Hear me out: Rosa and Sam as the final 2 for this season
TL;DR: I think the final two matchup for this season could be Rosa and Sam because they both seem to lack what their respective teams are expected to have - knowledge for the fans and experience for the favourites, which I think will be the contrasting theme of this season’s finale.
Each season tends to frame its final two around a clear contrast:
S1: old vs young
S2: anti-hero vs anti-villain
S3: growth vs regression
S4: brain vs. brawn (alternatively logic vs emotion)
For S5, I think the contrasting theme is going to be knowledge vs experience, something which has been hinted at ever since we got the character introduction videos for this season.
The fans team is meant to represent knowledge, while the favourites represent experience. However, both Sam and Rosa lack what their respective teams are supposed to embody.
Sam, on the fans team, lacks knowledge. In Episode 7, he reveals he has only watched Season 1 and a few isolated challenge clips from other seasons. Not watching the other seasons means he wouldn’t know how the returning players he hasn’t seen operate, which could become an obstacle to his game later on (though it might not, since most of them have changed their playstyles).
Rosa, on the favourites team, lacks the experience compared to the rest of her team. Most of the favourites competed in AS, so this season would be their third time competing on the show, giving them more familiarity with what the game has become.
While the S4 contestants are also playing for a second time, their experience is recent (they competed just last year), whereas Rosa last competed three (in-universe) years ago. This means her experience is less fresh compared to theirs, especially with the game now including more survival-focused elements than it did in her original season.
Altogether, this places Rosa at a disadvantage in terms of familiarity with the current version of disventure camp, leaving her as the odd one out - the favourite entering this season with the least amount of relevant experience.
We see her struggle early on to adapt to these new survival elements, like starting a fire, since her original season had cabins and a cafeteria, meaning she never had to learn basic survival skills. Her time away from the game also shows in episode 2, where she struggles in the challenge due to her lack of recent competitive experience.
Another similarity I’ve noticed between Rosa and Sam in the most recent episode is that they both passed up opportunities to gain what they lack. Sam missed out on gaining more knowledge on his competition by not watching every other season (probably due to personal reasons). On the other hand, the most recent episode revealed that Rosa declined an invitation to compete again in AS because of Riya, so she lost a chance to gain more experience before this season.
What do you guys think?