A Kenyan woman identified as, Maryanne Oketch, has won the Survivor series.
She becomes the second black woman to win on the long-running show.
The Survivor series is based on contestants who are stranded on a remote island trying to survive it and face challenging tasks to win the grand prize.
Survivor series episode 42 premiered on March 9, 2022, on CBS in the United States and Global in Canada. It ended on May 25, 2022.
Maryanne defeated Michael “Mike” Turner and Romeo Escobar in a 7–1–0 vote.
The winner carried home a $1 million reward (Ksh 116,680,000).
Maryanne is a 24-year-old seminary student from Ontario.
In an interview with Weekly Entertainment, Oketch said she felt she could win after walking away from the Tribal Council.
“Going into the final Tribal Council, I felt as if I probably was gonna win. I felt like since it was Mike at the end and not Jonathan that would be harder competition, but I really felt as if I would be able to go and speak and articulate the way that I won.”
Adding,
I then wavered a little bit at Tribal because people kept on just talking to Mike, and I was just basically dead in the water.
But then when they started talking to me, I started giving answers and was able to articulate my game. And the jury seemed that they were vibing with it. I really felt as if then I kind of won.”
Oketch says it did not hit her at first that she had won.
“People were talking, and I just realized that I won, and honestly, coming to the game, I didn’t think I was gonna win.
So this was just a surreal thing. I wasn’t in the moment. It was just screaming in my head, Jeff was talking, people were talking. Like, I couldn’t tell you.”
The 24-year-old had to sit on the information that she had won for some time.