pretty early in the game's lengthy history, and it's notable that he's never returned to play again. Plus, he eked out a win with just five votes, which put him just one vote ahead of the runner-up Chase Rice, so it's not like his victory was definitive. Nobody was sure what to do with Fabio, and he ended up winning a cool million bucks because of it. (Also, sorry, but he was really annoying.)

It feels bad to say this, but Amber Brkich Mariano should not have won "Survivor: All Stars." It should have been "Boston Rob" Mariano. 

Why does it feel bad to say this? There are so many reasons! Amber is "Survivor" royalty! The woman has been competing on the series since 2001, when she came in sixth place on the show's second season "Survivor: The Australian Outback." Besides "All Stars," Amber also competed on "Winners at War" alongside Boston Rob, and the two have also shown up on two seasons of "The Amazing Race." It's not an exaggeration to say that Amber is a reality show legend, but she didn't deserve the "All Stars" win, and she only took home the title of Sole Survivor because everybody hated Boston Rob so much.

The moment that Amber won the million dollars is one of the most famous in "Survivor" history, largely because Amber is wearing a giant shirt that says "I [Heart] Rob" and, just before the final vote was read — with Boston Rob and Amber directly competing for the win — Boston Rob proposed to Amber, who said yes. Ultimately, you could say that Amber — who has four children with Boston Rob — is the biggest "Survivor" winner in history, in that her family and future came with her big win, but the real, difficult truth here is that Boston Rob played a smarter, savvier game than his future wife. Unfortunately, it took Boston Rob four tries to win his own title, which he did in 2011 with "Survivor: Redemption Island," and Amber's win really belongs to him at the end of the day.

This is going to stir up some serious controversy, but so be it. Sandra Diaz-Twine deserved her win on "Survivor: Pearl Islands," but she did not deserve to win the landmark 20th season, "Heroes vs. Villains." Parvati Shallow deserved to win that season.

Sandra is an interesting "Survivor" player — that much is undeniable. She has no allegiances, and her alliances mean very little at any given moment; Sandra is constantly thinking about what move will benefit her the most, and nobody else matters in the moment. Ever since Sandra won "Pearl Islands," other "Survivor" contestants have done their best to steal the "all for one" mindset, but only Sandra, who genuinely does not give a single solitary f**k about anyone else, can actually pull it off. "Heroes vs. Villains," though, was Parvati's game through and through. There's the famous double-idol play, where she quietly collected immunity idols — without telling her allies how many she really had — and ended up voting out another player with an idol he gave away. 

Parvati is a genuine "Survivor" champion — her social game is incredible, and her physical prowess is no joke (she's particularly great at anything involving endurance) — and Sandra mostly just ... sits challenges out. No, seriously; it's rare to see her actually compete, which feels like an absolutely terrible quality for the only player to ever win twice! During the final tribal council, Parvati got a lot of heat for being "close" with the 2nd runner-up, noted "Survivor" jerk Russell Hantz (who received zero votes for the win), but what the jury clearly didn't grasp is that she was friendly with him for her own gain. Sandra just waited until all of the other stronger players were targeted and convinced six of the jury members that she played a better game than Parvati, which is just plain wrong. At least Russell lost. We can all take solace in that.

"Survivor" is available to stream on Paramount+.