The final five arrive at their new beach, in what is still a completely pointless twist. There’s three days left. What’s the point. A huge part of this “new era” of Survivor is how hard the game is supposed to be. Who cares if the last few days are a little tougher?
Lindsay and Jonathan have a little spat, with Lindsay pissed at Jonathan for not pulling her into the Omar plan. Except…Lindsay voted for Jonathan. I see her point, that if they are an alliance, he should have told her. But again. Lindsay voted for Jonathan. She doesn’t really have legs to stand on.
Romeo lies that he has an idol, so he’s guaranteed the final four. He thinks they buy it, but I read their reactions differently. Mike just says, “Good for you, Romeo.” I don’t know if they actually bought it. He also made a fake idol, though it’s an idol bracelet. I could be wrong but I don’t think an idol has ever been a bracelet before. I guess it’s cool that he’s trying this? But there’s no way he’s going home, so it won’t matter.
Mike and his idol could create some fireworks. He’s told both Lindsay and Maryanne that he might play his idol for them at the final five Tribal, and at least Lindsay knows this. Again, we’ll see what happens.
The group receives Tree Mail with a word scramble clue that leads them to an advantage. Lindsay finishes the puzzle first and hustles all around the island searching. She has a huge lead, getting maybe 40 minutes to look all by herself. She looks and looks and can’t find it. The rest of the group decides to work together. But Maryanne doesn’t want any part of that. She sandbags it, hoping Lindsay can find it before somebody else solves it. And whether or not that was the difference, Lindsay does end up finding the advantage. It doesn’t say exactly what it is yet, just that she has a slight advantage in the upcoming immunity challenge.
I hate this. I hate it so much. I love Lindsay, she was my episode 1 winner pick, but I hate this. Challenges advantages suck, but especially at such a late point in the game. Survivor isn’t a fair game, but some parts should be on a level playing field. Immunity challenges are one of those things. Make it an advantage at a reward challenge. Sure, that would be fine. A food reward could benefit you at the next immunity challenge, but it’s much less of head start than a immunity challenge advantage. But unfortunately, this “new island with an immunity challenge advantage” seems like another piece of new Survivor that’s here to stay.
Immunity Challenge
Love love love this challenge. The players race through an obstacle course, untying knots to release puzzle pieces. After collecting all pieces, they solve a circular puzzle. They’re also playing for a pasta reward back at camp.
Lindsay’s advantage lowers the number of knots she has to untie at each stations: 6 for everyone else, but just 1 for her.
Even with the advantage, Jonathan just beats Lindsay to the puzzle, but they both have a decent lead over everyone else. But if there’s one thing we know, it’s that it’s all about the puzzle. It’s the great equalizer. Mike starts whipping through the puzzle, and it comes down to him vs Lindsay. None of the other three are even close. Mike beats Lindsay by mere moments, just before she can get her last piece in place. Mike picks Jonathan to join him on the reward.
Pre-Tribal
While enjoying their reward, Mike now tells Jonathan that the idol will be played for him. So that makes three people who Mike has given his word to about the idol. It sure sounds like Maryanne is counting on Mike following through on his word to her. Would she then play her idol for Lindsay? Would be a wild scene at Tribal.
Lindsay knows what she has to do. She knows that Mike has played up his honor and integrity, and tries to lay the guilt on him about the promise he made to her about his idol. Mike tries to talk his way around it, saying he already promised Maryanne the same thing. Mike needs to play this very carefully. One way or another, he’s going to have two people who will believe he’s broken his word. This is a perfect example of the danger of playing the honesty and integrity game.
Maryanne is also in a tough spot. She knows what a big threat Lindsay is. But she’s worried that voting out the obvious player could be seen as a soft move. She wants to make a big move. Blindsiding Jonathan could be that move. But it probably all hinges on what Mike decides to do with his idol. If he plays it forJonathan, Maryanne has to play it for herself. You can’t take the risk of playing it for someone else at this point in the game.
Final 5 Tribal Council
The Tribal is mostly focused on Lindsay feeling like she’s for sure the vote. She tries to downplay her social and strategic chops, using the Omar vote as evidence. Jonathan tries to combat that, saying that one vote isn’t necessarily indicative of that. And it could have just been an editing trick (probably was) but as he’s saying this, we see some eye rolls from the jury for how he’s saying it. Probably just a subtle hint that Jonathan, one way or another, isn’t winning this game.
And here come the fireworks! Mike plays his idol for Maryanne. Romeo “plays” his fake idol, and basically gets laughed at. Good stuff. Maryanne does not play her idol for Lindsay, and she’s voted out. Even though Maryanne made the right call in not protecting Lindsay, I still think she should have played it for Jonathan or Romeo. Maybe she’s saving it for the Final Tribal, showing that she kept an idol a secret, and didn’t need to play it. But why not actually use it in an active vote in front of the jury?
This also feels like a good time to say once again that all idols should end at final six. Make the players endure one clean, pure vote. With Drea’s idol, there could have been three idols plus an individual immunity at the final five. For those that don’t like math, that could mean 4/5 players would be immune, ensuring only one possible player can be eliminated. Unlikely? Sure. But absolutely possible.
Immunity Challenge
Survivor wastes no time after the break and jumps right back into it, getting to the final immunity challenge. And it’s a classic, Simmotion, dropping balls into a track, with one hand tied behind your back.
