Survivor 47 continued the streak of great Survivor seasons in the “New Era”. From shocking blindsides, to intense challenges, to a historic fire-making showdown at Final Tribal Council, to a fan-favorite winner in Rachel, the season was one of the most memorable in recent memory.
Could Survivor 48 continue the streak?
This season of Survivor featured some of the most diverse cast members in the show’s 24-year history, featuring people of all different ages and backgrounds. The Purple Tribe this season, Lagi, sets the tone for the season by dominating the first challenge. Civa, the Yellow Tribe, finishes second, with Vula (Green) finishing up the rear.
For Vula, the first challenge was a sign of things to come. In the first challenge, Kevin hurts his shoulder (and later reveals in an interview he dislocated it and popped it back into place). Despite the predicament he is in, his Tribe votes for him, along with Kyle from Civa, to go on a journey to potentially earn their camp supplies. Like Survivor 47, the SWEAT VS SAVY test is gone, and the players had to follow a rope to a machete, then use that machete to get down a pot, followed by using water to fill the pot enough into a bucket where the key resided. Kyle ends up breaking the pot and helps Kevin win, showing the good guy he is and foreshadowing what is to come from Kyle this season.
Back at Lagi camp, we see in a confessional that Eva has autism and wants to prove herself to the tribe. Joe becomes her clear No. 1, as she tells him everything about her disability. One of the most powerful moments of the entire season occurs when Joe said he would sacrifice his game for Eva’s. This moment arguably sets the theme for the next 12 episodes of the show.
At Vula, the losing of the first reward challenge spirals into the first immunity challenge. Cedrek, Justin, Kevin, and Sal become an alliance, and they are looking to take out Stephanie, who is being seen as someone not trying to play the game, and Mary, who’s sort of just there in the eyes of the other players. Sai goes idol hunting, and this is where we find our idol twist for the season, as the idol is in a box with a code, and the code is based off letters found on animal symbols throughout camp. Sai asks her alliance to help her figure it out. Cedrek figures out the word is ‘listen’ and Sai gets the immunity idol.
Stephanie, feeling doubt about her chances to survive, plays her shot in the dark, so she does not vote. Her shot in the dark fails, and she goes home via a 4-1 vote, with Mary being the one who voted for Sai.
In Survivor, when a boat comes, that usually means a journey, and that was the case in episode two, as one member from each tribe had to go on a journey. For Vula, Sai and Mary’s feud heats up again when Sai gets angry that Mary went on the journey. Alongside Mary is Thomas for Lagi and Mitch for Civa.
At the journey, the three cast members had to do a puzzle and organize the numbers 1-15. If they did not get it, they would lose their vote. The results were as follows:
Mitch, who has a stutter and is adored by his Tribe for the way he overcomes his disability, tells the whole tribe about his advantage. Later on the beach, Charity and Mitch are talking on the beach, solidifying their alliance. The other four (Chrissy, David, Kamilla and Kyle) go idol hunting, with the boys going one way and the girls another. Kyle finds the beware advantage, but he asks Kamillia, who he bonded with during episode one because of their similar backgrounds, to solve the puzzle, which she did by figuring out the word was ‘enlist’.
On the other beaches, Thomas tells everyone he didn’t win an advantage and plans to keep it a secret while Mary told everyone she lost a vote, though Sai doesn’t buy her story.
The immunity challenge for this episode was a water challenge where castaways had to balance a beam with large balls on it, then shoot the ball into the basket. Vula goes to Tribal Council again after Kevin and Cedrik could not get through the balancing stage of the challenge.
As for who’s going home, Kevin wants to eliminate Sai. He wants her to feel comfortable to not play her idol and for him, Cedrik, Justin, and Mary to pounce on Sai. Cedrik tells Sai about Kevin’s plan and tells her to play her idol. Right before Tribal, Justin comes to Cedrik with a plan to vote out Kevin and says he is more dangerous than Sai.
At tribal. Sai does indeed play her idol on herself, and the vote goes 3-1 (Mary does not vote because she lost hers at the journey) in favor of Kevin going home, with Kevin being the only one voting for Sai.
