Welcome to Season 45’s Next Time On Survivor weekly feature on the Inside Survivor site! If you’re new around here, I’m Steph from sunny, tropical, humid Singapore. This is a tiny space where I give my best attempts at understanding preview trailers and make my predictions for the show’s next episodes.
Episode 7’s NTOS trailer begins with an ominous prediction by Bruce, “I see the Reba-Belo war coming.” Indeed, although the tribe voted unanimously twice at the last tribal council, much of the interactions at camp do seem to point towards the original Reba and Belo tribes keeping together for safety. In the episode, Bruce talks about keeping the Belo numbers together and even tells Kaleb, an original Lulu whom he thinks is now working with Belo, not to fraternise with the Reba players.
Another prominent alliance would be the four players originally from Reba: Austin, Drew, Julie, and Dee. At this point, they are sitting rather comfortably with both numbers on their side and a bunch of advantages between them. Austin has an idol from the beware advantage and the amulet, which, when played with Kellie’s currently becomes a vote steal advantage. And Drew has the Safety Without Power advantage, which allows him to leave tribal early before voting.
Even though the two women may not fully trust Drew and Austin, I think they’ll play a wiser, patient game not to actively go against this stack of advantages. I’m not sure if I can say the same for Drew and Austin. Within the alliance, they hold the power of advantages. I can see them blindsiding the women to advance their own pair.
Moving on to the big announcement of the trailers — at the challenge, Jeff announces that “two people will be safe, two people will be going home.” Based on past seasons, the players are likely to be split into two teams of six to compete for individual immunity amongst themselves. The team with the last person standing will go to tribal after the other team, but they will both vote one person out.
From scrutinising the trailer, you can make out how the teams are divided:
- Red team: Kaleb, Jake, Dee, Julie, Katurah, Austin
- Blue team: Kellie, Kendra, Sifu, Bruce, Emily, Drew
The players will be competing in the Get A Grip challenge, a classic dating back to early single-digit Survivor seasons. In another part of the trailer, Jake tells Katurah, “I want to disarm Dee,” which perhaps indicates that Dee wins immunity on the red team and is safe from being voted out. In this case, Jake may be referring to Julie or Austin as his target to weaken the Reba numbers.
On the other hand, Dee tells Austin, “Kaleb’s gotta go.” After the Shot in the Dark stunt and convincing tribal pitches he pulled off in the last episode, I think Kaleb’s going to be a constant threat in the game. It’s going to be an uphill battle for him, so the question is whether he’s able to evade attention like his original plan.
For the blue team, we get a shot of Kendra telling Drew, “I want Bruce out; that is it.” It turns out that Belo isn’t as strong as Bruce thinks. While I do think Bruce will eventually get blindsided by his Belo alliance, he has some unfinished business with Katurah, so I don’t think he’ll be the vote for this episode. Rather, I think Sifu will be the eventual target for this blue team lineup, as we’ve not seen anyone really close to him, and Reba has been shown to be willing to cut Sifu off without much fuss. Down in numbers, Emily and Drew would work with three Belo players to vote Sifu out.
For my prediction on the red team, I think it’ll be back and forth between Kaleb and Julie, but ultimately, I think Julie will be voted out. Kaleb will definitely be targeted for being a social player and possibly a relative challenge threat. However, I feel that his warning during Episode 6’s tribal council about the threat levels of Dee and Julie is enough to spook some players to make it a priority to weaken that alliance. As mentioned earlier, I can see Austin (and Drew) blindsiding Dee and Julie. It’s a possibility that Austin makes a move in the coming episode.
What do you think is going to happen in Episode 7? Leave your predictions in the comments!
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If that division is correct then I agree with you about who goes home. From the red side Julie is the only one I see going out now. I think Austin wins the challenge thou.
On blue I think the vote will go towards Bruce but he will use an idol and Sifu goes. I think Kellie wins the challenge.