It’s the merge! As usual, I’ll be looking at the trailers and sneak peeks to give my predictions for the coming episode. Heading into the merge, there are 11 players left in the main game—Ben, Adam, Sophie, Sarah, Jeremy, Tony, Kim, Denise, Michele, Wendell, and Nick.
The NTOS trailer begins with an overhead drone shot of an individual challenge for eight players. This is definitely the re-entry challenge that’ll allow one player living on the Edge of Extinction to rejoin the main game. After Queen Sandra’s departure last episode, eight players are left on the Edge—Natalie, Amber, Danni, Ethan, Tyson, Rob, Parvati, and Yul.
My prediction is that Tyson will win the challenge. He’s a physical threat and known to be good at challenges from his past seasons. His tactic of using his fire token to buy a huge jar of peanut butter on EOE seems like it will pay off—the way we were privy to his explanations leads me to believe he’ll succeed. Apart from this, I think Rob and Natalie will spend their fire tokens on an advantage in the challenge. Since the challenge course has different segments, I think the advantage possibly allows them to skip one of the segments to get a head start.
The next part of the trailers is mostly short scenes of the chaos and interaction happening on the newly merged tribe. First, Ben tells Jeremy and Tony, “either Nick or Wendell.” This, to me, cements the obvious Nick and Wendell pair, leading to other players wanting to split them up. The two were part of a larger four-person alliance on the original Dakal tribe alongside Sophie and Yul. With Nick and Wendell spending more days together on the swapped Yara tribe, and Yul gone, I predict that this alliance falls apart. Wendell, in the next scene, is seen saying, “Sophie is playing,” perhaps feeling he no longer trusts her after seeing her with such a close bond with Sarah, who was in opposition to the four-person alliance initially.
Next, Michele tells Jeremy, “let’s do Adam.” I’m glad to see Michele and Jeremy back together, though I don’t think they will be a strong duo throughout the post-merge as we weren’t really given as much insight to their dynamics on the original Sele tribe as I would expect a strong pair to have. And lastly, we were also shown a scene of Ben and Adam, our distrusting duo. Ben assures Adam that he doesn’t know what’s going on, only to have Adam mocking him in a confessional. Suffice to say, these two won’t be working with each other if they can help it.
For my predictions, I think we’ll see the merged tribe generally targeting Nick and Wendell at first. I can see players like Denise, Kim, Tony, Sarah, Sophie sticking together, wanting to get either of the two out of the game due to their lack of connection. On top of this, Michele’s in a good position to throw them under the bus. But I feel like the added layer of her relationship with Wendell would put her in a spot to choose whether to join the above-mentioned group or to go with her Yara tribemates who have arguably gone through more with her. Perhaps then, the alternative suggestion would be to vote out Adam, highlighting his sneakiness as a reason to get him out of the game.
Ultimately, because of the disproportionate portrayal of him in the last few episodes, Wendell is my prediction for the merge boot of the season.
Leave a comment below with your predictions for the next episode of Survivor: Winners at War!
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I’m just going to throw this out there, in case it happens I can take credit. Besides, its something nice I can dream of until it blows up when it doesn’t happen 🙂
Parvati has claimed:
However we never saw that happening.
In episode 1 she claimed control over the tribe, along with Rob:
Immediately, the editors showed us she knew exactly she was a big target(for the upcoming episodes), wondering:
She followed up, explaining that they was indeed scared:
Will it be a bumpy ride for her during this season?
Until this point in the season before the merge, no other player has had so powerful personal content like Parvati:
At the same time saying the above, the editors accomplish a different goal in that she show us how she will change her game this time around not using the flirt card.
In the following 3 episodes we saw an avalanche of praises from her fellow tribe members.
Ben talking about Rob and Parvati:
Will Parvati hang Ben because the game gives her a little rope of coming back?
He continued:
Adam:
Michelle:
We also saw Denise willing to give up half an idol to her, why would the editors show us that? We assumed it was to showcase Adam/Denise relationship but that blew up at the next vote when Denise blindsided Adam in an horrible way.
They showed us she was on the bottom on the old Sele but she was not willing to down without a fight:
All across the season, even with her on the Edge, she was shown the strong connection she has with Ethan. Why would they include that bond, why is it important that we know she and Ethan are very close? Will she ultimately avenge him by getting rid of Adam if she gets back into the game?
I can’t remember the last time the editors make it look like a player knew exactly whats going on when they were voted out. They build up the unbreakable alliance of Nick, Wendell and Yul from the start of the game. We now know they weren’t so solid since they took out Yul instead of Michele.
They then showed us the episode before her vote off, how she ‘desperately’ tried to find a crack in their alliance, minutes later showed her observing how they’re so happy with how this turned out. We get to understand she’s dealing with an impossible mission of getting one of them to turn. She doesn’t get blindsided, she even discussed her vote off with Wendell and that she knew he was fucking with her. She later exposed him and made him the subject of discussion and identified Nick as the one who might turn but alas Nick choose to side with Wendell:
Will this be about Nick downfall which he’ll regret later on? Its not necesarily about Parvati here we get to see that Michele is trusting her more than Wendell and alongside with her former allies in Rob and Ethan, it shows how strong of a bond she manages with her closest allies all of them putting her at #1 ally.
From hours and hours of recordings, were we shown all of the above just because she’s a fan favourite? Or does she really have unfinished business?
I predict that Rob will win his way back into the game after playing 3 tokens for 3 advantages in the competition. I predict that Tony will be voted out (I am assuming that Rob will be given idol or be ineligible for the first vote off).
I think Rob comes back In the challenge and Wendel gets the boot
Well Tyson RETURNED and Wendell WAS ELIMINATED!!! So this has to be one of the most accurate predictions that I have read!! Well done Stephanie!