Sai and Mary’s feud picks up post Tribal Council the next day, as the girls go back and forth chasing each other around the island, making sure the other doesn’t get an idol now that Sai’s idol is back out in the open.
Vula’s immunity challenge luck doesn’t change for episode three, as they again come in last. As a reward for coming in first, Lagi gets to choose three members (one from each Tribe) to go on a journey. They choose Bianca (Lagi), Justin (Vula), and Kamilla (Civa).
At the journey, players roll seven dice. On the dice are skulls (bad) and flames (good). If players roll four flames, they get an extra vote. If the player rolls skulls, they lose their vote.
The results are:
At Tribal Council, Mary and Sai still bicker back and forth, again advocating they can’t play with each other, and Cedrik tells host Jeff Probst the tribe is broken.
What happens next is one of the wildest Tribal Councils in 48 seasons of the show:
Mary plays her shot in the dark, and IT HITS, so no votes casted against her counts. Both Cedrik and Sai vote for Mary, and with Justin not having a vote, and Mary giving up her vote for the Shot in the Dark, that was all the votes that round.
With the revote, Mary cannot be voted for. Cedrik votes for Sai while Sai votes for Justin, evening the vote at 1-1.
Now tied 1-1 between Sai and Justin, there’s another revote, where it’s revealed by Probst that Justin has not been voting all night. Probst says that by rule it’s down to Sai and Justin as to who goes home and only Cedrik and Sai are voting. Cedrik votes for Sai while Sai votes for Justin again.
At this point, because Sai is a vote, and because Mary and Justin cannot vote, CEDRIK HAS TO DECIDE WHO GOES HOME, AND IF HE CAN’T, THEN HE GOES HOME!
ULTIMATELY, BOTH SAI AND JUSTIN GIVE THEIR PITCHES TO CEDRIK, AND CEDRIK TELLS SAI SHE’LL KEEP HER AROUND IF SHE AND MARY CAN WORK TOGETHER! SO AFTER VOTING HER OUT TWICE, HE KEEPS SAI AND SENDS JUSTIN HOME IN ONE OF THE MOST WILDEST TRIBALS EVER!
With only three Vula Tribe members left, it’s time for a Tribe switch!
Here are the new Tribes:
This is the portion of the game where Kyle and Kamillia play it off like they don’t want to work together even though they have all of the advantages on their new Tribe.
At the immunity challenge, even with new members, Vula comes in last again. In terms of who’s going home, Thomas, Joe and Shauhin, who formed the California Girls alliance back at Lagi, tries to decide who they want to go between Kamilla and Kyle. They have no idea about any of the advantages Civa has.
At Tribal, Kyle does play the idol for himself and plays the extra vote. The vote goes 3-2 (Kyle, Thomas). Because of the idol, votes casted against Thomas do not count, and Thomas is eliminated with the steal a vote advantage in his pocket.
In episode five, we have our first true reward challenge of the season outside of episode one. Castaways must bounce balls off trampolines, then roll the balls into a mini hole. Lagi won first and got to go to the Sanctuary and enjoy pastries.
At the sanctuary, in a confessional, Eva says while the reward was great, Charity is coming off as fake to her and that she does not want to work with her.
The immunity challenge features one of the most emotional segments in the history of the show. The end of the challenge forces participants to each get a ball into a little hole in a maze table puzzle. For the first time in the season, Vula wins an immunity challenge, but the story here is Lagi. That Tribe finishes second AFTER AN EMOTIONAL EVA HAS AN AUTISM BREAKDOWN BECAUSE SHE WAS SO FRUSTRATED WITH THE CHALLENGE! PROBST ALLOWS JOE TO GO HUG HER! EVA TELLS THE WHOLE GROUP ABOUT HER AUTISM AND MAKES PROBST CRY!
After the challenge, at Lagi, everybody praises Eva. Star tells Eva about her experience with family members with autism. Everybody is out in the open, and Star tells the group about her beware advantage she found earlier on in the game. EVA THEN SOLVES THE PUZZLE WITH THE WORD “SILENT” AND STAR GIVES HER THE ADVANTAGE IN A WILD TURN OF EVENTS!
