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.
Episode 3’s NTOS trailer begins with a voice-over confessional from Venus saying, “People think Hunter’s a really sweet dude, but I can see right through that facade.”
Extending upon what was presented in Episode 2, Venus again doesn’t seem to be getting along with her tribe. She shares extensively how she isn’t able to connect with them, so this confessional in the trailer just cements that sentiment.
Perhaps Venus is right about Hunter. Maybe he’s playing a dangerously charismatic social game so that the tribe will want to keep him around, and maybe that’s all a front. Even if she’s right, I’m quite certain she doesn’t have the social capital needed to convince the other players and turn them against Hunter, who is right now someone comfortably in the majority alliance.
This potential clash between Venus and Hunter that the NTOS is hinting at may hence be more one-sided and will be to the detriment of the former if rumours start spreading that she’s targeting Hunter.
Notably, though, Episode 2 highlighted an alliance between Venus and Randen. Despite initially not wanting to trust her, Randen confided in Venus and shared that he found the Beware Advantage. While this scene gave Venus some hope to move forward on her tribe, I’m thinking this is going to come back to bite Randen, as there’s been so much foreboding that Venus isn’t on the same page as the rest of Nami.
If Nami goes to tribal council, I predict it’s between these two players who will be targeted. Right now, Venus seems like the obvious choice, so perhaps the players will choose Randen instead to neutralise the threat of the Beware Advantage and to keep Venus around as an outsider that can be easily voted out later on.
The next highlight of the NTOS preview spotlights Bhanu telling Kenzie, “I need some help, Kenzie,” and immediately cuts to his confessional calling her a “mermaid dragon.” For me, Bhanu is really difficult to predict. I’m not sure if the cry for help is a front or an act; I’m not even sure if Mermaid Dragon is a good or bad descriptor in his books. From tribal councils, we see he’s not the best at keeping plans a secret and acts on a different wavelength as the rest of his tribemates.
On one hand, he perhaps plays the game in a very forthcoming and guileless manner. However, he also has a lot of head knowledge about playing Survivor. We can’t rule out the possibility that this preview scene may be him acting vulnerable to appeal to Kenzie, who was identified as the one running the Yanu tribe at the moment.
Nonetheless, I’m more interested in how convincing Bhanu is to Kenzie and whether she’ll keep him around as a potential number. I think it’s safe to say that Bhanu is under the heels of the rest of the Yanu tribe. I don’t expect him to make it another day if Yanu loses the immunity challenges and heads back to tribal council again.
What do you think will happen in Episode 3? Leave a comment with your predictions!
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I don’t think orange will go to tribal but if they do I think Liz will be the one to go. Either cause of idol fear. Tevin, Hunter, soda tell Liz the vote is Venus and Vote her or Randen deflects votes.
I also don’t think Purple will go again. Cause if the have 2 seasons in a row of one tribe getting destroyed in the beginning it would be horrible tribe making haha.
So I think Green will go and it will be between Tim and Moriah with Charlie and Marie choosing to get rid of Tim.