Christa Hastie didn't want you to like her — she wanted you to know it. Abrasive and proud of it on Drake, she actually tried to spin the whole cast hating her into a resume line: "I wanted people to know that if they ever decided to keep me on and take me to the final two, they would most likely win. Because everybody hates me!" Wired right into all that edge was the softest spot in her game — Sandra Diaz-Twine, her closest ally and best friend out there, the one bond she never burned.
It's the bond that doomed her. Once the Outcasts twist dumped Burton and Lillian back into the game and scrambled the merge, the endgame belonged to the returnees, and a Sandra-and-Christa pair was a knot they had no reason to keep. They cut Christa loose to the jury sixth, leaving Sandra to slip through the last stretch alone. She got the last word from the jury bench: the panel came down hard on Lillian for the betrayals it waved through on Sandra, and Christa rode that current straight to her friend — no warmth for the Boy Scout leader who'd cut her way back from Outcast Island. Loyalty made it easy. Christa's ballot was one of the six that handed Sandra the title 6-1 over Lil, the start of the best winner's resume the show's ever produced.
