There is one empty chair at the poker table, and there is one body everyone is waiting to fill it. It's August 2019, and Tony Vlachos is about to make an entrance. In a breathless moment, the two-time Survivor winner flies into the room, shakes hands with as many people as he can before sitting down to push huge stacks of chips to the middle of the table with reckless abandon. I watch from the corner of the room, realizing that whatever switch turns Tony on in Survivor never shuts off in the real world. The guy we see on our television screens is the genuine article off it. As Survivor Domenick Abbate tells it, after flaming out of the poker tournament, Tony hopped in his truck and drove off like a madman. The script couldn't have been written any better.
A few months earlier, Tony was risking it all for a larger prize, a purse of two million dollars. He was near the bottom of most people's lists to win it all. His high-octane style of play in season 28 hardly seemed replicable against 19 of the game's best. What's more, he was the most recognizable character on one of the greatest seasons of all time in Cagayan. The inventor of the Spy Shack would seemingly have few places to hide in his third attempt.
But that wasn't the case. Tony darted and dashed, deceived and destroyed. He adapted. He evolved. Tony knew that not Cagayan Tony - nor Game Changers Tony - would suffice on Winners at War. He put himself on "house arrest" when he stepped onto Dakal beach, a lesson learned from his blunder in season 34. The man who can't sit still invested his time in more fruitful endeavors, like building a rickety ladder to obtain sustenance for his tribe.
When it came time to strike, Tony was bursting at the seams. The cop betrayed his strongest ally in Sarah Lacina, another cop, to singlehandedly engineer a 4-3-2 vote and blindside Sophie Clarke, despite being dealt an extortion disadvantage that forced him to collect fire tokens from two different alliances to participate in the immunity challenge and vote at tribal council; it was the most impressive tour de force in any single episode for any Survivor in history. And it freakin' worked. Sarah gave Tony another chance and Ben Driebergen stayed loyal to his commander long enough to keep Tony out of danger. Not known for being a challenge threat, Tony won three consecutive immunity challenges, and added a fourth in the finale for good measure. And when he wasn't wearing the necklace, Tony managed to make sure his name wasn't written down until it counted towards his two million dollar check.
Even though Tony charted a different path than in Cagayan, he was still Classic Tony. He climbed up into his Spy Nest - the third dimension of his hideout invention - to gain significant intel. He comedically mispronounced words, like "mumment." He narrowly outlasted Sarah in a fire-making challenge and pleaded his case better than the returnee from the Edge of Extinction, Natalie Anderson, and scrappy underdog Michele Fitzgerald. After 40 seasons of Survivor, Tony reigns supreme, as a character, and player.