Fresh off a brutal Kevin blindside, Vula returns to camp again to hash out the fallout. Like before, Mary is stuck on the bottom with even fewer allies, but it’s nothing new, and Mary’s just proud to still be around and knows not to trust anyone anymore. While you’d expect Sai to be gunning for her yet again, she’s actually got a different plan in mind. Cedrek and Justin told her to play her idol when she didn’t need to, so clearly, they wanted to flush it for their own benefit, and she’s not dumb here.
Trust is broken across the board on Vula, and now it’s all about finding that re-hidden idol to claim safety in a tribe where nobody can hide. Mary heads out early with Sai clinging to her the entire time, but this rivalry has taken a fun turn as both of them develop some respect for one another, competitor to competitor. Mary dashes off down the beach and into the jungle, Sai goes on the hunt, and the men just sit in the shelter, letting the chaos play out.
Over on Civa, it’s a big moment for David as we learn the image of this perfect masculine specimen without a single flaw is just an illusion. It turns out he doesn’t have much money and lives in a trailer park, and unless he can find some good money, his current relationship won’t work out, as his girlfriend dreams of being a stay-at-home mom with a few kids. If that’s not a solid motivation to win the million, I don’t know what is.
On the other side of the beach, Mitch and Charity get even closer and start talking game for the first time, hoping to take Kyle and David to the merge as huge shields while Kamilla and Chrissy get left in the dust. Taking Kyle out to sea on a fishing trip gives Mitch the perfect time to rope Kyle into the fold, and suddenly Kyle’s in the best position one could ask for: sought by two alliances with an idol in his pocket.
Meanwhile, Lagi’s dynamics continue to solidify as Star goes off alone to figure out her puzzle box, leaving the other five to have a bonfire party on the beach. The California Girls have Bianca and Eva as their plus ones, but without Tribal to draw lines in the sand, it’s up to the players themselves to make cracks. When Eva bonds with Joe a little too openly by giving him a father-daughter friendship bracelet, Thomas and Shauhin give each other a look. A look that means, “She’s gotta go if we want to keep Joe loyal!”
Eva’s position gets even shakier as she tries to play with Star. Not in the sense of wanting to work with her, of course, but to work out whether Star trusts her enough to be open about her advantage. Star keeps her lips sealed, but Eva keeps flapping hers to get Star on someone else’s case for a while, just so she’s not her target moving forward. Eva throws Thomas and Bianca under the bus as two players filling the same role in challenges, meaning one is expendable, but Star runs straight to them and sells Eva out without hesitation. Suddenly, Bianca and Thomas have a change of heart: maybe working with outsider Star is the better move here, and they can help solve her idol puzzle, take control of the tribe, and send Eva packing without her suspecting a thing.
In the return of the brutal blindfolded obstacle course immunity challenge, it’s yet another blowout as Lagi sweeps with ease, Civa takes a respectable second place, and Vula gets stuck in last early and never recovers. Yep, we have another full-on disaster tribe, and at this point, it feels like they were doomed from the beginning by some hilariously uneven tribe divisions, so nobody’s even shocked. In addition, Lagi gets to send three people on a Journey, and it’s Bianca, Justin, and Kamilla taking the trip to Advantage Island.
Back at Vula, Mary’s not even that worried about the votes. If she goes, so be it. She’s just going to pretend she found an idol so the others might ignore her in favor of other options, and it actually works some magic on Sai and Cedrek. Mary’s ploy gets Sai overthinking everything, and she suggests throwing Justin under the bus with a split vote to avoid any Shot in the Dark or lost vote madness. The issue here? Cedrek hates the plan and wants to pile votes on Mary, calling her bluff and keeping it simple rather than messy.
Speaking of messy, let’s talk about this week’s Journey and how utterly terrible it is. Last week, we had players compete in a challenge against the clock. I’d prefer the players have the option to risk their vote or not, but at least that twist gave them a chance to show off their puzzle skills to keep their votes. This week? It’s literally just a roll of the dice to see who gets an extra vote or loses their vote. No real skill, no player agency, just pure, dumb luck in a game of Survivor Yahtzee. Kamilla barely scrapes by with a win, but Bianca and Justin get screwed by terrible rolls, which especially hurts for Justin, given how his tribe is counting on him tonight.
Unfortunately, we live in a timeline where a tribe of four effectively becomes a tribe of three by twisty nonsense, and someone potentially being robbed by a Journey is peak fiction to production, so we just have to deal with it for the time being.
