Australian Survivor continues to deliver pure chaos in its eighth episode as the Rebels 2.0 embark on the messiest tribal council of the season so far. Forget about “Revenge with a capital ‘R,'” this episode is absolute “Scramble with a capital ‘S.”
It all begins with the fallout from the Viola blindside. Mark is seething under the surface but keeps his cool in camp. He convinces his Middle-Aged Mafia compatriots that he understands the move and is ready to plow on forward with them. In reality, revenge is on his mind, and he will stop at nothing until he gets that sweet, sweet payback.
Mark’s first move is approaching Alex, the other person left out of the Viola blindside. They quickly agree to split up the Kitty and Caroline pair, with Mark saying Kitty is the glue that keeps Eden and Caroline together. Mark also cements this new alliance with Alex with a name, Yucatán, which completely baffles Alex; honestly, I’m not entirely sure why Mark named this alliance after a region in Mexico either.
Valeria is NOT happy #SurvivorAU pic.twitter.com/DpiWMydsyc
— SurvivorAU (@Survivor_AU) February 12, 2024
But for the Kitty blindside to work, Mark and Alex need the other OG Rebels — Sarah and Rianna — on board, too. This becomes the sticking point of the episode. Sarah and Rianna are a little too pleased to be “bargaining chips” or, as Sarah says, “hot property.” But they get a little too caught up in playing all the options.
Before the scrambling begins, there is an Immunity Challenge to tackle and, of course, the Titans’ reaction to Viola’s elimination. Viola, in particular, is shocked. In fact, she’s not just shocked but pissed off and begins interrogating the Rebels to find out who orchestrated the blindside. Naturally, the Rebels tribemates keep schtum.
The Titans win the Immunity Challenge after an impressive come-from-behind victory, with Aileen and art director Scott proving invaluable in the final puzzle portion. This puts another pause in the impending showdown between Feras and Kirby, who are both using their own methods to warm up to the OG Titan outsiders.
Back at the Rebels beach, “s**t is hitting the fan,” as Rianna perfectly puts it. Mark puts his operation revenge into motion, with part one being to get the Middle-Aged Mafia to split the votes. This part comes together relatively easily as they decide to split 3-3 on Rianna and Sarah, roping in Alex and Jayden as extra votes. Mark even offers himself as a decoy, letting the other Mafia members tell Sarah and Rianna to vote for him.
The tribes pulled out the big guns for this challenge! #SurvivorAU pic.twitter.com/PbtJiCJeeV
— SurvivorAU (@Survivor_AU) February 12, 2024
With the split in effect, Mark goes into phase two, which is to convince Alex, Sarah, and Rianna to vote with him against Kitty. Alex doesn’t need much convincing, but the two women are harder to pull in. Rianna and Sarah’s reservations are understandable; they just voted with Kitty and Caroline and appeared to be building trust. Why would they want to immediately scupper that by jumping ship to Mark?
This is when all hell begins to break loose. Sarah and Rianna decide to snitch and sell out Mark’s plan to Kitty. But there’s an issue… Kitty doesn’t believe them. I’m surprised Kitty was so quick to shoot down the idea that Mark could be plotting against her, especially after she’d just blindsided his good friend Viola. Regardless, Kitty tells Mark and the Middle-Aged Mafia that the girls are trying to cause dissension.
With various stories going around, it leads to plenty of awkward conversations with nobody copping to the truth. Sarah, in particular, becomes frazzled with all the contradicting tales. Still, despite their snitching, Mark still intends to go ahead with the move, except he changes the target to Caroline, thinking that’ll be more appealing to Sarah and Rianna. He also clues them in on having an idol.
Pink buff = rebel pirate ☠️ #SurvivorAU pic.twitter.com/zNa54KBChc
— SurvivorAU (@Survivor_AU) February 12, 2024
Even with this extra assurance, the OG Rebel ladies are still umming and ahhing over what to do. So, Alex tries to cement this new foursome by letting Rianna and Sarah know that the Middle-Aged Mafia’s real plan is to split the votes between them. However, once again, Sarah blows things up by asking Eden if what Alex said is true.
At this point, Sarah really only has herself to blame for how things ultimately go down. Paranoia takes over, and all her running around lands her in hot water. She doesn’t get a straight answer from Eden and Kitty when she asks if the split vote plan is true. And Mark still refuses to admit to plotting against the Middle-Aged Mafia.
This all leads to a chaotic tribal council where Sarah and Rianna are still weighing options going into the vote. Realizing she’s potentially on the chopping block, Sarah commits to voting with Alex and Mark against Caroline, but Rianna is clearly having second thoughts. Sarah even senses that Rianna isn’t on board as JLP is asking questions.
Uh oh… ♂️ #SurvivorAU pic.twitter.com/sJ9vPzDRQ6
— SurvivorAU (@Survivor_AU) February 12, 2024
Amid all the confusion, Eden gets a strange feeling that the split vote isn’t as secure as he’d hoped, and so he makes a last-second switch. The film buff whispers to Caroline, Kitty, and Jayden to vote for Sarah, abandoning the split and piling the votes on one person. This ends up being an astute decision, as Caroline cops three votes from Mark, Sarah, and Alex, meaning she’d have gone home had the original split vote gone ahead.
Mark burns his idol despite only receiving one vote from Rianna, who decides to stick with the plan Caroline and Kitty told her. This sends Sarah home with four votes, leaving Mark in the game to explain his attempted blindside on his Mafia mates. It’s not been a good week for the former diplomat, who lost his closest ally yesterday and now plotted a foiled revenge plan on his old alliance.
The silver lining for Mark is that the Middle-Aged Mafia did technically strike first by voting out Viola. So he could possibly play it off as tat-for-tat and now we’re even. But Caroline and Mark are both smart, cunning players, and regardless of what they might tell each other to their faces, I can’t see them putting their daggers away until one or the other is gone.
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