Overall Season 42 was insanely better than 41( the worst season ever imo). Even this finale episode is pretty good. Loved the final 5 immunity challenge and the preceding votes to final 3.
But this where the 22 year issue comes into play. Final tribal is just way to important. It makes the other 38 in this case 25 days not matter what so ever. Now i get it, part of the game is putting people in the jury you think will vote for you in the end. But why can't they just vote on the person who played the best? THEY DONT KNOW that's why. They basically have no idea what happens after they get voted off. They have no idea what happened in the first half of the game unless you were on their tribe. All that matters is how well you speak at final tribal. Last time i checked Survivor isn't a College Communications class.
I'm not saying Maryanne is a terrible winner, there have been way worse (41,32) but Mike clearly played the better overall game and just because he didn't speak better than Maryanne on 1 night of the WHOLE game he lost. You can go all the way back to Season 2 where Colby somehow didn't win in Australia because he didn't want to sleep with the She Devil lol.
I love Survivor i've seen every season but every year the worst part of every season is Final Tribal. I don't have a clear solution, i get it it's hard as hell to even make the show and they have kept it this way for so long now it would be really hard for them to change it now.
My pitch would be this- You keep tribal the exact same but at the live show to reveal the winner the jury members have an option to change their vote based on watching the season and seeing the WHOLE game. I know this will probably never happen but that's take.