Will Kelly Wiglesworth finally win that $1 million when she returns to Survivor next season?

Way back in the year 2000, 51 million Americans watched Kelly lose Survivor to Richard Hatch in the very first season of the reality series. They also watched her endure Sue Hawk's vicious jury speech, in which she was told that if she were dying of thirst out in the real world, she would not get a drink of water from her friend-turned-enemy.

Now, 15 years later, Kelly has returned and will be a contestant in Survivor: Cambodia - Second Chance - the show's 31st season. The show's latest concept is 20 one-time players who did not win the game in their original seasons coming back for a second shot at the million dollar prize.

It's been 15 years since we saw Kelly in her prime, so does she have what it takes to adapt to modern Survivor?

Kelly has expressed in several pre-show interviews that she's barely watched Survivor in the years following her season and only just recently watched her own. She reportedly lives in Mexico now with her husband and son, so she is pretty removed from the entire reality show experience these days.

During her original season, Kelly was part of the first successful alliance in the show's history, the Tagi 4, which consisted of herself, Richard, Sue and Rudy Boesch. They voted as a block into the merge, but Kelly preferred the company of the other tribe and showed hesitance towards her original alliance. She was perceived as wishy washy through most of the post-merge, but she won the last four Immunity Challenges in a row, cementing her place in the Final 2.

Kelly faced an epic moral dilemma as the game went along, so it will be interesting to see how she reacts to modern Survivor, which features Hidden Immunity Idols, tribe swaps and cutthroat, faster gameplay. Assuming she hasn't changed much, she will likely want to get into an alliance with people she respects - people with honor and integrity over hardcore game players. It is easy to imagine Kelly becoming the swing vote between rival alliances, with her possibly having to grapple with her morals in a game that doesn't necessarily have any.

Cambodia Prediction: Kelly was a valued member of her tribe in Borneo and a beast at challenges, so she probably won't be voted out early unless she refuses to make an alliance. She will be one of the strongest women out there and doesn't have a huge reputation other than her legacy as a player from the first season, so we think she will at least make the merge. After this it becomes to difficult to tell, but we predict she will still go deep into the game but ultimately get cut short in the days leading up to Final Tribal Council.

We predict: 6th place.

See how Kelly and the 19 players do when Survivor: Cambodia - Second Chance airs in the fall on CBS.

Tags
Survivor, Reality TV, CBS