Welcome back to Give Me Five! Each week, Brent Sullivan will look at the top five impactful moments from the latest episode that could influence the rest of the season.
There is so much going on at the Edge of Extinction and at Tribal Council that we’re now skipping whole days without showing anything that happened. This episode started with the fallout from last tribal on night 23 and jumped straight into a challenge on day 25. So, how much took place that we didn’t even see? Good thing that there is plenty to talk about with what is shown. Let’s see what may be impactful after a double boot:
1. Wardog in charge. I’m not exactly sure when this happened, but Manu was always losing and going to tribal, and then Lesu was always losing and going to tribal, and yet through all of that, Wardog, Kelley, and Lauren always seemed to come out on top. After the merge, the nicknamed Lesu 3 kept bouncing around and working with different groups to vote out whomever they wanted. However, it seems like Wardog is now the one dictating the votes. It’s not that he’s wrong in his decisions; I just find it fascinating that someone who was on a losing tribe every week is now somehow in a power position. The problem Wardog will have by taking out his old Manu members is he’s given an opportunity for the old Kama to retake control. Ron already mentioned that he thought Wardog was a threat, so if Kama can get back on the same page, he could very easily be their first target. Besides, by taking out the last two returning players, there are not many people left for him to hide behind.
2. Food or Immunity? I always struggle with these choices. I can never understand how someone can make it on Survivor and then sit out a challenge for food. Even if you know that you can’t balance and you’re up against people who are great at challenges, you just never know when a butterfly might land on someone and knock them out. Also, even if you feel safe, in a season like this where there have been so many blindsides, could you really feel that safe? Granted, I’ve never been stranded on an island for 25 days with no food and had the option of a pizza mountain, but still. The side effects of sitting out may not even come to pass, but in this case, everyone wanted Aurora out, and she ended up winning immunity. Now, even if Ron, Lauren, Kelley, and Victoria had participated Aurora could have still won, but we don’t know for sure. All we know is that they wanted her gone yet sat out the challenge anyway and poor David paid the price. Ron is obviously in a good place now, but there is no way that I would have felt comfortable enough to sit that one out after Eric and Julia had just been blindsided.
3. Aurora. I’m going to make a prediction here: I think Aurora will be sitting in the final three. She’s been coming up as a target so much over the last few weeks, including a close call this last time, but in doing so, she’s become that “easy vote” that people will start overlooking her because they can get her later. The problem with this is that she’s strong in challenges and has already won two of them. However, if she does make it to Final Tribal, she will have a hard time arguing to the jury why she deserves to win. Depending on who she’s up against, that could be a hard sell. There seems to be a handful who don’t like her and a few more that she has absolutely no relationship with. Let’s see if Aurora can turn up her social game in the next few weeks and make a run to win some votes.
4. Devens all alone. Right here is exactly why Aurora might make it to the end. Now that David’s gone, Devens knows he is all alone. Even though he voted with Ron, Wardog and Victoria at the last vote, he and David were clearly on the outs, and Devens doesn’t seem to be in any solid alliance. Also, everyone knows he has a friend on the jury, with David even sending him an advantage that led to his immunity win. I think Devens is a huge target and would have a fantastic shot at winning if he is sitting in the final three. The other players have been jumping around between alliances/groups/clusters, but everyone landing on Devens seems like a no-brainer at this point.
5. No more returning players. This whole season has been mostly about players potentially returning to the game, but the subplot is easily the returning players. Unlike past seasons, the new players seemed to want them out right away, with Joe and Aubry being early victims. It was sort of a shock to me that both Kelley and David made it as long as they did, but their run finally came to an end here with both of them going out back-to-back. Now there are no returning players left it goes back to people like Devens and Wardog being the major targets. The other thing that makes this interesting is that all four of the returnees are on Extinction Island. All four will be competing against each other at a chance to come back into the game. It should be a good contest. Each of them has won an immunity challenge in their previous seasons, plus with Eric and Chris also competing, it should make for an exciting challenge to return. If a returning player gets back into the game and makes it to the final three, would anyone vote for them? Would the other three returnees on the jury give them a vote? We will find out soon!
There you go. What moments from this week’s episode do you think made an impact?
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