Survivor: All-Stars - Season Summary

Season Summary

This season of the series featured the return of eighteen players from previous seasons, divided into tribes: Chapera, Mogo Mogo, and Saboga. Each tribe was named after an island of the Pearl Islands. During the fifth episode Reward Challenge, the Saboga tribe, having lost the challenge, was dissolved and its members divided between the other two tribes. During the period where the tribes had been absorbed, an alliance between Rob M. and Amber (who had formed their own alliance early in the game) and Rupert and Jenna L. formed, which would stay strong until the final four.

Two players voluntarily left the game. Jenna Morasca, fearing for her mother's health, decided to drop out in episode 3 and return to her mother's side; her mother would die eight days later from cancer. Susan "Sue" Hawk also left, distraught in episode six, after an incident during an immunity challenge in which a naked Richard Hatch had a brief but inappropriate bodily contact with her.

With ten players remaining, a tribal switch was held where players drew new buffs out of a bag. In an unorthodox twist of fate, each player simply drew a buff of the opposite tribe color except Amber, with the net effect of having Amber forced into the old Mogo Mogo tribe under the Chapera name. When Chapera lost the next immunity challenge, Rob whispered a deal to Lex to save Amber, promising that he will make it up to him later in the game. This led Lex to convince the rest of Chapera to vote out Jerri instead of Amber. The next day, the remaining players were merged under the tribe name Chaboga Mogo (a combination of the former tribe names Chapera, Saboga, and Mogo Mogo) and Rob found it necessary to vote off Lex, much to the anger of the latter for breaking the deal.

The four-player alliance continued to dominate the rest of the game. When down to five players, Rob, Amber, Rupert, Jenna L., and Big Tom, Rob incited an argument between Rupert and Big Tom, ultimately leading to Big Tom being voted off at the next Tribal Council followed by Rupert. Rob won the final immunity challenge and took Amber into the final two with him. It was recognized by the jury that both finalists played an identical game. Some felt that Rob's was stronger, and Amber's was more well-rounded. At the live show, prior to the reading of the votes, Rob proposed to Amber for her hand in marriage, which she accepted. Amber won the final vote, 4-3.

As winner, Amber was given the ability to give a car to another player, and she selected Shii-Ann, considering her to be the swing vote on the jury. Also during the reunion show, contestant Jerri Manthey of Survivor: The Australian Outback attempted to insert herself into the discussion between Big Tom and Boston Rob. She was greeted twice with a resounding round of boos from the 5,000-person audience, resulting in her storming out of the reunion show during a commercial break.

In addition, this remains the only reunion show during which some contestants were seated out of boot order. Sue Hawk, who was the sixth person to leave the game, was seated fourth, in between Jenna Morasca and Rob Cesternino. This was most likely because if the seats would have had stayed in order of the boot list, she would have sat next to Richard Hatch, who precipitated the incident which caused Hawk to leave the game in the first place.

A week later, Rupert was announced as the winner of the "America's Tribal Council" contest, receiving 85% of the 38 million votes cast, winning a million dollars himself.