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.
The NTOS trailer begins with Tiffany admonishing Q, saying, “Are you stupid?” and “Why won’t you give me a heads up?” Very much typical reactions from someone if their ally goes rogue during tribal council. In another scene, Kenzie is similarly mad at Q, displaying her frustration more explicitly than we’ve seen in previous episodes.
We’re going to be seeing the fallout of the last tribal council, where Q made one of the whackiest, most absurd, and honestly just plain cringy moves. He just gave up and asked to be voted out of the game. It’s really a sad move, especially when he had alliances — plural! Q was rather well-positioned with the alliance of six, as well as with Tiffany and Kenzie, his former Yanu tribemates.
His move was unexpected of a Survivor player, especially of the new era, yet so characteristic of his behaviour we’ve seen since the start of the season. He’s thrown in the towel at least once before, not caring all that much about how his decisions will affect the rest of his tribe or alliance. For this, I don’t see how he will recover and get his alliance to trust him again. As predicted last week, Q will get voted out for being a chaotic, volatile burden to others. He’s my pick for the next player out, no matter what. I don’t see how anyone will be able to trust him moving forward and put up with his self-indulgence.
The next portion of the trailer once again showcases Maria and Charlie discussing strategy, cementing to me that they will go far together. In the scene, Maria says, “I need her gone”. My guess is that she’s referring to Kenzie as the Tiffany and Kenzie pairing is getting more obvious over time. Maria may want Kenzie gone so that Tiffany has fewer options and will prioritise the alliance they have. After Q revealed that Tiffany has an idol in the last episode, Maria and Charlie may see it even more pressing to diminish Tiffany’s power by voting out her closest ally.
Finally, we see Venus talking to Q and Hunter and then expressing her annoyance in a confessional: “This bumbling buffoon, these two dumb-dumb meatheads.” It’s yet another instance of players not listening to Venus’ strategy and proposals. You got to feel a little bad that nobody wants to work with her all this while. But she must have made a really poor impression at the beginning and is now struggling to shake it off nine episodes in.
I’m quite certain Venus will just be a floater, hanging around and hoping to get people on board to make a move with her. She’s not really on anyone’s radar, as she lacks agency in the game. As last tribal council showed, she’s the tribe’s back-up vote. It’ll be useful for the other players to keep her around as they know they can always pull votes together to get her out any time when it’s a safer, more comfortable choice amidst the chaos.
I think Venus will try to get Hunter out in the next episode. In another preview trailer, she delivers the line: “If you write my name down, you best believe I’m going to return the favour.” Hunter and Tevin were the only ones who voted for Venus at the last tribal. From our perspective, Hunter is a good choice to eliminate, seeing how great he is at the challenges and the practice he’s done for them pre-season. I don’t think Venus will gain that much momentum in this attempt — it’ll just be another example of her lack of social capital this season.
What do you think will happen in Episode 9? Leave a comment with your predictions!
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I am definitely on board with Q’s inevitable elimination, however, I think that if Venus can pull off a Hunter blindside, or maybe even a Siga blindside (by working with Yanu, Liz and possibly Hunter) she could get some footing in the game and possibly win. It isn’t unknown at this point that people are speculating about Venus winning because, in her audition tape, she said “It’s about time there’s a Persian winner.” I don’t know though, these are just my opinions.
you do realize that audition tapes are made before a player’s even cast, right? i fail to see how that would have anything to do with her win equity.
On which channel please
Hunter did go but it wasn’t really Venus move, shell think it is though. I was also sure Q would be the one gone. Mainly cause I was sure Hunter would either win immunity or idol up