Survivor: Why Amber Mariano Is An Underrated Winner

Many Survivor winners are considered some of the greatest contestants to ever play the game, but some winners, like All-Stars champ Amber Mariano (née Brkich), are severely underrated. Amber first played in the show’s second season, Survivor: The Australian Outback, but didn’t make much of an impact on the game. Though she achieved fame due to the immense popularity of the show at the time, she was mostly known as the young and mild-mannered sidekick to the season’s then-notorious villain, Jerri Manthey.

Amber returned to Survivor in season 8 for its first All-Star season. She was a controversial casting choice due to her small edit on her original season and was most likely chosen due to bigger stars in her archetype turning down the offer to return. However, she made the most of her second chance, being crowned the season’s winner after forming a romantic relationship with her castmate “Boston” Rob Mariano. Amber bested Rob in the end when she won a 4-3 jury vote against him, and the couple went on to become one of the most well-known reality TV celebrity couples ever. Known as “Romber,” they competed on two seasons of The Amazing Race, got married, had four daughters together, and after Rob won season 22 of Survivor, they returned to the show together in 2020 for Survivor: Winners at War, but neither emerged victorious.

Amber’s reputation as a winner has been overshadowed by Boston Rob’s strategic dominance on All Stars since the season first aired. Many fans and commentators list Amber as one of Survivor‘s weaker winners, and some even argue that Rob was robbed of the title of Sole Survivor by a bitter jury. What these criticisms fail to acknowledge, however, is that Survivor is, above all else, a social game. In All Stars, Amber played a much better social game than Rob did, which ultimately gave her the edge in the jury vote. Rob might have played a strong strategic game, but he burned many social bridges when he ruthlessly backstabbed some of his closest allies. Though always associated with Rob, Amber expressed agency in her game by positioning herself to be the lesser of two evils when compared to him. She let him take the heat for betraying allies while she maintained a diplomatic and cordial relationship with the eventual jurors in the game.

Monetarily speaking, the final result of All-Stars probably didn’t matter too much to the couple at the time. Rob proposed to Amber at the reunion and the two got married soon after, but the negative reception to Amber’s win remains rooted in a fundamental and common misunderstanding of Survivor‘s gameplay dynamics. This issue persists into the current era of the show and is often most clearly observed when under-the-radar female players win the game over flashier strategic players with a heavier edit.

The most recent example of this phenomenon is the response to Erika Casupanan’s victory over Xander Hastings in Survivor 41. Like Amber, Erika played a strong, subtle social game, but many fans were upset that Xander, who got considerably more screen time than Erika, lost to her. Regardless of the reception to their wins, though, players like Erika and Amber deserved their victories and proved their Survivorbona fides when they won their respective seasons.

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