Welcome to Season 46’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.
It’s time for the merge! The NTOS preview heavily features this new stage of the game, showing players reading the tree mail announcement and getting excited to meet each other. However, this exhilaration won’t last for long. As Q rightly points out, “There’s cracks all around this island.”
Even though Yanu is in the minority with only three players left, it doesn’t mean that all hope is lost for them and that they’ll be picked off by the other two tribes.
The most immediate fallout we’ll see would be from Siga. In the last episode, Moriah was left out of the vote, thinking that Maria and Charlie were working with her. She likely doesn’t feel that she can trust the other Siga players any longer, and the trailer seems to suggest this too, showing a quick shot of Moriah and Charlie looking a little tense.
I think Moriah is going to start forming new relationships with the other players while somewhat still awkwardly trying to maintain the good vibes she’s been having with Siga. I wouldn’t be surprised if Moriah untethers herself from Siga sooner than later.
At the journey last episode, we witnessed Hunter, Q, and Tim start an alliance, agreeing to rope in one person each to form a group of six. Hunter chose Tevin, as they’ve been close and on the same page with their strategy on Nami thus far. Q said he’ll bring in Tiffany—they’ve already been identified as a pair, outed by Bhanu earlier when he went on a separate journey and told Ben and Liz all about Yanu’s tribe dynamics.
The incredulous couple presented was Tim saying he’s closest to Maria in Siga. From what we know about the tribe, I wouldn’t have paired the two. Rather, I would have thought that Tim’s closest ally was Ben. Not unexpectedly, perhaps he was deliberately obscuring his true alliances from Q and Hunter, whom he had just met. I don’t think this will significantly affect him, as things will be shaken up much more drastically. And after all, Maria and Tim did vote together last tribal council to blindside Jem—it wouldn’t be that far a stretch to assure a Tim and Maria pairing.
In the NTOS trailer, we get some quick soundbites from the players—Hunter reveals to Q that Liz hates Soda, and Q comments about Venus. It’s very typical of merge episodes where all players are sussing each other out in the new stage of the game. We can expect lots of discussions, plans to one up and stay ahead of other plans, and even some messy chaos.
For the Nami players who have never been to tribal council, tensions have been swelling, and I think it’s about to tip over. There’s that loose thread of a Soda blindside, which we may see come to fruition in this episode. And there’s also a high certainty we’ll see Venus jump ship as she’s been feeling at the bottom, unable to connect with the rest of Nami. I predict that either Soda or Venus will be voted out next. Other players will see the cracks as an opportunity to weaken Nami’s majority numbers, and I don’t believe Nami will force their full strength to stay together.
Of course, we don’t know what new or repeated twists lie ahead that’ll inevitably switch up the game. What do you think will happen at the merge? Leave a comment with your predictions!
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I think either Liz or Moriah will go home. Cause I don’t get a feeling of longevity from either one. Or Tim for that matter