Survivor: Kaôh Rōng – Another Twist?

In December, we revealed that the upcoming season, Survivor: Kaôh Rōng, would introduce a new twist regarding the hidden immunity idols. This season, players will be able to combine idols to create a “super idol” which can be played after the votes are read at Tribal Council. Jeff Probst recently confirmed the new idol twist in an interview with EW.com. However, Inside Survivor has learned that this isn’t the only new game twist that we will see next season.

Sources have revealed that there is also a twist involving the Jury. While not 100% verified, it is strongly rumored that someone will gain the power to remove a Jury member, thereby taking away their voting privileges at the Final Tribal Council.

The details of how exactly this power works, or how it is gained, are still vague.

In Survivor: Worlds Apart, Dan Foley earned a double-vote advantage after bidding on the item at the Survivor Auction. This past season in Survivor: Cambodia, Stephen Fishbach won a vote-stealer advantage after taking a “risk or reward” style offer from Jeff Probst during an immunity challenge.

Blood vs Water Jury
The jury members on Survivor: Blood vs. Water.

The more interesting question is, how will the power work?

We have seen similar Jury twists on other reality game shows, specifically Big Brother. In Big Brother 2, finalists Nicole Schaffrich and Dr. Will Kirby were each given the option to nullify a Jury vote (one each). More recently, in Big Brother Canada 3, the final three were required to name one of the nine jurors to evict from the Jury, stripping them of their voting rights. The decision had to be made unanimously.

Jordan Parhar removed from jury on Big Brother Canada.
Jordan Parhar is removed from the jury and has his vote nullified on the Big Brother Canada 3 finale.

It is possible that the power to remove a Jury member on Survivor: Kaôh Rōng could be made as a group decision similar to the one on Big Brother Canada. Although, the way sources worded the rumor made it sound like an advantage that could be gained by only one player.

Also, when can the power be used?

In the examples above from Big Brother, the decision was made at, or just before, the final. It would be reasonable to assume that the decision on Survivor: Kaôh Rōng would be made at, or just before, the Final Tribal Council.

There is certainly a lot to speculate on but all we know at the moment is that there is a twist involving the Jury and that it most likely means the power to remove a Jury member. We would love to hear your thoughts and speculation! Let us know in the comments.

Photo Credit: Happytimeblog via Compfight cc


Written by

Martin Holmes

Martin is a freelance writer from England. He’s represented by Berlin Associates for comedy writing and writes about TV and entertainment, currently for TV Insider and Vulture, previously Digital Spy, ET Canada, and Yahoo. A finalist for the Shortlist Sitcom Search in 2012 for “Siblings,” Martin received his BA in English with Creative Writing from The University of Hull. Martin is the owner and editor-in-chief of Insider Survivor.


18 responses to “Survivor: Kaôh Rōng – Another Twist?”

  1. Yikes, it’d be really painful to be forced to attend every TC and be stuck at Ponderosa for as long as the game is running just to find yourself in the end sitting on a side-bench watching other Jurors decide who wins.. Geez…

  2. If this is true, this is bad. I know people have said the same thing about twists in the past, but this might actually kill the game. We’ve seen so many times in the past that a good winner has taken the jury by only one vote. Subtract that juror and we’re looking at (possibly) Clay winning over Brian. Kelly winning over Hatch. Susie winning over Bob. I wasn’t a fan of the vote stealing twist, but that seems tame compared to this. I hope against hope the producers wouldn’t make this mistake.

    • i agree..cept with Susie beating Bob (technically, she did play a SLIGHTLY more strategic game) Taking away someone from the jury sounds just wrong ti me.

  3. i hate big brother because of the constant twist and it always seems unfair. i dont want that to happen to survivor. please!

  4. The only way I don’t hate everything about this is if it the decision about whose vote gets negated has to be reached unanimously by the 2/3 finalists before Final Tribal. Then I only hate most of it. One of the central premises of Survivor is that once the finalists have been determined, the power shifts to the jury. To do this really does fundamentally alter the fabric of the game in a way that other twists (TP Idol, Redemption Island, etc.) haven’t up to this point. And I don’t care for that.

    Plus, honestly? I think it’s mean. Yeah, they didn’t win, and they got voted out for whatever reason, but the jury members earned their spot on that jury fair and square, as much as the finalists earned their spots in front of them, and it sits uncomfortably with me that it would be taken away, especially by someone/ones who have already voted them out of the game once!

    No, thank you.

  5. If this is true, and depending on how it is handled, it could very potentially work against the player who uses the “advantage”. If I were part of the jury and someone excluded a jury member because they feared their vote, i would see it as a low blow and probably wouldn’t vote for that person.
    To me, it would be a bit like Spencer saying that if he were in the jury, he could control who votes for who as if the jury was a bunch of pawns.

  6. Yeah…. I don’t think this twist I’ll be that good……poor jury member…..I mean imagine making it to the jury and being excited on your final speech, and vote to who wins the million and then it all gets taken away…….they might as we’ll have been voted out pre-merge/jury

  7. I understand that twists are important to keeping the show interesting, but I’m becoming concerned that Survivor is becoming too much like Big Brother in that there are so many rules and it could be getting a tad bit complex. I’ve only bothered to watch about four episodes of Big Brother and I was frustrated by how unnecessarily complex it was and how the process of evicting people was unnecessarily long. (Four of five episodes? Really?) All of a sudden Survivor is adopting Big Brother-like twists and Caleb Reynolds. I love Survivor, not Big Brother. As interesting as this twist would be, I hope they wait a few seasons for another twist.

    • I don’t know how you came up with 4 or 5 episodes for a BB elimination when it’s almost always 3, and it’s less than that more often than it is more than that.

      Anyway, I don’t think this makes Survivor too complex, or even all that much more complex than it has been. If anything has increased the complexity of the Survivor game, it’s idols. This is the kind of twist that will most likely result in someone winning 7-0 (or 6-1) instead of 7-1. A lame twist, yes, but not one that breaks the game or really changes it all the much. It’s one of those things that drums up excitement for the naive viewers who think it will mean more than it actually does.

  8. This is, as every has said, a terrible twist.

    It DOES, however, provide a chance to look good for the person who gets this advantage. If they reveal the advantage to the jury, explain that they think the advantage flies in the face of the game, say something like, “the power is meant to shift to you guys, the jury – I’m not going to play that way”, then throw the advantage in the fire, then they might get brownie points.

    The only people who might need to use this power are people who aren’t sure things to win – but if you’re removing one person from the jury, I think the odds of pissing off the remaining jurors is way too strong. This advantage is a bit of a booby-trap, I think.

  9. Lame twists. I’m all for change and trying things out. But the super idol already proved to be not the fairest twist. Removing a jurymember? Not that big of an advantage and one you’re never sure of if it worked or not.

  10. I don’t think tis is a real twist. Remember how Burnett said a bunch of people got injured at ponderosa? I think that being taken off the jury is due to that and not a twist.

  11. I often wonder if having each person who is voted off NOT being able to have contact with the others who are voted off changes their vote.

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