Survivor 47 trotted out some pretty heavy-handed misdirection with its Episode 5-opening twist (two teams, not two tribes), but it mostly turned out for the best, as seven castaways were allowed to mingle and chat while eating exactly one hot dog apiece. Better than having their votes yanked away, at least.

It wasn't the outcome lots of fans (including/mainly this one) had hoped for, but it was also an effective piece of misdirection over the power a prior episode's journey had over the outcome. To be fair, we'd been warned since Episode 2 that if Gata went to Tribal again, Anika was out and Andy was in, thanks to Sam's idol. But Gata kept winning, and for a while it looked like Anika might be able to skate by to the merge despite losing her vote on an Ep3 journey. That was ... not the case.

As the New Era shackles keep getting gradually pared back, let's hope that forced vote-risking follows the hourglass and Do or Die to the island of dead twist ideas. (Goddamn, the next edition of Ghost Island is going to suck.) Until then, there's good news, possibly great news coming for this season (feel free to skip ahead to the end, I would), so let's get thinking about the last three-tribe episode of this season over with and move on with our lives.

The "brand new" Survivor Social Hour twist

This week's episode teased a two-"tribe" challenge in last week's previews, raising hopes of an actual swap down from three tribes to two. The episode itself also hightlighted the contestants' similar musings as they arrived at the challenge site: "Two tribes!" "There's no red!" "Hope you guys brought your stuff" and so on.

And then in classic Survivor preview fashion, it was all a fakeout, and the "brand-new twist" Probst seemed so proud about was just ... a random draw for two teams, exactly as has happened in every Ep6 IC in the new era, just an episode earlier here. It had all those same trappings, including a rock draw for teams. Then the winning team would be sent to the Sanctuary (like the winners of the merge-atory IC) for a "feast." (In true late-New Era Cheapo Depot Survivor fashion, that alleged feast was exactly one hot dog, one bun, and one soda per person, with not even mustard or ketchup for the hot dogs.)

Note also that the final journey in Survivor 44 was also a trip to the Sanctuary, where Brandon, Danny, and Caroline got to eat and just chat. So this was essentially that, except there was no picking people to attend after the challenge, the winners just all got to go. It was a "brand new" twist in the same sense that swapping out the final puzzle for a slightly different one is what passes for a "brand new" challenge in the new era. (Or swapping in an element borrowed from Australian Survivor, which John Kirhoffer nonetheless swore he dreamed up himself after thinking about throwing baseballs at windows, or whatever.)

Note also that Millennials vs. Gen X had a "Survivor Summit" in Episode 3 with eight total people (four from each tribe). There, the contestants themselves were allowed to pick who attended, not a random draw from a rock bag plus a challenge.

Having said all that, the Summit er, Social Hour itself was actually relatively interesting, particularly since we now find ourselves teetering on the precipice of the merge. Tiyana raised alarms on the other tribes about Gabe. She also sequestered herself off with the physical players (Sam, Kyle ... but also Sue) to play cornhole, which follows what she had said pre-game about seeking a meat shield-like post-merge strategy. While sandbags were being tossed, the more strategy-oriented players kept "playing Survivor," in Caroline's words, and Rachel, Caroline, and Teeny struck up/strengthened some possible post-merge connections. (Caroline and Teeny had already bonded on the Ep4 amulet idol journey.) No word on whether Caroline apologized to Teeny privately over all but strong-arming Teeny into giving up her vote last episode, only for Teeny to then be blindsided by the vote against Kishan. Whoopsies!

This kind of cross-tribal interaction has always been one of the few positive features of the journeys. As with the one-person-from-each-tribe pre-merge set-up at Exile Island in Tocantins, though, it has never really led to any lasting post-merge bonds, except maybe the Shan-Liana journey in 41. (Also I guess the James/Owen/Noelle one in 43 sort of paid off, but mostly just in setting up James's blindside. Sorry, James.) So why do these things never pan out? Because they're not a swap. A swap does that.

Spending a few minutes with someone at a neutral location might seem like Valuable Bonding Time on paper, but in reality, everyone is/was mostly there to scout out info from the other tribes, as we saw. For that reason, if anything, these short-term meetups really just reinforce the original tribal lines. Living for an unforeseeable number of days with a new group of people, however, and being forced to build new relationships from scratch, and maybe voting together a time or two, *does* cement bonds with folks who are not the production-selected set you found yourself with on Day 1. This is something Survivor has known for over two decades now, but apparently forgot in 2021 due to COVID brain fog, or something. Or maybe they just don't care, and prefer the more streamlined editing opportunities when the people in the same-colored clothes always stick together in the post-merge. I don't know.

Anyway, this "brand new" twist was fine as a time-filling exercise for a late pre-merge episode. But a swap and delayed merge would have been better. And a swap from three tribes down to two back in Episode 3 (with 16 left) would have been even better than that. You can still call that "brand new" if you want. If the results work out well enough, we're happy to pretend to not remember.

Did losing her vote seal Anika's fate?

Yes. It did.

On the one hand, Anika wanted to go on the Ep3 journey when Gata asked for volunteers. On the other hand, once she got there, she was forced to play a game in which she had 2-in-3 chances of losing her vote. The most likely outcome was the one she experienced: She lost her vote.

