Victoria Baamonde finished Survivor: Edge of Extinction in sixth place during the three-hour finale event of Survivor Season 38 on CBS.

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Victoria, a 23-year-old waitress from Bronx, NY, was voted out shortly after Chris Underwood returned from the Edge of Extinction and rejoined the game.

Although Victoria only received two of the six votes read aloud at Tribal Council on Night 36, the two main targets -- Rick Devens and Chris -- were safe because Rick played a hidden Immunity Idol for himself and Lauren O'Connell played her idol for Chris.

In the end, Chris won the $1 million and was crowned "Sole Survivor." Gavin Whitson finished in second place, Julie Rosenberg placed third, Rick finished in fourth place, and Lauren placed fifth.

Chris ultimately received the following jury votes to win: Victoria, Reem Daly, Julia Carter, Eric Hafemann, Aubry Bracco, David Wright, Joe Anglim, Dan "The Wardog" DaSilva, and Ron Clark.

And Gavin earned votes from Lauren, Rick, Aurora McCreary, and Kelley Wentworth. Julie, however, didn't receive a single jury vote.

During an exclusive interview with Reality TV World following the finale broadcast, Victoria talked about her Survivor experience. Below is the concluding portion of what she had to say.

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Reality TV World: If Rick had gone out at Final 6, how do you think things would've played out from there? And did you have an ideal Final 3 in mind at that point?

Victoria Baamonde: It's tough, because if Rick had gone out at Final 6, it would depend obviously on who else came back from the Edge of Extinction. So if Chris was still in the game, I would've still wanted him out.

I think Chris coming back into the game at any point puts me on the chopping block, so I don't think I would've made it to Final 3.

But if I had my choice with Chris still there, I would've gone to the end with Julie... in an ideal world. And I guess with my choice that's left, Lauren.

But I'm not really sure, like, what the jury thinks of her. They weren't that impressed. I know she had Kelley, but Lauren was very similar to Gavin in my opinion, except she had that underdog story in the beginning.

I probably would've have chosen Julie, but if Aurora was still around, my ideal Final 3 -- at the Final 7 I guess -- would've been Aurora and Julie, hands down.

Reality TV World: Heading into the Tribal when you went home, how had you been planning to address the hidden Immunity Idol that Rick had previously flashed in your faces?

Victoria Baamonde: We knew he had something since he had just flashed it the day before, but the question was whether it was real or not. I talked to Rick obviously a lot that day, trying to get him to work with me, and he basically told me it was real.

But again, you can't take anything he says at face value. But my plan -- and I did everything I could -- was proposing to Rick and Gavin that Chris would receive the majority of votes and then Lauren would be the backup plan in case Chris plays something.

And then the only people we don't really involve in this would be Lauren and Julie. So, they would probably end up voting for Rick still. So that would put most on Chris, next on Lauren, and then the least amount of votes on Rick.

So I was trying to get Rick -- I told him, "If you have something, you don't have to play it now. Save it for the last time you could possibly play it."

So that was my best argument to him, saying neither one of us would make it to Final 3 without each other, if we're being called the biggest threats. So I thought it was time to work together and said, "Here's the plan, where you don't even have to use your idol."

I told him, "You can trust me because it's in my best interest too." That was my way of not getting him to use it, but I wasn't lying to him. That's truly what I wanted to happen.

In that plan, Rick was supposed to vote out Lauren because he refused to write Chris' name down, but it just so happened he and Gavin must have thought up something else when I wasn't there.

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Reality TV World: A big moment in the game this season was Aurora's exit. How tough of a decision was it for you to vote her out, and did Rick's idol announcement at that Tribal Council play any role in your decision or had you already decided to vote Aurora out before Tribal even began?

Victoria Baamonde: We had decided to vote her off before Tribal began. I will not take any credit for deciding to vote her off, because I did not want to. That move was probably mostly Lauren pushing hard to get Aurora out.

And Gavin usually did whatever Lauren said, usually. I really, really wanted Julie out in that moment because, like I said, I knew she would be taken to Final 3 because she's the perfect person to sit next to.

And Aurora was incredibly loyal to me at that time. Our relationship wasn't very much shown either [in the edit]. We had become very, very close -- even before the family visit.

So I wanted to take Aurora with me as far as I could because she was a great challenge competitor. And we had made a promise to each other that if one of us would win the Final 4 challenge -- which was obviously more likely for her than for me -- that we would take each other to the end.

So that's a great promise to have from somebody who is likely to win. So I did not want to take her out, but Lauren just would not budge, and Gavin wanted to keep working with Lauren.

And we also had to consider Rick, because we knew he had something at this point. So we had to consider the possibility that Rick and Julie could be immune. Even though we didn't think it would actually happen, it was still possible.

And they could have ended up controlling the vote in that scenario, so the majority of my alliance wanted to get rid of Aurora anyway. It was just doubly safe to just do it, so my hands were pretty much tied. So, I didn't want her out, but I had to and couldn't really change it. It was definitely a cool Tribal.

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To read the rest of Reality TV World's exclusive Survivor interview with Victoria, click here for Part 1 and click here for Part 2. (Also, check out our Survivor: Edge of Extinction show page for more interviews with the Final 6 castaways).


About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski

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