I'm not going to lie, this finale left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. It's a damn shame too because this season was on its way to becoming my favorite of the new era seasons, but the finale causes it to drop quite a bit.

Wow, what a roller coaster. I was honestly expecting a pretty straightforward finale without a ton of tension. While I ended up being right about the winner, there was actually a ton of tension in this episode. It was much closer strategically than I thought it would be as well as at the Final Tribal Council. I loved it and it's a great ending to an awesome season.

Now, that is more like it. Season 44 is my favorite of the post-Covid seasons. While there was a little bit of garbage from production around the merge, most of the post-merge was nice and clean, as was the finale, with the exception being the fire-making challenge.

Sigh. What the hell?! This show needs to get its editing game under control… Does the winner make sense and give a satisfying conclusion to the season? That isn't the case here and it's very frustrating.

And so we've reached the end of another season of Survivor. I do think this was a better season than 41. I think the post-merge was superior, the editing was more well rounded, and the winner had a much more satisfying arc.