Had she been given a choice, she might not have opted to take that risk. Given that she thought she had a solid three-person alliance on the five-person Gata tribe, and that Andy was firmly on the bottom, maybe she would have gone all in for an advantage, anyway. But that's all counterfactual hypotheticals, because she did not have a choice: She was forced to play.

So thus we found ourselves at Tribal with four people voting. Sierra was torn between supporting the women's Breadwinners alliance and sticking with her "secret" duo with Sam (in which Andy makes three). Sierra seemed to actually be leaning towards going with Anika and Rachel, except ... (1) she knew Sam had an idol that expired that night, and he was firmly in favor of keeping Andy, and (2) she knew Anika had no vote.

So Sierra's choice had also already been made for her, really. She *could* go with Rachel, but in that scenario, it's a guaranteed 2-2 tie. If that holds firm on the revote, then it's on to a three-person rock draw (with Sam, herself, and Rachel drawing). Not ideal. And that scenario assumes Sam doesn't play his idol. He didn't end up doing so in the episode, but he probably would have if he thought Sierra was voting for Andy. So Anika was almost certainly out anyway, and forcing the issue probably removes the option of Sierra working with Sam and Andy post-merge. The final pre-merge vote is a bad time to be driving wedges between your alliance-mates.

Was there a scenario where Anika stays if she still had her vote? Maybe. The obvious one is the women just brute-force the vote, 3-2, while tricking Sam into not playing his idol. (With this cast just having watched the middle episodes of 46, this was probably harder than it sounds, despite Sam not playing his idol in reality.) The point is, though, there's a chance for Anika to stay in the game there. Maybe Sierra still goes with the guys, but it's a tougher choice for her.

In contrast, in actual Episode 5, Anika was thoroughly doomed, and the only real strategy here was convincing her she was safe, so that she didn't play her Shot in the Dark. The "dangerous fun" (emphasis on the first word, very little of the second) of taking people's votes away turned an actual nail-biter of a decision into a no-brainer, so...

Great work, Survivor. No wonder you wanted people to pay attention to the shiny new "Survivor social hour," which was definitely brand-new, and not just the MvGX "Survivor Summit" (above), just with far less food.

The hidden power of the amulets

One other factor that may have played into Sierra's decision is also journey-related: As the always-astute Ashley's Dreamboard pointed out on twitter the day after the episode aired, the way the new amulets work (and the fact that everyone knows about them) means having an amulet-holder in your alliance essentially gives your group veto power over the other two holders playing their idol(s) against you in the post-merge:

Did Andy tell people about the amulet?

Cause keeping him kinda helps block Teeny/Caroline from having power of a shared idol w/ no input from Gata. #survovor

— Ashley's Dreamboard (@AshsDreamboard) October 17, 2024

So here, keeping Anika over Andy would have been risky, especially for Sam. Rachel may have laid the groundwork for a post-merge alliance with Teeny and Caroline at the Summit, which would be super problematic for Sam if he didn't have Andy and his amulet idol at his side. In fact, Rachel-Anika-Sierra-Teeny-Caroline (plus Sue) is just one player short of a majority when they merge at 13 next episode. That group could easily pull in a stray voter like Gabe (who is also close with Sue) for a vote or two, then run the post-merge game. No Sam needed. Or they could pull Sam in for two votes, then dump him at Final 11 (using the amulets to make sure it works).

We really haven't seen much discussion in-show of the new powers of the amulet idols, mostly just that they exist. Andy did praise them for having "new" features, without really going into detail. (Future players take note: This kind of hollow production-praising stuff guarantees your confessional will be included in the edit.) Still, someone's bound to realize all this eventually, and then once again, the amulet-holders will become targets, because they're blocking an idol from being used. But at least heading into a merge, the amulets are useful to have control over.

Shorter takes

At last! (Actually this time, maybe?) Why do I keep saying "merge" instead of "mergatory"? Well ... I was absolutely fooled by the fake swap in last week's previews, but for Episode 6, there's something *even better*, and this time, I don't see how the press release and previews can be misleading about this. (It's possible I'm just very gullible/ not very imaginative.) Here's the preview ad:

"One will be safe. Twelve will not!" #survivor #Survivor47 pic.twitter.com/l92zGxntel

— Anthony | SurvivorGIF.com (@anthonyd46) October 19, 2024

Meanwhile, the press release states: "The game is about to change when castaways drop their buffs and come together on the same beach. Castaways must find a hidden advantage to earn a huge lead in the challenge. Then, individual immunity is up for grabs for the first time this season."

When I read the press release (which came out first), I thought, "Eh, I guess in mergatory seven people technically have individual immunity," but then the ad pretty explicitly states only one person has immunity. And why have an in-camp scramble for IC advantage (the image above) if it's just team-v-team?

So what does this all mean? It looks like we actually did already have our rock-drawn team-v-team challenge (as in every mergatory of the New Era) this episode, and we're getting an actual merge next episode. Mergatory is dead! (Rest is shattered hourglass pieces.) The merge is reborn!

(Is it too much to hope for an actual merge feast? Yeah, probably. This is still late-stage low-budget Survivor.)