“Survivor 50” winner Aubry Bracco responds to runner-up Jonathan Young saying he should have won in interviews

Key Points

• Survivor 50 winner Aubry Bracco responds to Jonathan Young’s contention that he played a better game than she did.

• “I’m confident in the game that I played,” Bracco said in a Saturday Instagram video.

• Another past Survivor winner agrees that Young was in the wrong for “belittling” Bracco’s game.

Survivor 50 winner Aubry Bracco does have some sympathy for runner-up Jonathan Young — but that won’t stop her from defending her game.

The seismic season 50 finale put $2 million on the line and when it came down to jury votes, Bracco won in a landslide. For Young, that result has been particularly difficult to swallow, and he has not kept that feeling to himself. For days afterwards, Young insisted that he did more than enough to win the game, questioning whether Bracco’s win was truly deserved. And it has not escaped her notice.

In a Saturday Instagram Q&A, Bracco offered her take on Young’s response to his loss, expressing some sympathy over that devastating final tribal.

“Jonathan was hurting in that moment. It is devastating to learn that you lost,” said Bracco, who herself lost out on the prize three times before her season 50 victory. “We all handle it differently and something that I’ve come to believe over the four times I played Survivor is that your opinion of me is none of my business. It has nothing to do with me.”

She added, “I do my best in the game, I play the game I’m gonna play and you’re gonna have feelings on it.”

Young has certainly made his feelings very clear. In exit interviews the day after his loss, Young told Entertainment Weekly (and several other outlets) that he felt he played a better game than Bracco, attributing her win to “bitter” jury members and speculating that Survivor legend Cirie Fields played a significant role in rallying votes against him.

Bracco admits that it was “a little hard” to see Young bashing her game, given the “special bond” that had formed between the final three, but ultimately resolved that his feelings on the matter have nothing to do with her own.

“I really genuinely, I hope he’s doing okay,” Bracco concluded. “I disagree with him, but he’s allowed to have his opinion. It is what it is. I don’t like that saying, but I’m confident in the game that I played.”

While disagreements about who deserved the win still abound, there’s no arguing with the results: Young received just three votes at final tribal, all from his former allies in the game (Chrissy Hofbeck, “Coach” Benjamin Wade, and Stephenie LaGrossa Kendrick). The other eight jury votes went to Bracco, securing her win for the $2 million prize. (Finalist Joe Hunter got 0 votes.)

Young was emotional when he spoke to EW about his loss the following day, wiping away tears as he reflected on his game play.

“It hurt me so bad. ‘Cause I know I did everything I could do, ’cause I had thought about Survivor for four years, and I don’t think I could’ve played … I don’t know what I could’ve done different,” Young lamented to EW’s Dalton Ross. “I keep going back to: What do I learn from this? God, what do you want me to learn? And I don’t know yet.”

He continued, “I don’t know what I’m learning, because I believe deep in my heart that I played the better game. I know I did. But because Aubry’s played five times, that weighed on a lot of the jury votes. And is that fair? That’s up to the fans and up to Survivor to decide. But if that’s a jury, then I’m confused, you know?”

Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.

Bracco isn’t the only Survivor winner who took issue with Young criticizing the final vote. Former winner “Boston” Rob Mariano, who helped Young prepare for his return to Survivor, had some tough feedback for his former pupil in the aftermath of the finale.

“He butchered his press,” Mariano told TV Insider at the 2026 ATX TV Festival. “It gets hard, because he’s a pretty emotional guy, and I think he took it really hard. But I told him that that was a wrong move.”

Mariano continued, “I don’t think belittling Aubry’s game to make your game better is a good look, and he agrees. But in the moment, he felt it. You can’t take it away from Aubry. She won. I always have said the person that wins is the one that deserves to win. The jury can vote however they want. It’s your job to manage them. I give Aubry a lot of credit.”

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly