Skip to content
All 751 castaways
Jonathan Young
2 seasons · 51 days

Jonathan Young

The towering provider who carried tribes on his back, then came back with a strategist's brain to match.

2
seasons played
51 days
on the island
2nd
best finish
1
final tribal council

Known for

In Survivor 42 Jonathan was Taku's engine, hauling the tribe through a water challenge the other tribes could not even finish, and a core member of the Taku Four. After the merge his blunt, sometimes condescending edge frayed those bonds, but his loyalty won him a new partner in Mike Turner. He made a deep run against all expectations until Mike beat him at fire, and he cast the lone jury vote for Mike.

In the Hands of the Fans, he still provided and still won, but he also schemed. When Dee Valladares and Kamilla Karthigesu blindsided his ally Charlie Davis on the swapped Cila, he took revenge on both at the merge, casting the swing vote on Kamilla and calling out Dee's lies until she went too. Working with Joe Hunter and Stephenie LaGrossa Kendrick, he helped pick off threat after threat and used the Power Broker twist to vote at both halves of a Split Tribal Council. He beat Rizo Velovic at fire this time, but the jury favored Aubry Bracco's game, 8-3-0.

Background: Survivor Wiki

Season by season

  1. Jonathan Young, Survivor 42
    4Survivor 42age 29, Gulf Shores, Alabama4th of 18 · 25 days · jury
  2. Jonathan Young, Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fans

Photos and logos: CBS

Seasons played, finishing positions, day counts, jury status, ages and hometowns come from the contestant table in each season's Wikipedia article, cross-checked against the series overview before publication.

Sources (4)

  1. “Survivor 42,” Wikipedia, accessed September 28, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_42.
  2. “Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fans,” Wikipedia, accessed September 28, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_50:_In_the_Hands_of_the_Fans.
  3. “List of Survivor (American TV series) episodes,” Wikipedia, accessed September 25, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Survivor_(American_TV_series)_episodes.
  4. “Jonathan Young,” Survivor Wiki, accessed September 28, 2026, https://survivor.fandom.com/wiki/Jonathan_Young.

Which Survivor hot take do you actually agree with?