Before the challenge starts, Jeff does his usual check-in with the players. Maryanne gives a truly heartfelt speech about how there’s a rift in her family, and that her winning the game could be what brings the family back together. It felt like an incredibly obvious foreshadow to a Maryanne win. But as I’ve said before, we’ll see.
The challenge starts and Mike’s out. Jeff says a couple times how shocked he is, he’s never seen it happen before. It’s an absolute shame. This challenge can be difficult, but one ball should be child’s play. You have to feel bad for Mike.
Maryanne drops next, leaving us with a Jonathan vs Romeo showdown. Jonathan drops and Romeo wins. Hilarious. There was about a 99.99999% chance whoever won was taking him to the end, and now he’s actually the one with the power. And I love it. This will make for objectively the most interesting decision.
Pre-Tribal
Romeo starts off thinking Mike has to be one of the two to make fire, and Mike knows it. Mike’s pitch is to take Jonathan and have Mike make fire against Maryanne. Mike tries to convince Romeo that going up against himself and Maryanne would be the toughest final three. Then Romeo would only have to go up against one of Mike and Maryanne, the consensus two most likable players left. It actually is an interesting choice, but not for the reasons Romeo thinks. Assuming fire is Mike vs Maryanne, the winner should become Sole Survivor in a cakewalk. But if for some reason Romeo takes Maryanne, we could have a legit heavyweight battle between her and Mike.
Final 4 Tribal Council/Fire Challenge
Romeo takes Maryanne with him to the end, sending Mike and Jonathan to fire. In Romeo’s position, there really wasn’t a good decision. But Mike’s pitch was right; he should have saved Jonathan so he would only have to go up against one of Mike and Maryanne. There’s maybe the tiniest (and I do mean *tiniest*) sliver of hope that he could talk his way into a win over one of them. But risking going against both of them? Not a chance.
Mike wins the challenge, and at least we should have a competitive Final Tribal. Had Jonathan won, anything less than an 8-0-0, maybe 7-1-0 win for Maryanne would be a shocker. But now, even though Maryanne is probably the favorite, Mike definitely has a chance.
Kula Kula
In some inspired editing, we get confessionals from the jury. Going over each player, they discuss each of the final three, and what they need to do to win the game. I love this. It doesn’t fully give anything away, but it does kind of give us at least a rough rubric of how the players could be performing with their answers. This is a change I would love to see stick around.
It feels like the jury emotionally wants Maryanne to win, but is coming in leaning towards Mike from a gameplay standpoint. They want Maryanne to give them a reason to vote for her or for Mike to give them a reason not to vote for him. It’s an interesting dynamic at play.
Final Tribal Council
Geez, we’re back to the three pillars of Survivor shaping the Final Tribal, though slightly different, but I’m not sure if it’s worse. Rather than focusing on Outwit, Outplay, Outlast, it’s Social, Physical, Strategic. Still dumb, either way. Why force them to fit their questions into arbitrary boxes like that? Let the jury ask the questions they want to ask. Those are key aspects in the game, they’ll all get covered.
As we saw in the jury confessionals, Mike needs to own his game, he can’t keep trying to play up the honor and integrity angle. And they give him every chance and then some to own up to it, but he just doesn’t see it. He keeps trying to talk his way out of it, by seemingly half-owning it and half trying to keep the honor thing going. It’s not going well.
But Mike still has the social connections. He gets some compliments over his work ethic around camp, and his positive attitude. He might still have a chance. He then gets a chance to circle back to the integrity part, and begins to own up to it a little more. But Maryanne counters with her idol reveal, and it gets a big reaction out of the jury. The music swells as she’s revealing this, and explaining how she used it to set up her end game, and it certainly felt like “this person is going to win Survivor” moment. And what do you know, it turns out the person who is just about to win Survivor knows more about smart Survivor gameplay than I do.
And Maryanne wins. That’s no surprise. But what is surprising is that it was a 7-1-0 win. I would have thought Mike would have gotten 2 or 3 votes, but no. But a well-deserved congratulations to Maryanne! She was on the outs early on, and could have easily been one of the first couple boots. But she persisted, bided her time, and struck at the right moment. If anyone wasn’t on team Maryanne, they almost certainly are now, whether they be fellow players or just fans. From the outside, I think I would have still voted for Mike, but I’m not going to waste any energy here arguing against Maryanne’s win. It was more than deserved.
Final Thoughts
This season was awesome. Even while being a carbon copy in many ways of Survivor 41, it still managed to feel different. Part of that was the awesome cast. Part of that was the editing. That was much cleaner this season, and put most of the focus back on the players where it belongs. That was the big problem with 41. There was too much time spent on the various twists and advantages. Shift that to the players themselves, and look at what you get.
I can still do without most of these new twists and advantages, but I’ve said here and on Talking Llama that we can’t really begin to judge the new Survivor era until we see what the show does with the next cycle. Hopefully they’ll take some of the fans’ feedback to heart and make some necessary changes. But it’s exciting and invigorating to see that the show can still be this fun and this good 42 seasons in.
I can’t wait to be back for Survivor 43, and sooner than that, the new upcoming season of Survivor South Africa, premiering sometime in July. Hope to see you all there, and I truly appreciate every single person who reads even one of these recaps!
