Tai is good for audience and is getting a really nice edit since the very beginning, as a very active guy in his tribe who collected food and got his idol after lot of effort. Production portrayed him as a guy committed to his tribe, and to the game, loving animals, etc. Every aspect shown about him, was of a good 50-yo guy who is in Survivor after a hard life.
Based on that, his evolution in the game was being good until the swap and the merge made him trust Scot and be dependent on him to survive. After the merge, Tai never got the numbers because of having some ties with Scot (except when Beauty and Brawns were going to be together, which only lasted while Neal was evaced and then ended with Nick's vote off). So Tai was edited in a way that he was one of the kind and soulful characters of the season from the get go, and we have seen how he went to the dark side, to cause chaos. I think this is all what producers have set on our minds, because we got a lot of airtime from Tai in the early stages. So, after his bad actions such as putting the fire down, I feel lots of people in the audience was disappointed at his change, which he argued as being just part of a gameplay (I still don't support that part). His story seems to be complete only when he comes back to the bright side. This could, in fact, benefit him because his true colours shine bright after he wasn't convinced of being blinded by Scot and Jason's "villianism" and high-ego. So I think his story wasn't complete until he got a change in the good direction, and lots of people expected something to happen so the game didn't end up in Scot and Jason's hands. Tai was the one who blindsided them, so he left in the dust the "dark side" amending his previous mistakes
