#heather's plot armour was a meta thing in island but an in-universe canonical aspect of wt

[total-drama-brainrot]

What do you think of the Heather was kept in the game by the producers for ratings/drama theory?

What do you mean, theory? That's literally canon.

In World Tour, at least. Heather's contunied "survival" through Island is mostly happenstance and, from a meta standpoint, plot armour, but in-universe it's mostly a lot of coincidences resulting in her not being voted out from her team.

In World Tour? The only thing keeping Heather around was the fact that her team always seemed to miraculously lose when that episode's challenge was a rewards challenge.

Alejandro's sabotaging of Team Victory helped out with that a bit, but a lot of Heather's "luck" in World Tour fell solely on the shoulders of the producers wanting to keep her around. She's a conflict generator, the conflict generator, and that paired with her looks and her entertaining personality make her a "rating's jewel". Of course they want to keep her around for as long as possible, and it just so happens that Chris already established that rewards challenges won't be disclosed until after the losers were determined. Ergo, should Heather's team lose and inevitably vote her off, Chris can just claim it was a rewards challenge the whole time.

It's not just that though. There's other, smaller instances of favouritism towards Heather in World Tour that lend credence to this.

Her team got lost in the Amazon? The "zing-zings" worship her as a goddess and, oh, give her a golden tooth to replace the one Leshawna knocked out of her mouth the previous episode - convenient that they would go out of their way to "fix" Heather's appearence, it's almost as if her looks are a big part of her appeal (in-universe) and therefore the show's viewership.

Chris outright tells Alejandro that he's not allowed to have DJ join their team, but has no qualms about Heather cozying up to him throughout Newfoundland - implying he was more than happy for Heather to recruit DJ (a known strong contestant) to her side, making her elimination more unlikely.

This isn't so much a theory as it is just looking deeper at the source material itself; the dots areall there, and it takes very little effort to connect them. The producers wanted to keep Heather around because she's good for ratings and good at causing drama - the show's whole brand. In doing so enabled her antagonist-to-antihero arc against Alejandro which only generated more audience engagement (and consequently avenue) and incentivisined them to keep pulling strings to ensure she stayed on the show for as long as possible.