[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Survivor Season 47 Episode 7.]
There’s one trend among castaways in the new era of Survivor that still has Jeff Probst scratching his head seven seasons in. The “new era” is Survivor Seasons 41 through the present day, when all of the seasons are 26 days of gameplay instead of 39 like every season prior. In the latest episode of the Survivor On Fire podcast (embedded below), tied to the October 30 episode on CBS, Probst asked cohost and Season 46 runner-up Charlie Davis to help him understand his biggest point of confusion in the new era, and it led to a discussion about a mistake that contestants too often make in recent seasons.
Survivor Season 47 Episode 7 showed Sol finding an advantage that he could gift to the opposing side before tribal council. He chose wisely by giving the advantage to Rachel, who was the only person at tribal who wasn’t formerly part of the Tuku tribe. That group of five seemed primed to vote her out, but they feared presenting an all-Tuku alliance, especially when the other six players were present for tribal but safe from elimination and could therefore witness their strategy play out.
Rachel’s advantage gave her two options: block a vote or have safety without power (aka she’d be safe from being voted out but couldn’t vote herself). After partaking in earnest in the tribal deliberations, Rachel revealed her advantage just seconds before the vote, announcing that she would choose safety without power. She made it clear that she was only playing this unexpected advantage because she refused to go home with something in her pocket that could’ve protected her. This led to Tiyana being eliminated in a blindside that left her in tears.
As Rachel left tribal, she thanked the mystery person who saved her. Sol played dumb and didn’t take credit, but he could next week. Davis thought Sol was smart to keep his cards close to his chest.
“Maybe he wants to hide the information from Tuku or maybe he wants to be able to share it with the right person at the right time,” Davis said on On Fire. “Ultimately if you give up control of that information, you might lose a little bit of power.”
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In response, Probst asked, “Charlie, can you give me any insight to something I’ve been pondering since the new era began? That is why so often in the new era, players are sharing so much information with each other.”
“These overexcited new era players, oh my goodness,” Davis replied. “It’s a great question, and it’s hard to answer too. I think one of the big variables at play is just the excitement of it all. When you have good news, which in Survivor is finding an advantage, pulling off a big move, playing an advantage, you want to share with your friends. You want people to know that you’ve just done something really, really cool. It’s like if you just got hired for a new job, you want to tell your partner or your family or whoever it is. It’s the same in Survivor, but there’s a lot more consequences in Survivor that I think players have been forgetting about lately.”
“That’s really interesting because that’s human behavior. That is I’ve got something exciting, it’s a bucket list item, and I’ve got to share it with somebody. My feeling was have the new era players created a world in which the value system demands that if you tell me I’m your number one, you must tell me everything. And if you don’t and I find out later there will be a penalty. If that’s the case, then that’s where the game is.”
Probst thinks castaways should be trying harder to steer away from this trend.
“From a big-picture standpoint, as a potential future player, I would want to be moving that away from this ‘I have to tell you everything,’ because it’s going to make it difficult for the player who works hard to find an advantage to maximize its power if I have to tell the four people in my alliance. Because one of those four is going to tell somebody else, then everybody knows. And now I just play it to get rid of it because it’s an albatross and I don’t want it. What a waste!”
“Survivor‘s situational,” Davis replies, “so I can think of situations where you would want to share that you have an advantage. It’s a tough dilemma from the player’s perspective. There’s no perfect way to do anything on Survivor, which is so frustrating as a player. You wish there was a playbook, but there’s not.”
What do you think is the biggest mistake players are making in the new era? Let us know in the comments, below.
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