It’s Merge Time on Survivor 49!

Following the blindside of Shannon on episode six, Jawan, Steven, and Sage form The Bottoms Up alliance as the others come to the old Kele beach to merge. They originally don’t even come out to meet everybody right away, afraid of the blowback.

But before the rest of the players can even hear about the Shannon vote, there’s a reward for someone who can find the one key to unlock the chest, a situation very similar to the birdcage hidden immunity idol in Survivor 44. Sage is the one that unlocks the chest.

So after the key hunt, it’s time to talk strategy, and there’s a lot going on in the next few scenes. Jawan, Steven, and Sage tell the others that Shannon was trying to blow up old Uli, wanting Jawan out. Rizo and Nate think Jawan is still good with them and begin talking who to get out from old Hina next. Alex and Sophi reconvene and realize they are now on separate paths, with Alex connected to old Hina and Sophi connected to old Uli. Savannah and Rizo also make it obvious with whispering around the group that they are together. 

Old Uli and Sophi come together with a plan to get out Sophie (or Yellow Sophie as they dub it). Meanwhile, the aforementioned Yellow Sophie and Kristina are working together with Sage to take out one of Savannah or Rizo. We saw in episode six how upsetting cutting the chickens was to Sage, and Sage begins to have blind rage towards Savannah because the journalist is so willingly to cut the chickens’ heads off for food, even naming them Kentucky Fried Chicken, Rotisserie Chicken, among others.

The immunity challenge is a two-part challenge. The first part involves randomly splitting into two teams of five. The teams roll a ball through obstacles, use a machete to cut a rope, then they climb the ball to get to the top of a platform for a Survivor puzzle that spells, “That’s How You Do It On Survivor” (hence the title of this recap). The winning team would earn the merge meal and then compete for individual immunity in the classic challenge of standing on a platform while balancing a ball on top of a poll. 

For opening the chest, Sage gets to skip the first stage. She earned the merge meal and gets to compete in the individual immunity challenge without going through the obstacle course. The teams are: 

  1. Sophi, Sophie, Nate, Rizzo, Steven
  2. Kristina, Savannah, Alex, MC, Jawan

Team 1 won the first stage one, and Sophie wins the first individual immunity of the season. There’s not any strategy talk at the meal due to the recipients being on opposite sides, but back at camp, MC goes off to find her idol that she’s been looking for since finding the beware advantage back during the Tribe stage of the game. Savannah catches her and DIVES for the keys needed to open up the chest that contains the idol, but MC gets to it first. Then, Savannah keeps distracting her while she’s trying to open the chest (even though eventually MC does open the chest and get the idol).

At this point, MC and Savannah, even though they were on the same Tribe after the second switch, are clearly on different sides. Sophie and Kristina want to do Nate while Jawan wants to do Rizo and Sage wants to do Savannah. On the other side, Savannah tells her allies about MC’s idol and since Sophie won immunity, the belief is that Steven should be the target.

At Tribal, Rizo makes it public knowledge to the group that he has an idol and threatens to play it. The talk among the group is if you’re on the wrong side of this vote, you do not have a good standing in this game, which is ironic because of what is about to happen.

MC plays her idol she just found on herself.

The vote goes 7-4 (Nate- Steven), with Sophie, Steven, MC, Kristina, Jawan, Sage, and Alex all voting for Nate, and Savannah, Rizo, Sophi, and Nate all put pen to paper on Steven.

Nate is blindsided by the elimination, and in his post interview, realizes Jawan and Sage turned their back on original Uli.

This episode had a lot of action, and I LOVED the fact that going into Tribal, I had no idea if the vote was going to be Nate, Steven, Savannah, Rizo, or maybe even Sage. With Jeff Probst also telling the players the cast of Survivor 50 was still up for grabs during the filming of this season, you could see the shift in mentality. 

The early theme this season was a war between Hina and Uli, but now, with two Tribe swaps in one season, it’s a free-for-all. As the song “This is a War” by The Phantoms states, “This is a war and our blood will draw the battlelines.” 

I can’t wait to see how Savannah and Rizo (SPOILER ALERT: The two members from this cast on Survivor 50) retaliate against their old Uli members. 

Grade: A