Welcome to Season 43’s Next Time On Survivor feature on the Inside Survivor site! It’s a tiny space on the internet where I look at episode preview trailers, attempt to decipher them, and give my thoughts on what I think may happen in the upcoming episode.
I found it quite difficult to figure out where everyone stood this week. But we can only assume that if information isn’t presented to us in the episode, it’s not relevant to the story at the moment. From the NTOS preview, we get insight into an emerging alliance of seven as James states, “We have seven, that can take us far,” while Jesse agrees excitedly in a confessional.
Based on how the votes fell in the last tribal, we can assume this seven refers to James, Karla, Cassidy, Ryan, Cody, Jesse, and Sami, all of whom voted for Dwight. At face value, we see the original Coco players sticking together, and Cody and Jesse seemingly cemented as a pair who have been voting together since the early days on Vesi. I’m not too sure how Sami got on board this group of seven; I had thought he was closely aligned with Gabler.
A majority of seven may be the most straightforward way ahead, but things are never so simple on Survivor. The next scene of the preview immediately shows Sami telling Owen and Jeanine, his former Baka mates, that “That’s not the way the game should go.” Noelle and Sami then strike a deal, and the preview ends with Sami saying in a confessional, “I’m trying to set myself up to win this game.”
Clearly, Sami is being highlighted as stirring the pot, not content with the seven majority — perhaps because he’ll be the only one formerly from Baka while the rest have closer allies from their pre-merge tribes. We could infer that Sami’s scooping up those left out of the vote last week: Jeanine, Owen, Gabler, and Noelle. I think the plan here is to bring in Cassidy, as she’s seen in agreement with Jeanine that they “could do damage.”
My prediction is that Cassidy will be the swing vote in this coming episode. So far, it seems that her closest ally is Karla, and I think they’ll choose between the two factions. Perhaps the target will be on James or Ryan, their former Coco tribemates — especially because Ryan was confidently about to vote Cassidy out with Geo in Episode 5. However, I’m leaning towards James being the choice swinging Cassidy & Karla over from the majority seven and the eventual player voted out this week, as he’s a bigger target with his newly attained Knowledge is Power advantage.
In this age of Survivor, it’s safe to say there are more swing votes of people jumping between alliances than unwavering solid groups working together across multiple votes. The upcoming episode may kick this off for the season with Sami, Cassidy, and maybe Karla voting against the alliance of seven they were just working with in Episode 7.
Leave your thoughts and predictions in the comments below!
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