Welcome to Season 42’s Next Time On Survivor feature on Inside Survivor! This is a tiny section where I breakdown the trailers and any other previews and give my personal predictions of the week’s upcoming episode.
This week’s NTOS trailer jumps right into what seems to be Omar and Maryanne finding an idol or advantage on Taku. At least, that’s what astounded reactions in the jungle typically reveal—but you never know for sure with Maryanne’s dramatic expressions. In any case, Maryanne then goes on to talk about how she got “bait and switched” in a confessional.
To me, this points towards the mechanics of the beware advantage, which offers the opportunity for an immunity idol, but with hefty terms and conditions to activate it. This would mean Maryanne would most likely not have a vote at Tribal until the merge or until the idols are activated when all three players say their given phrases. As Mike described it in Episode 2 when he found Vati’s beware advantage, “It’s a blessing, and it’s a curse.”
In a tribe of four, losing the power to vote is extremely risky. Luckily for Maryanne, it does seem that she has options to work with, seeing how her tribe unanimously voted for Marya and chose to save her at the last Tribal. Here, we see her potentially sharing the information with Omar, and I think she will share it with Jonathan too. She also has an extra vote, earned from risking her vote correctly at the summit in Episode 1. With these two advantages and her relationships, I’m not terribly worried about her game at this point.
Next, we are given a look at another comical exchange between Mike and Daniel on Vati. There seems to be yet more confusion about the location of the beware advantage idol, with Mike telling Daniel, “I gave you the whole thing,” and Daniel replying that he doesn’t have it. In a confessional, Mike then exclaims, “The idol is missing. I almost stroked out right there.” We could attribute this to him misplacing the idol, and it won’t be a stretch since he almost forgot where he buried it in the previous episode.
However, I’m wondering if Daniel has more of a hand in this. We saw him scheming with Chanelle that he “prefer that the idols never get activated.” He’s a strategic guy, and I wouldn’t put it past him to trick and bamboozle Mike into misplacing the advantage.
Finally, both the NTOS and preview trailers show a water challenge giving much trouble to the players. We see huge waves and choppy waters, and Jeff narrates, “It is one of the most turbulent days ever seen on Survivor.” Chanelle grips tightly onto a wooden pole, and Rocksroy shouts for help as his head bobs around the rungs of a ladder prop. Jeff then calls out to “both tribes” and says, “we’ve never done this in the history of Survivor.”
The word that jumps out here is “both.” I believe this means that one tribe has already won the challenge or is very far ahead at least. Seeing how most of the players struggling in the water are from Ika or Vati, I think Taku has likely finished the challenge at that point. Perhaps due to safety reasons, Jeff puts a pause on the challenge and lets both tribes move on to their next portions out of the water.
Between Ika and Vati, I do want to see Vati go to Tribal since we haven’t seen them vote a tribemate out yet. And I would also like to see how the Daniel and Mike idol strategy plays out. It seems to me that Vati is split into three pairs—Daniel and Chanelle, Hai and Lydia, Jenny and Mike. I can see Daniel working with Mike as well, keeping him close since he confided in him, and voting out either one of Lydia or Hai. I’m leaning towards Lydia to keep relative challenge strength.
My prediction is that Mike isn’t too great a threat to the tribe, and they let him stick around longer despite more than half the tribe knowing about his advantage. On the other hand, we have Jenny returning from the summit, and we haven’t seen the tribe reacting towards her yet. It could be inconsequential, but I think it might factor in some of the decisions made. Nonetheless, with the current preview of Vati that we have, my guess is that Lydia is eliminated in Episode 3.
Leave a comment with your predictions!
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I like Maryanne. She’s upbeat, funny. I’d like to see her win, or at the very least, be in the final 3 & get some votes if she doesn’t win.
I think Mary will win this. Mike is giving me runner up vibes