It’s been a summer of ups and downs for sure, but when it comes to choosing who deserves this win the most, I can say my heart and mind agree: It’s Nicole Anthony all the way.

There are a lot of arguments floating around the BB21 community about who deserves to win this season the most. When it comes to Big Brother, there are so many aspects of the game to be good at in order to pull it all together in the end, and this season has had quite a variety of players. Some took a while to get off the ground, while others came bounding out the gate. Some prioritized social game while others took comp wins seriously. What is the winning recipe?

With the final three comes our last chance to debate who most deserves to sit in the eviction chairs on finale night when the votes are for a winner and you want to see your name come out of the box. It’s important to weigh all the options when choosing which player you believe in the most, so we are happy to present arguments for all three remaining players.

This article is all about Nicole. Make sure to check out why we think Holly and Jackson (coming soon!) deserve to win, too.

She’s been playing since day one

Nicole has been my favorite player this season, starting with her early refusal to lie down and die when Bella single-handedly made her a target, and *hopefully* ending with her being crowned the winner of BB21.

Early in the game, Nicole tried to make alliances, relying on two small groups to secure her future in the game. She aligned with Bella, Jess, and Kemi to form the Black Widow alliance, as well as Cliff and Ovi in the Fellowship of the Zing. Those that say that Nicole coasted the first half of the game seem to forget that Nicole was a pretty active player those first few weeks, trying to overcome her shyness to get to know her housemates and set herself up in alliances that can go the distance.

Sadly, Bella couldn’t keep two secrets at the same time, and purposely outed the Black Widow alliance to Gr8ful. From this moment on, Nicole had limited resources as far as allies go, but she did her best with who she pulled to her side. With her Black Widows outed, Nicole leaned toward her other friends in the house and formed Fellowship of the Zing.

These early moves prove Nicole didn’t enter the house with the intention of sliding along to the end. She wanted to play, but had to bide her time and stay out of the limelight until she could take things into her own hands.

Always the smallest target

With the exception of the week Bella threw Nicole to the wolves, Nicole skillfully avoided being Gr8ful’s main target. Her name was thrown around often, but it never stuck. This is the part of the game where you could argue that Nicole coasted. She had to fly under the radar all these weeks, especially since her name wasn’t drawn to compete in any Veto comps until week 10, AKA the last week that the Veto players are drawn instead of everyone being allowed to play. You can’t win comps you don’t get a chance to play in, plain and simple.

Since she wasn’t nominated, competing for Vetos, and/or winning HOH’s, Nicole had to find another way to keep herself involved in the game. She stepped into a role as peacemaker and friend to anyone who needed her. When someone lost all their allies and had no one else to turn to in the house, Nicole was always there.

She stepped in to be a friend to Sam when it was clear he was going home. She made tough choices when her allies were against each other on the block. She formed Cliff’s Angels with Cliff, Kat, and Jessica to shore up her ties to anyone she could. She established a close friendship with Nick, her most unlikely of allies. She didn’t have the most powerful friends, but Nicole was determined to do whatever she could to stay off the nomination block, and succeeded.

Winning when she had to

So, she was playing very early on, fighting her ass off in comps, but never pulling out a win. Honestly, this makes her game all that more admirable. Nicole stepped up in week 10, pulling off a crucial HOH win for this season’s double eviction episode. This is one of the most unpredictable weeks every year, because it is solely dependent upon who wins comps. There’s not enough time to scheme and plot to escape the block so the nominees have little control over their own fate.

Nicole then went on to win one of the most crucial Veto wins of the season, the BB Comics comp in Week 11, and would take the HOH week 12 when Holly threw it to her. Some say that having a comp thrown to you doesn’t mean you won. I say, it shows just how hard Nicole is playing this game. Once you get to six or seven people in the house, every comp is essential. Comp wins and power are the only way to assure you get to the final stages of the game, and if you are wielding enough power to get someone to promise to throw you an HOH comp and actually stick to their word, then you definitely earned that win.

And we are still three comps away from the end of this game. Three comps that Nicole absolutely has to win. In order to make it to those final two chairs, Nicole is going to have to win the final HOH, which means besting both Holly and Jackson in two of those three competitions. And all her fans are in her corner. She can absolutely win and take herself to the final two. She can assure her own safety for the Big Brother season 21 finale and decide who is going to sit next to her. I don’t think our Strong Island girl can lose if she gets there, so the game is definitely within her grasp.

Master of the social game

Big Brother is more than just winning competitions. In order to get to the end and WIN you have to have people on the jury, people you had a hand in sending out of the game, want to vote for you to win the money. In order to have more to say to these people than, “I won a bunch of competitions,” you are going to have to build meaningful connections to these people. Connections that will last weeks after they are sent to the jury house. Connections that will endure the onslaught of people trying to convince them that someone else deserves the win more.

In my opinion, THAT is the aspect of this game that Nicole has mastered, hands down. There are very few people in the house who left with a negative opinion of Nicole. And at least two of the last four evictees have walked out the door naming Nicole as the person they are pulling for. Nick, Christie, and Tommy all acknowledge that when it comes down to it, Nicole is doing what she has to do.

If she gets herself to the final two, I truly believe Nicole can’t be beat. I think both Jackson and Holly lose if Nicole is sitting in that chair. She has loyal allies in the jury house that I hope are laying the groundwork for her win, illustrating, much as I have, the path that Nicole has carefully tread to get to the end.

The best person for the job

More than anything, Nicole deserves to win this game because she has managed to make her way to the final four without turning into an unrecognizable version of herself. She walked into the house shy and awkward, expecting to be seen as an outsider from the get go. She befriended Kemi and Ovi from the start, proving her to be a good judge of character. She knows what she stands for and hasn’t been afraid to stand up to any of this season’s biggest bullies, even attempting to confront a roomful of people hell bent on dragging her good name through the mud.

In a season where racial slurs and nasty insults have been thrown around left and right, Nicole has kept her integrity intact. To be clear, she’s not afraid to call things like she sees them, especially when hypocrisy has run amuck, but she has never been mean or rude to anyone to save her own pride. We have watched her keep her own ego in check time and time again as she talks straight to the live feeders, reminding herself of how she got here and who helped her along the way.

And that takes a superhuman amount of integrity to maintain in the Big Brother house. Nicole has the strength of character to not get sucked into dangerous groupthink, or fall victim to peer pressure to talk badly about someone behind their back.

These are the qualities I want in a winner. A good game player. A person who never surrenders. A humble, yet feisty personality. A good friend. She has stayed humble and clear-headed every step of the way, putting game aside when she needed to, and focusing on it when it was most important.

All these reasons barely begin to scratch the surface of how much I’ve loved watching Nicole play Big Brother this season, but they more than describe why she’s the most deserving winner left standing.