‘Survivor 43’: Cassidy Reveals Why She Lost — The Jury ‘Made Their Decision Before They Got There’
It’s not easy being a runner-up in Survivor. To get that close to the end and fall just short of the title of Sole Survivor must be heartbreaking. Sadly, someone has to go through it every season, and for Survivor 43, that castaway was Cassidy Clark.
[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers from the Survivor 43 finale, “Snap Some Necks and Cash Some Checks.”]
Cassidy is the runner-up of ‘Survivor 43’
Mike Gabler, Cassidy Clark, and Owen Knight made up the final three in the Survivor 43 finale after sending Karla Cruz Godoy and Jesse Lopez to the jury.
Cassidy won the final four Immunity Challenge and chose to bring Owen with her to the final three and send Gabler and Jesse to fire. While some later disagreed, she felt that she earned her spot in the Final Tribal Council, so she didn’t want to be the one to face Jesse in the fire-making challenge. But Cassidy knew Jesse had to be the one to go, which is why she had Gabler, a strong fire-maker, go against him.
At the Final Tribal Council, Cassidy laid out her strategy. She claimed she was never on the wrong side of votes, built relationships to further her in the game, and won three Immunity Challenges. However, Gabler was seemingly more persuasive than Cassidy.
In a 7-1-0 vote, with James Jones being the only one to vote for Cassidy, Gabler won Survivor 43. He later revealed that he would donate his prize money to veterans.
Cassidy tries to make sense of why she didn’t win ‘Survivor 43’
Following the Survivor 43 finale, Cassidy spoke with Parade about her loss. And she believes that the jury might have already made up their minds before walking into the Final Tribal Council.
“I think one of my mistakes in the game was underestimating Gabler and how much people liked him,” Cassidy admitted. “And I think going in, me and Owen were both under the impression that it was going to be potentially between me and him, which obviously was our fatal mistake. But when Gabler was at Final Tribal, and he was just so enthusiastic, and I could tell he was making people laugh.”
She continued, “It just seemed like everything he was saying was being received well. Whereas everything I said felt like there was a wall up. It felt like it didn’t really matter; it almost felt like they had already made their decision before they even got there. And to see them so open with Gabler and then closed off to me. I wasn’t feeling super confident by the end.”
“I thought at the beginning I had a really great shot of winning,” Cassidy revealed. “And by the end, it was like, ‘I honestly don’t know what’s gonna happen here.’ But seeing it be such a landslide for Gabler, that definitely hurt.”
The audience could tell just by Cassidy’s reaction to the vote that she was shocked and devastated that she lost Survivor 43 to Gabler. And based on responses on social media, many fans are in the same boat as Cassidy.
Did Karla poison the jury against Cassidy?
Before getting voted out in the Survivor 43 finale, Karla told Cassidy that she would smear her name to the jury if Cassidy sent her packing. And during an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Cassidy wondered if Karla banked on her promise.
“After I got out of the game, I can’t remember who, but somebody mentioned to me that she had been speaking against me,” the runner-up shared. “And I’m not saying it’s 100 percent true, but that was what I had heard from somebody who was at Ponderosa.”
Cassidy added, “And so it was really hard to hear that she couldn’t just look at it and be like, ‘Damn, you got me, good game,’ and still support me because we have been allies the entire game. If that is the case, that’s really unfortunate. I’m not going to speak for her and say that is 100 percent what happened, but that’s just what I heard. So it was hard to come to terms with that.”
Survivor 43 is available to stream on Paramount+. Survivor 44 premieres on March 1, 2023, on CBS.
