Survivor 30 Ghosts: The Returnee Season That Almost Happened

I hope it’s just 20 players and like a modified redemption island. I hate the thought of 30 players going out there and 10 of them, some of which are probably huge fans, end up with no real shot to play the game. Who would vote for someone at final tribal that they have never met and entered the game on day 37? What do they have to show? It sounds fun, but only if it is modified from the 30 player version.

Wow. Thanks for these awesome articles!

Sounds like a less creative Stranded with Refuge if you ask me.

This is actually a really cool idea, I think. Not perfect, but I’d like to see it play out at least once.

I hope someone at Survivor learns that “willpower” is one word (as opposed to One World).
The best diction of the whole document has to be “mentally loopy”.

I think it could work with some tweaking. I would have the Ghost Island castaways show up at the IC and all 3 tribes compete. If the Ghost Island tribe finishes first, the two losing tribes both go to tribal council and vote someone out. The 2 losing tribes go to TC and the vote someone out. The player voted out from the 3rd place team is eliminated, the person voted out of the 2nd place tribe goes to Ghost Island and picks someone to replace them on their tribe. The new inhabitant of GI would compete as part of the GI tribe and could potentially enter the game again. If you are eliminated from the game, you are out for good and either go on the pre-jury trip or join the jury.

I like this much better than having 10 people that are hardly seen and then reenter the game.

Probst hyped up and seemed to like that season tho. 😀

What if someone from Ghost Island gets back in Day 37 then reaches Day 39, the jury won’t have any idea or basis about his or her gameplay.

I think the whole concept is absolutely amazing; with one flaw. 🙁 I know, there’s always something to complain about. XD
Anyway, here’s my problem. I’ll take you through the entire game within a couple paragraphs and show you how I think things will play out. Bear with me throughout this long comment. 🙂
Day 1: The people who choose to live on Ghost Island (I imagine more will stay than leave, at least initially.) leave the rest of the castaways, and begin their journey. The audience subtly roots for those players while still subconsciously following the real game. It would almost be like having a normal season with three tribes. You would have edits from both competing tribes and then Ghost Island.
Beyond that, I predict that 25% of the people on Ghost Island will quit before the merge, and then 75% of whoever is left after losing the merge re-entry challenge will quit as well. So I fear that it will be very anti-climactic, and the player that have gone through far more than the other tribes and the audience is rooting for, will just quit, and leave the audience disappointed.

And finally: The biggest problem I have. The amount of time for the Ghost Island survivor to play the actual game of Survivor.
If you really pay attention to Survivor, and it really isn’t actually that hard to notice, but normally, when there is a tribe swap or a merge, the tribe with fewer members or the people swapped to another tribe and have the lowest number of members in their original tribe in the new tribe, they are immediately considered “The Minority”. This is because, if you want to take the easiest road, which most players do, it makes sense to get rid of all the people you don’t know anything about and are bound to be unpredictable, and the battle it out between your original alliances once the minority is gone. It allows you to get further in the game, as well as giving you more time to decide where you are headed once it comes time to start breaking up the majority alliances in preparation for the final 6 or 7.
With this theory in mind, you tell me what chances you think a player has of winning if they come into the game on Day 37, literally giving them roughly 24 hours to talk to the people they have not even seen the entire game besides at the merge re-entry challenge. It just doesn’t make sense!
How in the SURVIVOR REALM could a castaway who has only been in the game “officially” for 24 hours, convince the remaining 4 or 3 players to vote out one of the people they have been working with theoretically the entire game to get this far, in exchange for taking them to FT?
Trick question 🙂
I talked super negatively in that paragraph to try to confuse you, let’s see if you caught on.
Despite my negative connotation, it actually makes perfect sense.
Don’t get it? Answer this question and THEN see if you do.

You just won final immunity. You and your closest ally have to decide if you want to take one person or another to FT.
On one hand, you have your other closest ally who the entire jury knows about, and the jury knows how they play, what moves they have made, how they did in challenges, what they did for the tribe, if they were strategic, if they Outwitted, Outplayed, and Outlasted, if they were trustworthy, if they were a snake, if they were a rat, if they blindsided their closest allies, if they were smart, if they played idols, or even found any, and in short, THEY KNOW HOW THAT PERSON PLAYED THE GAME.
On the other hand, you have someone who the jury knows absolutely NOTHING about, except for the final member. Literally the ONLY member of the jury that would know ANYTHING about how the Ghost Island play plays, even at all, would be the member that got voted out at this very tribal we are talking about.
So, you have a jury of 10 members, (roughly) and one of them knows just a little bit, 24 hours to be exact, about this Ghost Player.

WHO WOULD YOU TAKE TO FT?

Obviously, you take the Ghost Island player, because no one is going to vote for them. Very low chances. Why would you vote for someone you know nothing about? You don’t know what game they played, they didn’t have to form a single alliance or be part of a single voting block until Day 37, and virtually had to Survive 1 TRIBAL COUNCIL.
There’s no way in Survivor hell that they are going to win the game.
Do you see my point?

So what has this super long comment taught you?
Basically, this season would be anticlimactic.

The Day 37 Ghost Island returnee will almost 100% get to FT, but that’s only because the rest of the players in the Final 3 or 2 know that the returnee will receive little to no votes, most likely none.

So in the end, the audience will be let down by a finale that toggles between the two players who actually played the game, leaving the returnee to sit there thinking about the 36 days they wasted in mental anguish on that island, only to come back from fighting like hell to get to this place and finish in 3rd, with 0 jury votes.

Hopefully all that helped you see my point, and I feel like it would be a very large hit to Survivor’s ratings. Less people would view season 37 because no one will feel good after watching the season 36 finale.

If you disagree, please reply to this comment, I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Again, this is Survivor Bartlett, headed back to camp. 🙂

I want to see this season so bad. Unfortunately, it sounds like the actual Ghost Island won’t be like this Ghost Island. Sure, it has flaws. But the idea of players trying to convince each other to quit is a new idea that we’ve never seen before (unless you count Hatch-Sue in All-Stars). This is how Redemption Island should have been. Sad that it’s probably going into the can for good.