In terms of who’s going home, right before Tribal Council, Bianca tells Cedrik about not having a vote, and Cedrik uses that information to blindside Bianca and end her game.
BIANCA IS ELIMINATED AND CRIES HER EYES OUT ON HER WAY OUT. CHRISSY TELLS SAI THERE WERE ONLY FOUR VOTES THERE.
Now, it’s merge time, and as everybody arrives on the Lagi beach, just like in Season 47, the cast races to find an advantage for the next day’s Immunity Challenge. Charity spots the advantage, but Sai comes out of nowhere and swipes it (the camera work on the scene was tremendous!).
David and Joe form a bond over love of whole chocolate milk, and Eva, Joe, Kyle, Shauhin, and David form an alliance, an alliance that would (almost) control the rest of the game. Those five say they want to play an honest game.
Meanwhile, the others spill tea about Eva’s idol. Charity wants Star to take back the idol, and Star tells her no way, creating tension between the two.
Kyle ends up winning the first individual immunity challenge of the season. At Tribal Council, the vote ends up going 7-5-1 (Charity, Sai, Cedrik). Following Charity’s elimination, Mitch once again feels lost and blindsided. Cedrik wonders who voted for him. In a confessional, Sai says she voted for him and wrote in cursive, so he couldn’t tell in a clever move.
For the next immunity challenge, the 12 remaining people in the game were once again split into two teams of six for the annual pregame body weight bucket challenge. One person from each team would win immunity, and the team who was eliminated first would go back to the old Civa beach and go to Tribal first. Whoever would be eliminated from that group would also not make the jury. The teams were:
Joe and David win immunity, and there were TONS OF TRASH TALK. David won the reward for his team and second Tribal Council, guaranteeing whoever his group eliminated would make the jury. Joe and David both also BROKE THE RECORD FOR THE LONGEST LASTING IN THIS CHALLENGE AT 52 MINUTES!
For Joe’s team, the debate of who to eliminate is between Sai and Mitch, but everything changes when Mitch looks to build trust with Joe by telling him he’s playing his block a vote, and Sai is going home, which is what happens.
On the second team, the debate is Cedrik could be easy vote, but Kyle and Kamillia think Shauhin is more likely to make a move on his own and flip. Kamilla tries to lie to David and say Shauhin has an idol. In the end, Cedrik is the only vote for Shauhin and the rest of the votes pile on Cedrik, making the surgeon the first jury member of the season.
After the dust settles from both Tribal Council’s, David reveals he wants Mary in as part of the Strong 5 to make a Strong 6, as him and Mary quickly form a strong bond on the merge beach. At tree mail the next morning, it says to get into five pairs of two for the immunity challenge. The pairs are:
For the immunity challenge, there are three stages:
On the journey, Kamilla, Shauhlin, Star, and Mitch play a game with a shoot, where each person can pick up a gray (good) or red (bad) ball. They can choose one or two balls and put it into their shoot. Whoever gets three red balls lose their vote. Kamilla and Mitch make eye contact, as they want Star to lose her vote, and that’s ultimately what happens.
Meanwhile at the reward, Mary is pushing hard for it to be Shauhin who goes home while Joe and Eva would rather target Chrissy. Then, David raises suspension about Kamilla and how Shauhin was so quick to work with her, so he wants to take out Kamilla. Mary agrees.
Eva see’s a stick laying down on the beans. She grabs the scroll and stuffs it into her shorts. When everybody returns to the beach, Eva goes off to read her advantage. It says she must sneak off at camp at night by the flames to earn it.
At Tribal, Chrissy and David get into a massive fight because Chrissy says she’s sick and tired of letting Joe and Eva run the game and the strong man alliance while David says he’s sick of strong men being used as shields. Chrissy says she’s going down swinging, and she does go down swinging indeed to an 8-1 vote, with herself voting for Shauhin.
