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 6 is going to mark another turning point in the game — it’s the merge! Or are we getting a fake merge/mergetory situation that has been happening in the new era? In any case, we’re at least at the point where the remaining players are no longer in separate tribes and camps. Amidst all the celebration of reaching another milestone that we see in the NTOS trailer and promo previews, there will be chaos as the 13 players figure out how to survive another vote.
Almost all the trailers feature Sifu up to his usual antics, aiming air fireballs at the other players as if he were in Naruto or Dragon Ball Z. At this point, I think we’re going to continue seeing Sifu as this almost caricature-like personality rather than a prominent player strategising. There was a little segment of him plotting revenge after getting blindsided two votes ago, but I feel like he’s just going to be depicted as an entertaining character, not as consequential to the new merged dynamics.
I can see Sifu being targeted as an easy vote in the next episode as he does not seem to have close ties to the players he’s been on tribes with and was even actively targeted by J. Maya, Dee, and Julie a few episodes ago.
Speaking of the players from Reba, the next episode will see Austin, Drew, Dee, and Julie reunited after the short split at the tribe switch. In the trailer, Drew says, “We’re the strongest four in the game. We’ve entered a new stage of the game, and we can just squash them.” Pretty over-confident, I feel, but Drew is right as this alliance has been consistently emphasised over most of the previous episodes.
Even though it’s fractured, with Dee and Julie not fully trusting the guys, I think they’ll tide through a couple of difficult votes with one another. I can see them solidly together for the next episode, keeping strength in relatively stable numbers to get out someone (from the original Belo?) they are not so sure about.
Episode 5’s tribal council concluded with Emily, the swing vote, choosing to side with Austin and Drew, leaving Kendra on the outs, as her only other former Belo tribemate Brando got sent home. In the preview, Kendra declares, “I want to get revenge,” likely speaking about Emily, who blindsided her. With this in mind, I can see a possible continuation of Reba vs. Belo from the last episode, with both sides trying to pick up Kaleb now, who probably sits in the middle as the swing.
In the NTOS trailer, Bruce tells Kaleb rather dramatically, “You are powerful right now; you just might not realise it.” However, Kaleb immediately undercuts this with a humourous confessional, “I’m not Batman; I’m the Canadian,” perhaps deliberately downplaying his importance. I think it’s clear that Kaleb’s a smart guy, he’s probably trying to fade into the background while louder players fight it out, laying low and open to working with anyone.
As much as it seems like it’s Reba vs. Belo as mentioned, it’s always just outwardly and for the early conversations of the merge where no one really wants to make the first move to backstab their original tribe alliance. I’m sure we’ll see a couple of pairs form across the Belo-Reba divide in Episode 6. I predict we’ll finally see something actionable come out of the Bruce vs. Katurah feud, which means that Belo may be split up and start taking one of their own out.
To sum up, from my rather scattered predictions, I see either of two situations happening: first, we may get a rather simple Belo vs. Reba dynamic as players play safe with the people they’re familiar with. In this case, Reba has a slight numbers advantage, with Emily already choosing Austin and Drew. The second situation, which I think is the more likely scenario, is that we’ll see a cumulation of more personal moves — Bruce vs. Katurah, or even J. Maya vs Sifu.
What do you think is going to happen in Episode 6? Leave your predictions in the comments!
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I think Sifu will be voted out.
I think it will get a mergetory type thing and OG Reba will turn on one of their own to save someone like julie from going and either j maya or sifu will go.
If it is regular vote I still think a Reba will go cause I think Emily and Kaleb will want to keep the sides more even