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.
Luckily for Lulu, who are getting sorely whittled down, there will be a tribe swap next week! In the trailers, we hear Jeff Probst announcing the swap at a challenge, followed by a bunch of soundbites from players enthusing the switch up and asserting their new strategy as they adapt to this next stage of the game.
From looking closely at the trailers, here’s what I could gather about the new tribe lineups:
New Lulu will receive at least Bruce, Jake, and Katurah, three former Belo members, as they are all seen wearing a yellow buff. The trailer also shows a scene of Kaleb shaking hands with Jake, hinting that they will be on the same tribe as well. Each new tribe will have five players each, so there’ll be one more player joining Lulu that we can’t confirm from the released previews for now.
Even though there’s a former Belo majority on this new tribe, I don’t think we’ll see them all continue working together. For a few episodes now, we’ve seen Katurah get annoyed by Bruce’s antics. I don’t think she’ll take a strike any time soon, but it seems that she’ll subtly sow the seeds with other players to eventually vote Bruce out. She’s had modest success on Belo, at least with Kellie, and I predict that she’ll be able to orchestrate this come the merge. For now, if this new Lulu tribe goes to tribal council, I’m leaning towards Jake being voted out as he may be seen as overplaying on all sides.
On the new Reba tribe, we have Dee, Sifu, Julie, and J. Maya, who were formerly also from Reba, joined by Sean, the lone player from Lulu. On paper, Sean is definitely in trouble as the odd one out. The preview trailers echo this sentiment as well, as we see Sifu, Julie, and Dee reaching into a yellow bag that has to be Sean’s, likely searching if he has an advantage or an immunity idol.
It’s certainly an uphill battle for Sean to form alliances with people who have been together longer. However, I think he’ll be able to do so, as we know that the former Reba players are fractured with Dee and Julie in an alliance, while Sifu and J. Maya were excluded. Previous episodes have highlighted Dee and Julie positively, and if Sean is able to identify this, I believe he’ll be able to navigate his way past some votes, outlasting perhaps Sifu and J. Maya on this new tribe.
From the trailers, we don’t really know too much about who is on the new Belo tribe. Emily and Austin are seen wearing new blue buffs, particularly excited for this switch-up. But we also catch glimpses of Brando, Katurah, Kellie, and Kendra with blue buffs, though these scenes are likely to be from before the swap, as we know Katurah will get swapped to Lulu.
I’ll be interested in how Emily forms new alliances with different people. It’s not a complete clean slate for her, though, as all players would have noted her calling Bruce out at the opening challenge back from the premiere episode. I’m hopeful, as she’s definitely very strategic and will be able to pitch her worth to other players. Perhaps Austin will see the opportunity of Emily as a free agent, share the information of his Beware Advantage idol with her, to gain enough security so that he can risk his vote to extend the validity of the immunity idol till the merge.
What do you think will happen as the tribes swap this week? Leave a comment with your predictions below!
Written by
I don’t see new lulu going to tribal they seem to strong. If new Reba goes I agree that Sean would be able to play the middle. But i think it is more Julia Dee that would be in trouble. If new belo goes to tribal I think Emily will be able to be the swing vote between the two sides and I think Austin will be able to real her in and send one of the og belo out rather it be Brando or Kendra. Kellie might be on that tribe but I don’t see her going