After the Chrissy elimination, David is ticked off the vote wasn’t Kamillia. He questions Kyle and Joe on the vote, creating panic in Joe’s mind over if David is going to flip on the alliance.
Meanwhile, in the middle of the night, Eva sneaks off for her advantage in the jungle, and she has decisions to make.
Joe ends up winning a very close immunity challenge between him and David where participants had to hold a ball above their head while standing on a platform. Joe takes Mitch, Shauhin and Eva on a ham and cheese croissant reward while Mary consoles David back at camp, who’s pissed off he lost.
At the reward, Mitch says he wants David out. Shauhin said for this David vote to work, he’s been planting the seed for days, and we get a flashback of him throwing David’s name out to Joe. In a confessional, Eva says she’s in the middle because she doesn’t want to vote out David, but she’s tired of the chaos, and it may be time to make a move because she doesn’t like David and Mary controlling the game.
At Tribal, David is steadfast that his alliance is good, but Kamillia fires back and says if she’s on the jury, she won’t be getting his vote. In the end, David doesn’t have to worry about getting Kamillia’s vote because his alliance does blindside him and take one of the strongest players out of the game as the ninth person eliminated and the third person on the jury, shocking Cedrik and Chrissy.
The next two episodes really show control of the game flipping to the core four of Eva, Joe, Shauhin, and Kyle, as Star and Mary become the fourth and fifth members of the jury, respectively. While there is talk between the rest of the group about making a move, on Joe specifically, and Kamillia really pushes Kyle to flip, it’s all talk, no action, and the basis of the no action was a lack of trust from Mitch with the players he needed to work with to make a move on.
With now six players left in the game (Eva, Joe, Shauhin, Kyle, Kamillia, and Mitch), the competitors head back to the water on a stormy day in Fuji for a reward challenge that is won by Shauhin, his first individual challenge win of the season. Shauhin ends up taking Joe and Kyle with him to the sanctuary, where the three boys are not only fed with burgers, fries, and beer, but they receive their letters from home.
It is at this reward that we see all three members get emotional. Joe talks about losing his sister, JoeAnne, to domestic violence, Kyle’s dad praising him, and Shauhin explaining that Survivor is what has brought him and his mother together. While Joe has some alone time, Shauhin ends up talking to Kyle about game strategy and whether or not now is the time to make a move on the alliance.
In a confessional, we hear Kyle talk about he see’s Shauhin is trying to make a move, and he must beat him to the punch. When Kyle tells this to Kamillia back at camp, Kamillia is overjoyed, considering the fact she’s angry that Shauhin fed the strongest person in the game.
Joe ends up winning another immunity challenge, which is fine for the secret duo of Kyle and Kamillia because they are going to try and frame Shauhin. Kyle tells Joe the truth of Shauhin bringing up his name at the reward, but he lies when he tells him Shauhin has an idol. Kamillia confirms Kyle’s story to Joe, and it creates a tense moment between Shauhin and Joe, as well as Eva and Joe, as they decide if the story Kyle and Kamillia are selling is a lie.
At Tribal Council, we get an incredible edit where Joe’s head is blurred listening to Shauhin and Kyle, trying to figure out who to trust. At the end of the day, a 4-2 vote sends Shauhin to the jury as the sixth member, leaving Joe and Eva (originally Lagi) and Kyle, Kamillia, and Mitch (originally Civa) as the final five, as Survivor 48 heads into the Season Finale.
As the players wake up for Day 24 of Survivor 48, they don’t see tree mail and instead see a potential advantage at the final five immunity challenge. The players must use the animal clues again to solve a word puzzle, the same way the idols were unlocked this season. Kyle originally thinks the word is “RESCUE”, but Eva figures out the word is “SECURE” and secures (pun-intended) an advantage at the challenge.
For the immunity challenge, players have to go through a mud rope, shoot a ball into a net, untie the ball from the net, shoot the ball into a basket that reveals numbers for a combo lock, use that lock to get a key for puzzle pieces to solve a puzzle. Eva’s advantage is she can place the ball into the basket to unveil her numbers.
