Welcome to Season 49’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 highlight of this week’s trailers is definitely the upcoming “unprecedented medical emergency.” In the NTOS trailer, Jake states, “a snake just latched on me,” and Alex, later in a confessional, shares, “I’m worried about his life at this point.” Then, in the promo trailer, we see quick shots of the crew assisting a player on a stretcher, along with shouts of “Is he breathing?”
Unfortunately, these are clear signs that Jake is being evacuated in Episode 3 after being bitten by a venomous snake—a solemn reminder about the very real stakes of living outdoors.
This leaves the blue Kele tribe with three players remaining—Alex, who has an immunity idol, Sophi, and Jeremiah. All three players have been voting together in the past two tribal councils, so it’ll definitely be interesting to see how they’ll move forward. Seeing their performance in challenges and how they haven’t been receiving supplies at camp, I wouldn’t be surprised if Kele loses the upcoming immunity challenge again.
On the red Uli tribe, the NTOS trailer depicts a riled-up Savannah asking someone offscreen, “She was saying this stuff about me?” and declaring in a confessional, “If I wanted to get Sage out, I could do it.”
This aligns with the sneak peek scene that shows Sage talking to Shannon, bringing up how Savannah’s a threat and commenting about how she’s close to Rizo. While Sage has made an accurate observation about Savannah’s relationships, she unfortunately has confided in Savannah’s “number one” ally, as described by Shannon herself. It checks out that Shannon would share the conversation with Savannah, which prompts the latter’s response we see in the NTOS trailer.
In any case, I think the four-person alliance—Shannon, Savannah, Rizo, and Nate—will be sticking together as a majority. They seem like strategic players that see the value in a solid four-person group to tide them through, at least for their time on Uli together. If the tribe loses the immunity challenge, they’d have their pick between Sage or Jawan, who have been portrayed as quite secondary to the majority four so far.
For another week, we’ve gotten nothing substantial about the yellow Hina tribe in the preview trailers. This is probably a good signal for the players, suggesting that they won’t be heading to tribal council soon, and thus, we, the viewers, don’t need to be too focused on them now. Looking at their challenge performance and how they managed to win despite having a disadvantage last week, I’m inclined to believe the tribe will be going on an immunity run before the merge.
As mentioned earlier, my prediction for this week is that Kele is heading to tribal council once again, the third time this season. With three players remaining, I think Alex plays his immunity idol to protect himself and votes Jeremiah out, believing that he’ll be able to work with or control Sophi more easily. It might be the laugh clouding my judgement, but I can’t shake the feeling that Jeremiah’s quite the unhinged, chaotic wild card that other players might find difficult to align with.
What do you think will happen in Episode 3? Leave your predictions in the comments!
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