Jonathan Young Sparks Buzz After Blaming Cirie Fields and Ozzy Lusth for His Survivor 50 Defeat

After watching the full season of Survivor 50 play out and then seeing the votes revealed live on television, Jonathan Young still doesn’t seem to fully accept how he ended up losing the game. Viewers at home could clearly see that many of the moves he credited himself for were actually driven by other players, and his social game largely worked only with the people he personally connected with — the same people who ultimately voted for him in the end. Even so, he remains convinced he played the season’s strongest game.

But a lot of his ideas about what makes a winner don’t line up neatly with the classic Survivor formula of outwit, outplay, outlast. Yes, he made it to the end, which checks the outlast box, and he did win two immunity challenges to protect himself. But much of the strategic work he says influenced key eliminations was handled more completely by other players — and he never truly seemed like the biggest threat at camp anyway.

That point was reinforced when he reached the Final Three without receiving a single vote, just like Joe Hunter. In older eras of Survivor, that might have been seen as proof of a clean game. In the modern version, though, it can also suggest that other players never saw you as someone actively shaping the action.

He also draws comparisons to fellow Survivor 50 contestant Kamilla Karthigesu, whose game was underestimated for much of her run before Final Tribal Council exposed how much control she had behind the scenes in a different season. That was not the outcome Jonathan got this time.

In an interview with Parade, Jonathan says he doesn’t believe he made a major mistake anywhere in the game. Instead, he argues the jury ultimately turned against him. He also admits he knew the result was slipping away as soon as Joe dropped the ball at the final immunity challenge — not when he lost, but when Joe couldn’t beat Aubry Bracco.

“Just as soon as that ball dropped, I knew it was pretty much over, and that I was going to get second.” He tells Parade’s TV Editor, Mike Bloom, “Because I knew what was going on, if you noticed, mostly the whole time. Except for the Charlie [Davis] vote…”

He says the four years he spent training with Boston Rob Mariano made him believe he had adjusted his game enough to earn more credit than he received. And although he says he plans to play again, he’s still trying to make sense of what happened. “We’ll have to figure it out for the third time. I don’t know exactly what to learn from this, but I promise you, I’ll learn something.”

Jonathan also suggests the real issue in both his Survivor 42 and Survivor 50 appearances had less to do with strategy and more to do with how he handled other players. Before Dee Valladares became the first juror, he spent much of his time criticizing her for lying in a game where deception is built into the rules. Dee’s response was essentially that everyone lies on that beach at some point — including Jonathan.

When Mike Bloom asked about his relationship with Cirie Fields, Jonathan admitted, “I know that I couldn’t trust Miss Cirie…” even though he worked with her for most of the game. He says that’s hard to separate from the Dee situation, especially since he also can’t understand why Cirie told him she would vote for him if she reached the jury, then didn’t follow through in the end.

“Miss Cirie basically rallied the troops when she got back to Ponderosa…that’s part of the reason I think I lost.” – Jonathan Young tells Parade

He goes on to argue that Cirie’s influence in the game carried over to the jury, where people were constantly asking her how she was voting before she would tell them how to vote. In his view, that had to affect the final result. “You don’t think they’re doing that at Ponderosa? And is by happenstance that the people that surrounded her…are the same people that didn’t vote for me in the finale? I’m just curious.”

Jonathan still seems to miss the bigger pattern: the players who didn’t vote for him were mostly people who played alongside Aubry Bracco, or respected a style of play similar to hers. There is one exception, though — Ozzy Lusth, who reportedly told Jonathan at the Survivor 50 premiere, “I should have voted for you.” Jonathan says that was not something he wanted to hear, and he was also surprised Ozzy shared his endgame plan with Aubry and voted for her anyway, despite her revealing information to others and contributing to his vote-out.

Even so, he still claims ownership of the Ozzy vote.

As for how he would have voted if the Final Three had looked different and he had lost fire to Rizo Velovic, Jonathan says it would have been difficult to choose. “I wouldn’t vote for Rizo…as far as the camp life, he doesn’t have much of that going on.” About Joe, he adds, “I think he deserves more credit than he got…and I think that when you know somebody’s down, don’t kick them.”

Although he didn’t specifically mention Aubry, Jonathan made it clear Rizo would not have gotten his vote, and a vote for Joe would have been more about sympathy than gameplay. That leaves the impression he may actually see Aubry as the strongest competitor. Either way, his exit press has been full of contradictions — and if he does come back for another run, it will be interesting to see whether he finally adjusts his own read on the game, since that may have been the very thing that kept him from winning.

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