Back at their camps, Kamilla owns up to winning an extra vote, Bianca doesn’t tell anyone the truth except for her number one Thomas (who still doesn’t tell her about his advantage ironically enough), and Justin lies too, even to Cedrek, hoping he’ll stay safe and make amends for lying later if need be. But without that key bit of information, the rest of Vula is playing straight into a disaster tonight. Cedrek believes himself and Justin can vote for Mary together.
Mary commits to the bit and pretends to have an idol to the bitter end, weighing her options between voting for one of the three where her vote could overpower a split… or just playing her Shot in the Dark and hoping for the best. Sai isn’t sure about trusting anyone, so she might fall for Mary’s ruse and throw a vote on Justin to be safe. And then there’s Justin, serving as the most important vote of the night when he doesn’t even have one to cast.
At Tribal, the mood is grim and somber after three losses in a row. Jeff speaks like it’s a funeral, Sai lashes out against Jeff’s new-era nonsense, and Justin’s just kind of miserable the whole time. It’s such a downer Tribal that Jeff calls the vote early so Vula can get it over with and go home, but this night is FAR from over. Mary risks it all on a Shot in the Dark play and actually pulls the safety scroll, nullifying Sai and Cedrek’s votes against her. Justin’s exposed as a liar and can’t revote either, leaving Sai and Cedrek to vote for someone other than Mary as the underdog queen herself sits pretty.
On the revote, Sai votes for Justin, Cedrek votes for Sai, and we’re tied a second time. Jeff calls it like it is: Justin has no vote, so he can’t vote. Sai can only vote for Justin, but Cedrek, being the one person not in the tie, can decide to flip his vote on yet another revote… or else it becomes a deadlock. Well, Cedrek holds steady with Justin, and it’s a deadlock after all.
The convoluted rules give Vula one last obstacle: with Justin and Sai deadlocked and Mary safe without a vote, it all comes down to Cedrek’s ultimatum: choose between Sai and Justin… or eliminate himself if he can’t make a decision. Obviously, he won’t just bow out and quit, so it’s up to the others to make their pitches. Sai goes on the offensive, bringing up all the times she told him information and kept him in the loop while throwing Justin under the bus for lying about his lost vote all day. While she begs to stay, Justin takes the chill approach and says he can live with whatever choice Cedrek makes for his game, and he’ll always be welcome at that pizza restaurant of his.
Ultimately, Cedrek flips and eliminates Justin with the catch that Sai has to work on her relationship with Mary and vice versa. No more arguing, no more chaos, just peace and unity in that little tribe of three. The women agree, and Justin takes the fall… all because he got screwed by a game of Yahtzee that he didn’t ask to play on a Journey he didn’t ask to go on. It’s a memorable Tribal for sure, and still better than the rancid slop that was Cirie getting auto-booted in Game Changers because at least Justin had the chance to save himself socially here.
But the fact that we even got this situation to begin with isn’t the big celebration the show wants it to be. Am I glad we kept Sai around when she probably would’ve been eliminated 2-1 on a hypothetical revote with Justin involved? Yes, she and Mary make for amazing TV together. Am I left with a bad taste in my mouth at Justin being eliminated largely because of unfair twists and an extreme domino effect despite his own failures this round? Also yes!
Justin should NEVER have gone home this round. You can argue he should’ve told Cedrek about his lost vote and fought harder to stay at Tribal, of course, and he’s definitely not blameless here, but he needed an avalanche of bad luck to go out this way. He needed Mary to lose her vote on a Journey last week, so she had to save her Shot in the Dark until now. Then, he needed it to save her when the odds were so small. Then he himself had to get picked to go on the Journey and lose his vote thanks to bad luck, which might not even happen if Civa wins that challenge instead of Lagi.
This elimination was peak New Era Survivor, and I don’t mean that in any sort of nice way. It was a case of the players getting played by production rather than each other, and I guarantee you that if Journeys are up for a vote for Season 50, I’m smashing that “No Journeys” button until the site crashes. The Journey concept could be fun if it were more like the social summit in Survivor 44, where the twist was the lack of any twists, and players could form cross-Tribal bonds and rivalries over a nice lunch. But these Journeys where it’s just people being forced to play twisted games to survive like it’s a low-budget, family-friendly Saw movie? It’s overdone and unfair, and it needs to end after this hot mess if they aren’t going to dial it back.
Thankfully, the rest of the episode was actually pretty fun, and next week is bailing this season out of a rough spot with a tribe swap! Finally, something different! It’ll probably be to three tribes of five again like in Season 45, but at this point I’ll take it! Save Vula from their certain extinction instead of letting them get Ulonged, give the other tribes some time to play after three weeks of winning, shake up what seemed like pretty clear dynamics up to this point, and let’s get the season back on track after a huge hiccup sent it off the rails.
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