The next Sole Survivor will be crowned on Wednesday's finale. Here's who to keep an eye on.
The finale of Survivor: David vs. Goliath is just a week away, and with one of the season's biggest threats out of the way, it's anyone's game.
Christian Hubicki was eliminated on Wednesday night's episode after weeks of having his name thrown around as a possible target. Things seemed to look good for him as he escaped former ally Gabby's attempt to get him out last week, but he just couldn't make it last.
"It makes it a little easier to accept having gone home at that time if you had been targeted for so long. The contrast would be, what if I thought I was in such an awesome position to win, and all of the sudden I went home and it all crashed and I was crushed," he told ET over the phone on Thursday. "That would have been far worse."
The 32-year-old robotics scientist was surprisingly -- or unsurprisingly, if you really know him -- chill after host Jeff Probst revealed his fate on Wednesday's episode, though he did admit to feeling disappointed by his elimination. "I had been so mentally drained by lack of food and the elements, [but] I definitely didn't have anger towards the players. I mean, they were targeting me for what seemed to be a good reason," he explained. "They seemed to think I was a big threat if I had gotten to that final three, so it made sense for them to get rid of me."
"[There was] a little sadness, because you survive so many bullets, and you still don't win," Christian continued. "It feels a little... unfair isn't the right word, but it feels a little skewed that the road I had to go was so hard and the rope was so tight that I had to walk that now it's all done, but at least I had quite a journey."
For Christian, the hardest part of his Survivor experience was the mental fatigue he felt on the show; the most rewarding was how viewers accepted him.
"I went out there and I wanted to talk about the game that I thought was interesting, in a way that I hadn't heard it talked about before, in the language of science and mathematics and data and that's an ambitious story to tell to people, because science, some people find boring. And the fact that I was able to get people to listen to the sort of scientific view of the game, and they didn't call it pretentious or boring, that's quite rewarding, and that risk paid off," he said.
As for who fans should keep an eye on ahead of next week's season finale, Christian said, like many before him have, that there are several good players in the mix, like his former David tribe members, Nick and Davie. He also called out a surprising choice from the David tribe, Mike, noting that fans -- and other players -- have perhaps underestimated him because of his celebrity status.
"I was very impressed by Mike, because I had been working with Mike secretly for a long time, where we would meet in the middle of the night, and he'd say, 'Hey Christian, let's just meet in the middle of the night, we'll talk, and no one will ever know that we talked.' And I was planning basically the end of the game with him, at least the version that we were working with each other. So I thought, 'Hey, maybe he wants to go deep with me.' But I was a long con," he revealed. "It was very well executed and very clever."
"He's such a beguiling figure that I think people would be wise to keep their eye on him, and not just assume he's just this millionaire who doesn't care about the game he's playing," he added.
The season finale of Survivor airs Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.
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