With Patt blindsided, Kilby saved by the skin of his teeth, and Devin’s cult alliance left stunned, they have to pick up the pieces and figure out where the future of their games lies. Despite being incredibly cocky for the past 24 hours, Brady takes the loss on the chin and admits he got humbled… but he’s still mad as hell and getting pissy with Maggie and Kilby, and he’s salty about his “brodies” Carter and Lewis backstabbing him.
While Brady crashes out, Lewis and Thien An laugh it off. Those five thought they ran the tribe, and now they’re acting like children once their assumptions were proven wrong. But the five-turned-four isn’t done yet. Jelly still has an idol, and she’s willing to throw anyone but her guy Devin under the bus to survive this mess.
Meanwhile, Savu is doing yoga on the beach after an epic underdog victory, but the “vibes tribe” won’t be together for long, and neither will the new Toka majority because a swap is on the horizon! Jeff does his best to sell this as a mind-blowing twist, but it’s all a big tease, as we get a standard swap from the 30s era Survivor. Seventeen people, three new tribes, and one will be down a member because of Rob’s pathetic meme of a quit messing up the schedule.
The new Toka is Mike, Carter, Brady, Maggie, Thien An, and Kristin. The new Savu is Devin, Ori, Jelly, Alexis, and Jenna. The newly formed Dina tribe, wearing red, is Lewis, Kilby, Sharonda, Eric, Linnea, and Cristian, and they have to start over on a new beach with only a pot, machete, and flint to their name.
But the old Savu has the clear advantage here, and Cristian (yes, this person wasn’t just a CGI extra in the first three episodes) is immediately confident in his chances. A self-inflicted kiss of death if I’ve ever heard one. They aren’t the strongest tribe, though, and Lewis is sick as a dog, so they might be screwed in challenges.
Kilby sees the writing on the wall and throws the rest of Toka under the bus to plant seeds of sympathy. Devin sucks. Brady sucks. Jelly sucks. Mike sucks. It was just a jock fest with the bros in charge, and he was totally mistreated. His pitch even gets Eric crying and running to him for a new alliance to help overthrow these alleged bullies. For now, this tribe will be Savu strong with Lewis as the first sacrifice, but Kilby has actually found a path through at least one vote if not more.
Eric’s also found some new life of his own here on Dina, finding a more theater-vibes group with Kilby in the mix to play off of as a wingman. Finally, someone who doesn’t think his dorky antics are annoying as hell. They’re both gamers, wrestling fans, Disney’s Aladdin stans… So they deem their new alliance the Lover Boys, the island’s most chatty, geeky, awkward partnership of all time.
But Kilby isn’t 100% sold on it. Eric is too happy to have a new friend, making the alliance incredibly obvious, and the rest of the tribe notices and calls out the issue. Eric swears he’s Savu strong, but Sharonda and Linnea aren’t buying it and vow to take Kilby out before he infiltrates their ranks and pulls Eric away from their side.
Back on Toka, Kristin is the sole Savu in a sea of former Toka members, but with those five fractured by a crazy vote last night, Kristin might be invaluable. She’s tackling this like a crisis manager, trying to understand the group and offer something useful, like knowledge of the food sources she studied before playing. Picking up on the residual chaos, she tries to bring Carter back into the Savu fold despite their messy past, but Carter doesn’t hear her. To him, she’s just pandering, buttering him up, treating him like a little pig. And well, Carter is no pig.
But maybe Brady could be interested in a little of Kristin’s pandering, being in self-preservation mode with Mike. Though Mike is the first to jump on the idea, offering a close alliance with Kristin while pitching himself as a totally free agent to Maggie and Thien An… who immediately dunk on him for riding everyone’s coattails and transparently jumping on every opportunity possible with no real direction. After all, if you’re interested in working with everyone, you’re really working with no one, and no one has any reason to trust you. So all this has done is make Maggie and Thien An best buddies, and Carter is happy to jump on board as a trusted ally in an unstable tribe.
Over on Savu, Toka has the numbers too, but like with the new Toka, the new Savu is more complex than the surface numbers let on. Alexis is terrified and links up with Jenna, informing her about Devin’s trash talk from last week’s journey. Jenna isn’t sure about Alexis as an ally, though, and prefers working with old Toka to keep it simple. She even sells Alexis out to Devin right away, but Devin is fully devoted to taking Jenna out and casts himself as the middleman here alongside Jelly. And having Ori around as a number from the original Helicopter Alliance doesn’t hurt, especially with this Jelly/Ori lasanga-lover showmance reignited. Both are here for the money, but romance is tempting, and Devin is keen to play matchmaker for his two single friends (to Jelly’s embarrassment).
Despite their disadvantages, Dina takes first place in the immunity challenge and a fully stocked coffee kit. Not what I would want to drink with an empty stomach over a week into the game, but okay, enjoy your diarrhea reward. Toka takes a close second, leaving Savu in dead last after a horrible start they couldn’t recover from. So now the question becomes whether Devin and Jelly can be trusted to stay Toka strong and vote Alexis… or if they’ll jump ship and finally take out Jenna. Thematically, Devin kills his first chicken and mentally names it Jenna. So… that’s ominous.
Jenna sees the votes coming in a worst-case scenario and pitches her loyalty to Jelly and Devin, promising them that sticking together will be better for all their games in the long term. When pushed for answers by Alexis as to why she isn’t really working with her, Jenna can’t give a clear response. She doesn’t even have a Shot in the Dark to lend as a sign of trust, and Jenna isn’t about to hand Alexis her shoes, of all things, to buy loyalty as she demands.
So now all Alexis can do is drive that wedge deeper and deeper within the old Toka. But she’s been so desperate and so paranoid and so anti-Devin and Jelly that Jelly debates whether she’s worth keeping around at all, even over a common enemy like Jenna. But the real issue there would be pushing Ori away if they cut one of his allies out of pettiness.
Ultimately, it’s Jenna who takes the fall in a unanimous vote. No surprise there. She was a dead woman walking the second she landed on this tribe with her biggest enemies and one of their closest allies, and no amount of sensible pitching or Alexis making a mess out of things was going to save her. And with that, Devin has slayed his nemesis… but he might have a new one waiting for him next week as Jelly grows tired of him emotionally putting her game in danger.
And with next week also bringing a double elimination with two tribes heading to Tribal, odds are we see that story play out in dramatic fashion. Or Alexis just goes home in another fairly standard vote as the Helicopter Alliance’s next victim since those three should obviously stay together regardless of the drama at hand. Oh well. But with teases of some kind of “blood ring” advantage and Maggie visiting another tribe, another ho hum vote on the new Savu might be an appetizer for something nuts.
Was this week’s swap a bit of a step down from the two tribe phase? Yes. Was the vote a bit dull? Yeah. Does it bother me? Not really. Three tribes just works better as a swap format because we know where alliances stand going in, and resentments have had time to blossom. Not every vote can or should be a crazy blindside, and I’m glad the show hasn’t featured some bonkers, broken twist every week and actually let us watch the players play.
The show will never reach the heights of its golden age again because television has changed and Survivor has gotten infinitely cheaper across the board. Still, a return to the tried-and-true formats of the 30s seasons, with 90-minute episodes and an editing style that prioritizes cast dynamics over the game itself, even when any twist is possible, is the direction the show needed after the stale 40s.
It’s not a fix-all, of course, and I know at some point there’ll be at least one episode that turns these recaps into a 2000-word rant… but it’s good enough to keep me excited for what comes next. And in the wake of the New Era doldrums, thank god they listened to us about something.
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