Welcome 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.
This was a really strong episode filled with idols, advantages, and a Ghost Island comebac. Plus, it all ended with a bit of a confusing vote-off. Let’s see the moments:
1. Michael finds his second idol. It seems like Michael has been on the wrong side of the numbers for most of this game. Plus, his tribe had been losing most of the challenges, so he has been to most of the tribal councils. Earlier in the season, Michael was able to find an idol that he shared with his alliance, but he chose poorly and played it on the wrong person. Through all of that, he finds himself still in the game with the merge right around the corner. After James went home last episode, he knew that he was next in line, so he did exactly what he should have done and went out searching for another idol. The funny part about this was that his tribemates knew what he was doing and still let him do it anyway. Well, sure enough, Michael finds his second hidden idol of the game. A quick side note, I just want to mention that I think it is cool as hell that the idol he found was the fake stick that Ozzy made in Micronesia – the F-ing Stick! Anyway, Michael may be in a good spot now. It appears that the merge is happening next week and he gets to go into that with an idol that no one knows about, plus he still has a few of his original tribemates still in the game.
2. Kellyn goes to Ghost Island again. Talking about people doing something for the second time, Kellyn took another trip to Ghost Island this week. She took it like a champ and even decided to play the game of chance this time. Kellyn made a smart move previously by choosing not to play, but this time she does, and it pays off again. She ended up winning the vote steal that Sarah used in Survivor: Game Changers, except now it is an extra vote instead. I think that Kellyn is playing a really good game, she has eight of the original Naviti left when they merge, and now she has an advantage as well. I don’t necessarily think that the Naviti are going to stay together long-term, but Kellyn has a little bit of a shield now if she chooses to use it correctly.
3. Wendell finds something too. This episode was all about people finding stuff, and that continued over on Yanuya where after we saw Wendell talking about how much he missed his girlfriend. Based on the way most of this season has gone, I thought that we were going to see Wendell crying and talking about how much he missed home. Instead, we saw him go out and find this gigantic hidden idol. It’s the immunity necklace that Erik gave away to Natalie during Survivor: Micronesia, but it now has the powers of a hidden immunity idol. I don’t know where Wendell is going to hide that thing at tribal council, but that will be a part of the fun. Here we have another person who was already playing a strong game, and now he has an idol as well. The most interesting part of this though is which side is Wendell going to take after they merge? If he teams back up with Domenick, then that duo is going to be extremely powerful with two idols and a legacy advantage between them. These next few episodes should be fun seeing where everyone falls and what idols and advantages come into play.
4. Libby. The focus of the episode mostly on the idols and advantages, but I just wanted to take a minute to talk about Libby. She is getting a very curious edit in my opinion. She has not been one of the big characters of the season by far, but her name always seems to come up around voting time as a person who will be a threat down the line or someone can’t be trusted. Despite all of that, here Libby sits getting ready to make the merge and be reunited with some of her old tribemates. This may mean nothing, but I can see her making it to the final four or five before she finally gets her torch snuffed since there always seems to be bigger targets out there. Who knows, if she can make it far with people like Chris or Domenick (Dom did save her after all), she may get a ride all the way to the end.
5. Naviti takes out one of their own. For the first time in this season, Naviti took out one of their own. The original tribe never lost, and they only went to tribal once after the swap, and that’s when Malolo pulled a fast one on them and voted out Morgan. They had a chance to go into the merge with nine original Naviti to four original Malolo. Domenick and Chelsea decided to vote out Bradley. I know the edit made it seem like it was because he was hard to live with and talked down to people, but I have other thoughts about this. I don’t know if this is what Domenick was thinking or not, but he knows that both him and Chris are going to be reunited soon, so I think that what he was doing was trying to build an army. I know that Bradley was on his side, but maybe he thought by dumping Bradley, that he could gain two soldiers in Libby and Donathan. The other thought here is in modern Survivor if a tribe goes into a merge with that big of a numbers advantage, that usually spells disaster. We have seen it too many times where the tribe with the smaller number ends up with a majority sitting in the final three. Again, not saying that Domenick was thinking that far ahead or that deep, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Now, the other side of this is what will the other Naviti members think when they see that Bradley is gone? For this reason, and the others listed above, I think the merge is going to be exciting.
There you go. What moments from this week’s episode do you think made an impact?
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Good recap
I think the immunity winner might be important in this next episode