The first above-knee amputee ever to play Survivor, and she wasn't out there to be anybody's inspiration story. Noelle, a U.S. Paralympic sprinter who lost her left leg in a 2016 moped accident, hit the beach on a Vesi tribe that could not buy a win and outlasted the bleed anyway — she, Jesse, and Cody were the three left standing when the losing streak finally ended. Then she made the merge and showed she'd come to play: a steal-a-vote in her pocket on double-elimination night, swiping Owen's vote as a smokescreen to help bury James Jones 4-1.
By the next vote she'd charmed the entire camp and had a plan of her own cooking — so Jesse quietly tipped Karla off to it, the group decided the beloved Noelle was too dangerous to drag any further, and they moved first. They blindsided her in eighth and sent her out as the fourth juror. The wild part: nobody on that jury had a bad word for her. She wasn't snuffed for a misread or a flub — Jesse just got to Karla a beat before she got to anybody, and on a new-era season that's all the room there is.