Kamillia comes from behind to win immunity and a pasta reward at the sanctuary. She takes Eva with her. Back at camp, Mitch pitches to Kyle that they should work with Kamillia to take out Joe, but when Kamillia and Eva get back from the reward, Kamillia and Kyle both agree if Mitch is in the final three, he wins and so do Joe and Eva, so everybody tells Mitch they respect him too much to lie to him and sit next to him at the end, so he’s going home.
Mitch is shook, but he takes his elimination like a champion, setting up a final four between two very different duos. Before the final immunity challenge, Kyle and Kamillia admit to each other they can’t sit next to each other at the end. Kamillia says she will take Eva, Kyle promises Joe he will go with him, and Eva and Joe say they will take each other.
For the final immunity challenge, It’s the classic challenge where players place a pool ball on a rack, and it comes out on alternating sides (left, right). Players add more balls as time goes on and the ball cannot drop, or you’re out. The challenge comes down to Kyle and Joe, and Kyle wins immunity.
The winner of the final immunity challenge intends to keep his promise to Joe, but while sitting at camp, Kyle and Joe hear Eva having a meltdown similar to the one she had at the challenge back in episode four, as she is struggling to make fire. Joe goes over to console her. He says to let him take over fire making, and Eva tells Joe he can help her, but she wants to make the fire on her own.
Meanwhile, in a confessional, we see Kyle say he doesn’t want to make Eva cry, and he will put himself in fire making if that’s what he has to do to not let Kamillia go with him to the end! It is a very Kyle-esk move that we see all the way back when he helped Kevin win supplies for Vula in episode one.
At fire making, it is Eva versus Kamillia. Eva gets rattled again when she see’s the equipment at the showdown is not what was back at camp. She starts off well, but the wind kills her flame. She starts panicking, and Kyle, Joe, AND KAMILLIA all calm her down. Kamillia says she cannot get a flame and doesn’t know how to make fire and essentially coaches Eva through the end, so she can advance to the final three.
At Final Tribal Council, everybody articulates their game differently. Kyle does so from a strategic standpoint while Joe and Eva come from an emotional standpoint. Chrissy asks Joe and Eva if they will ever turn on each other and both reply no, saying they will politely explain why their game is better without taking shots at one another or Kyle because that’s the game they played.
Eva tries to explain the Shauhin vote out was part of her and Joe’s strategy, but Kamillia interrupts and asks Kyle to tell his perspective. Kyle not only reveals he’s a lawyer to the jury instead of a teacher, but he tells the journey the complete truth about the vote and how he and Kamillia planted the lie to Joe and Eva.
When asked why they should win the game, Joe points to his story and doing it for his kids, Kyle points to his strategic gameplay again, and Eva says she represents everything about the season. She says she did not play her Safety Without Power advantage because she wanted to protect her alliance. She articulates her game was completely public, and that we’ve seen strategic players play the middle and win, we’ve seen strong guys with four immunity wins be rewarded, but we have never seen somebody so public with her struggles and emotions and gameplay win, and this was a special season and should see a special winner.
In the end, the jury sided with Kyle in a 5-2-1 vote. Voting for Kyle was Shauhin, Chrissy, David, Mitch, and Kamillia. Star and Mary chose Eva, and Cedrik casted his vote for Joe.
Out of everybody on Survivor 48, I agree Kyle played the best Survivor game. I am a little surprised Joe got only one vote, and the jury viewed Eva’s game more impressive even though Joe had the immunity resume.
While the majority of the post-merge votes this season were underwhelming, the last two episodes, specifically the finale, changed my tune on this season. Kyle and Kamillia and Joe and Eva will go down as two of the most historic duos in the history of the show, and they were on the same season and played two different games. The emotion and the stores of this cast really showed through.
The fact Kyle even contemplated putting himself in fire to not hurt Eva shows what a good guy he is. As he said in Final Tribal, he is your average, average guy, and that average, average guy is now $1 million richer (before taxes!).
This season wasn’t the best gameplay wise, but it had some historic moments and should be remembered for them. I think history will be more kind to this season than the present.
