Only six players remain on Survivor: Nothing Happens Island, and while I wish I could say this endgame was some intense battle to the finish line… it’s most definitely not. We just lost Mary to a unanimous vote when Joe was miraculously vulnerable and aloof to anyone plotting against him, and that might’ve been the rest of the cast’s final chance to stop him. Mitch tells us for the millionth time that it’s time to make a move, Eva let her Safety Without Power expire for the sake of keeping her alliance up in numbers, and Joe’s down for taking out Mitch and Kamilla next as usual. But Kyle’s still not committed to the Strong Four. He’s been playing with heart as he rides the middle, but now it’s head time. Hopefully.
A reward challenge rolls around, and Shauhin’s pissed at yet another arm strength challenge denying him a shot to show off his leg power. Mitch approaches him to make a move against Joe, but Shauhin’s still stubborn about his Lagi final three dream and pitching a better case to the jury than Joe the faux frontrunner. Great, so that’s one lost cause playing for Joe’s bank account. Eva makes two. But Kamilla and Kyle link up once more and commit to making a move here. Again, hopefully. We’ve seen this song and dance like five times this season with them, and it’s never paid off.
But first, we have a challenge for the biggest reward of the season: a feast, letters from home, and a night away at the Sanctuary. Despite all his complaining, a ton of pain, and a cyst on his wrist, Shauhin actually manages to pull out a win here, all for the sake of getting a letter from his mom. But with it comes a huge loss: leaving three people out of the loved one reward. His first pick is Joe, obviously, because he’s got kids and lives for his family, and then he takes Kyle because his wedding’s in a month. Sucks to be Eva, Mitch, and Kamilla, but the game carries on.
At the Sanctuary, the bros bond over their losses and loved ones. Joe, in particular, opens up about losing his sister to domestic violence and how they fought on the phone the night before she died. It’s haunted him ever since, and the healing has been slow, but with the emotional support of his allies out here when he’s at his most vulnerable, he’s with good company. And when game talk comes out, Joe spills the real boot order: Mitch and Kamilla first… then Kyle in fourth place. He wants the Lagi finale, just like Shauhin.
But Shauhin sees a fork in the road here: go time or Icarus time? Will he make the safe move or the risky move? Stay comfy or fly too close to the sun? Alone with Kyle, Shauhin pitches a plot to vote Eva out with the idol in her pocket, but that’s Shauhin’s move, not Kyle’s move. They’ve both played this will-they-won’t-they game of patience when it comes to strategy, a game of chicken if you will, knowing well enough that one of them will strike first and earn a ton of credit in such a stale season. With Shauhin throwing Eva’s name out behind Joe’s back, it gives Kyle all the ammo he needs to put a fat, juicy target on Shauhin’s back.
Back at camp, the vibes are completely flipped. Instead of joy and love, it’s misery and frustration as Mitch crashes out about Shauhin stupidly feeding Joe before the challenge. Kamilla’s in full agreement, and if Shauhin wants to feed Joe and give him a better shot at immunity, Shauhin can get the boot as the backup plan and lie in the death bed he made for himself. Once the reward winners return, Kyle workshops the game plan with Kamilla to get them both to final four. The goal here is to take Shauhin out by framing him for showing Kamilla an idol, ending up with no blood on their hands and looking like they just saved Joe and Eva from certain doom so they won’t see future moves coming. If they end up with Joe at the end, they can undermine his game and make him look like a fool for getting played by the real puppet masters.
As all the plotting goes down against him, Joe heads to the beach and has a deeply spiritual conversation with his late sister. An apology for what he said and what he didn’t get to say. A profession of love, an admittance of failure as a brother. Hope for the future, for healing and acceptance and forgiveness. The season itself might be a big flop, but even bad seasons can produce amazing human moments that go beyond votes and blindsides and idols, and they deserve credit when it’s due. These moments reflect what Survivor was like in its glory days when it had a real soul to it. It’s just a shame the rest of the season hasn’t lived up to great moments like this one or Eva’s episode in the pre-merge because if the season was consistently this emotionally touching and raw instead of hinging everything on red herrings and faux suspense, we might be singing a slightly different tune about its quality.
In an already huge episode for Joe, he pulls out his fourth immunity win and dedicates it to his sister. He’s in the finale and one win shy of tying the immunity record, and now all the blowback for this result is falling on Shauhin for feeding the beast. The secret duo’s plan is a go, even if Joe won’t be as paranoid as they’d hoped.
Step one: Kyle tells Joe that Shauhin flipped and wants to make a move against them. Then comes the lie: Shauhin showed Kamilla an idol, which she then relayed to him when Kyle checked in. Joe goes into analysis mode, thinking about who’s telling him this and why, and tells Eva about this news. Eva herself is shocked that the friendship finale might be off, but she knows Shauhin can’t beat them at the end so the move would make sense. So, for now, she’s trusting Kyle’s word here.
Step two: Joe goes to Kamilla to compare notes, and now she gets to show off her own acting skills again. She claims Shauhin showed him beads in his bags, exactly as Kyle said, and Joe’s feeling distraught about a traitor in his ranks. She’s got Joe under the bus and she’s driving it back and forth over him with a smile on her face, knowing the king’s gone a little mad and losing control of his court. But there’s still a huge issue in the plan, which is Joe checking in with Shauhin, hearing the truth from his mouth, and believing it over Kyle and Kamilla’s lies.
Joe goes into dad mode and presses Shauhin to slip up, hoping to catch him with his hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. Joe insists on there being some mysterious chaos without actually revealing what’s been said, but Shauhin doesn’t take the bait and keeps pitching for a Mitch boot like Joe wanted. Joe expected him to own up to something, but nope, into bizarro timeout Shauhin goes as Joe storms off, frustrated and grumpy. So once again, Shauhin’s pissed about Joe’s attitude when he’s sitting pretty in the final five and has nothing to complain about.
But despite all this messiness and drama giving him a great reason to actually flip, Shauhin abandons any plan to do so and tells Kyle to stay the course. Get Mitch out, coast to the final four, and fight it out. Joe and Eva debate whether Kyle or Shauhin is lying here, and it’s up to them to figure out who to trust going into the finale. Do they turn against Shauhin for these rumored schemes and blow up the alliance before he can? Or do they stay Lagi strong and boot Mitch as they originally planned? Will something finally happen on his forsaken season, or is it another 90 minutes of false hope for the third week in a row?
Well, let me just say hope has finally arrived! Something actually happened! In a 4-2 vote, where I assume Kamilla votes Mitch as part of a calculated split, Shauhin is blindsided, leaving the battle for the finale open between two powerful day one duos with Mitch in the middle. Is this the route the audience really wanted to see? Probably not, but at this point, beggars can’t be choosers. It’s not a delicious Joe blindside after two episodes of teasing us with one, but getting Joe paranoid enough to flip on his own ally and Shauhin getting dunked on hard on his way out is acceptable enough, I suppose.
Good episode aside, the season still isn’t being redeemed, even if the finale is a legit banger too. Almost nothing has come together in a satisfying way; half of the episodes are almost completely skippable on a rewatch, and I’m more ready for it to be over than anything. The buildup just wasn’t there to earn this payoff. So give us a winner nobody’s dying to root for but can’t complain about, show us the Survivor 49 trailer, go film season 50 next month, and put this mess to rest once and for all.
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No article of Jane’s passing? A fan favorite and truly unforgettable player