As the merge looms large and Rome randomly narrates the recap of the pre-merge thus far, the Gata Tribe has one last round of damage control to do. After two weeks of feeling in charge, Rachel’s obviously on the bottom, but Andy and Sam are living the high life. Andy survived another vote against expectations, proving he’s not just the hot mess who almost flamed out on Day 3, and Sam kept his single Tribal idol as a decoy, hoping Andy never finds out until he’s out of the game.
Thankfully for Rachel, the merge is here! Or… Earn the Merge, fake merge, Mergatory, whatever you want to call it. But everyone’s on the same beach, the bottom feeders have room to play with new faces galore, and the amulets have been activated. In addition, Sue’s got an idol, and Kyle has no vote. The playing field is set, but Jeff has one last twist for this crew: a challenge advantage is up for grabs! But this cast knows social skills win seasons, not fancy trinkets, so most of the cast decides to bond instead of scrambling. Eventually, Genevieve finds the advantage after others pass it by, but what power she’ll have is a secret until the challenge comes.
But because this is Tuku’s beach they’ve merged on, there’s still a Chekov’s gun left to be fired: Sue’s red paint fiasco. Sierra notices red paint splattered around the well from Sue’s recent attempt to clean her idol off and alerts the others, which leads to the entire paint stash and broken pottery being discovered. While some assume it has something to do with the challenge advantage, Caroline and Tiyana put the pieces together and realize what’s happening. Caroline is proud of Sue’s gameplay and swears to keep her idol a secret; Tiyana, the flip-flopper, isn’t so proud. She might not know about the idol, but she knows Sue can’t be trusted, and Sue says, “Right back at ya!” and sets her sights on Tiyana in return.
Meanwhile, Rome’s back to stirring the pot with people who aren’t aware of his sneaky playstyle yet. An early morning conversation with Kyle gives him key info about his strategic thoughts: Sam is the biggest threat, he agrees that Tiyana’s a threat too, and Sue and Caroline might be a mother-daughter duo but suck both socially and in challenges.
What does Rome do? Well, in true villain fashion, he runs to all the people Kyle smack talked and twists some words to sow chaos against the country boy. But Rome’s old tribe is quick to clear up the situation with the others, explaining that Rome stirs the pot on a daily basis and shouldn’t be trusted with anything he says. Kyle’s name is somewhat cleared, and Rome quickly becomes a key target at this crucial merge vote.
The Earn the Merge challenge gets an update this season after four seasons of the same-old-same-old. The team challenge will be run like usual, but the winning group of six won’t be immune. Instead, they’ll win a food reward and a shot at individual immunity. One will be safe; twelve will be vulnerable. As for Genevieve’s advantage, she gets a free spot in the immunity portion of the challenge, bypassing the team phase with all its mud and sweat.
Despite struggling with the obstacle course, the team of Sam, Kyle, Rachel, Sue, Teeny, and Sierra prove that playing it safe and taking your time can pay off as Rome and Gabe blow the table maze at the end with their go-for-broke approach, allowing Sam and Kyle to pull off a flawless finish. Joining this group in part two is Genevieve, whose advantage doesn’t do her much good against the likes of Sue and Kyle, who end up in a showdown for immunity. Kyle doubted her challenge skills, but Sue’s doing great at 58. Not great enough to win though, as Kyle takes the first necklace of the season.
At the merge feast that Jeff refuses to call a merge feast, it’s a big party. Sam’s tastes his first pineapple and declares himself a fan, Teeny gets tipsy on wine, and it’s all good vibes. But the topic of the vote has to come up eventually, and it’s unanimous: Rome needs to go. Now. But there needs to be a backup name just in case Rome pulls a rabbit out of a hat, and Sue casually drops Andy’s name as a potential decoy. Sam and Sierra wince at their ally’s name being brought up, but they can’t really throw out any names themselves and the rest of the group is fine with Andy being on the block, so Andy it is.
Back at camp, Rome is also the name of the hour among the losers. He’s annoying, he’s playing too hard, his enemies have him in their sights, and the trigger can finally be pulled. But Rome’s kicking, and he’s going to cause chaos with his own schemes. He put in the work to set Kyle up to fail, and it didn’t pan out. Bummer. So now he needs a backup plan, and that plan is getting his old enemy Sol out as payback for all those perceived slights against him over the first two weeks of the game.
Needing seven votes, Rome goes around pitching a crocodile tears sob story about feeling insecure and deeply hurt by Sol’s complaints about his challenge performances. While he assumes it works on the likes of Caroline and Tiyana, it doesn’t quite land. He’s transparently phony, the real plan is still Rome, and unless he whips out a Shot in the Dark success to send Andy home in a worst-case scenario, he’s toast.
Additionally, there’s a wrinkle tonight: the amulets. Fresh off the heels of last season’s series of idol-flushing disaster votes, nobody wants to hold onto advantages too long. So the plan from Caroline, Teeny, and Andy is to play the amulets as an idol, get them out of the way and out of people’s minds, and start fresh with no targets on their backs the next day. And just to minimize the potential chaos, they play them on Teeny, who was never in trouble whatsoever.
It’s obviously Rome’s time to go here, and the show won’t try to hide it. He played sloppy on Lavo; then he played sloppy at the merge. He had only enemies and no friends. There’s no escaping when everyone wants your head on a stake and you don’t even realize it. He gets a brief moment to sit in Jeff’s host throne and summarize why the amulet advantage sucks, gets shot down from taking over Jeff’s role in the future, and puts Sam’s name down instead of Sol’s just to be a troublemaker. But it’s a landslide blindside, and Rome finally falls along with all the potential Roman Empire jokes I was prepared to make all season long.
So we’ve lost the season’s biggest agent of chaos, a great New Era villain who might be a worthy second-chance candidate someday. But the official merge brings some new shakeups! Andy’s reeling from being the decoy vote as Gata comes under fire. The women tease another gendered alliance to take out some of the big dogs. Gabe’s ready to step up and start carving his legacy as one of the greats of the New Era. And without Rome around to stifle his game, Sol’s cooking up some plans of his own.
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