Episode 8: "Hot Grim Reaper"
Survivor 49 Episode 8 boxscore
Filmed: May 4, 2025 | Aired: November 12, 2025
- Ep.8 idol: Alex, Kristina, and Steven go looking for the idol, mainly to prevent Savannah, Rizo, and Sophi from finding it first. Kristina finds it, vows to use it for Steven or Alex if necessary.
- Ep.8 IC: "Chimney Sweeps" - Production manages to complicate a classic challenge, with random-drawn teams, with the losing team being whichever loses all its members first. Winners get sandwiches, cookies ... and immunity. No Tribal for them.
- Ep.8 advantage: After she's done eating, Savannah learns she gets to attend the losing team's Tribal ... and cast a vote! Unless she'd rather save that vote for a later (up until F6) Tribal, that is.
- Ep.8 Tribal: Savannah decides to bank her vote rather than use it now, so MC is out, 4-1 over Sophie.
Episode 8 scoring notes
- The challenging challenge: This episode's sole challenge was incredibly difficult to score. As presented to the losing team, it was a simple team reward/immunity challenge (although the individual who lasted the longest also won a personal "advantage"). So it should be a simple five winners, five losers, 0.2 ChW per player, right? Except that Savannah's advantage for winning included the immunity necklace, which she wore to Tribal, and where she could have cast a vote, if she wanted to. That made it a straightforward individual endurance challenge, where by winning, she also got to have food with her team (that she didn't pick, but whatever). Honestly, you could make a solid argument for either case. I ended up on individual RC/IC, because it's hard to argue that Kristina and Alex being the first two to drop out in any way helped their team win. The win was 100% Savannah's, so in that sense, it was individual. (Besides, we're two episodes into the merge, and it was the only challenge, and half the cast hadn't been in an individual challenge yet.)
- *Savannah's non-vote: As has been done in the past, since TCA actually counts votes cast, no TCA for Savannah in this episode. That will come when she actually uses her vote, so only 5 TotV cast here.
Vote count:
- MC received 4 votes, from Jawan, Rizo, Sage, and Sophie (voted out, 4-1).
- Sophie received 1 vote, from MC.
| Reward/ Immunity challenge | Overall score | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contestant | ChW | ChA | Plc | % Fin | MPF |
| Savannah | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1.00 | 100% |
| Sophie | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0.90 | 95.0% |
| Sophi | 0 | 1 | 4 | 0.70 | 68.3% |
| Steven | 0 | 1 | 6 | 0.50 | 66.7% |
| Jawan | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0.60 | 60% |
| Sage | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0.80 | 56.7% |
| MC | 0 | 1 | 7 | 0.40 | 40% |
| Rizo | 0 | 1 | 8 | 0.30 | 23.3% |
| Alex | 0 | 1 | 9 | 0.20 | 20% |
| Kristina | 0 | 1 | 10 | 0.10 | 10% |
| Tribal Council stats | Overall scores | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contestant | VFB | VAP | TotV | TCA | SurvSc | SurvAv |
| Kristina | - | - | - | - | 1.37 | 8.06 |
| Sophie | 1 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 1.56 | 7.89 |
| Alex | - | - | - | - | 1.19 | 7.56 |
| Sage | 1 | - | 5 | 1 | 1.14 | 7.56 |
| Jawan | 1 | - | 5 | 1 | 1.06 | 5.78 |
| Rizo | 1 | - | 5 | 1 | 0.97 | 5.08 |
| Steven | - | - | - | - | 1.17 | 4.68 |
| MC | 0 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0.84 | 3.09 |
| Sophi | - | - | - | - | 0.84 | 4.43 |
| Savannah | - | - | 5 | 0* | 0.98 | 4.18 |
| Nate | - | - | - | - | 0.83 | 2.36 |
| Shannon | - | - | - | - | -0.46 | 0.49 |
| Jason | - | - | - | - | 0.97 | 2.14 |
| Matt | - | - | - | - | -0.04 | 0.53 |
| Jeremiah | - | - | - | - | 0.62 | 3.11 |
| Jake | - | - | - | - | 0.58 | 2.33 |
| Annie | - | - | - | - | 0.27 | 1.56 |
| Nicole | - | - | - | - | -0.83 | 0.00 |
Glossary of terms
- Challenge
stats
- ChW: Challenge Wins. For tribal challenges, a contestant earns a fraction of 1 win, depending on if they participated (no points for sitting out). So in a five-person tribe's win, each participant gets (1/5) of a point, or 0.2 points. Duels (or individual RCs as in Ep1) at Redemption Island count as half a challenge (and half a win). Individual challenge wins count as a full point.
- ChA: Challenge Appearances. Used to calculate ChW%. Fractional for tribal challenges (same as ChW), except sit-outs get charged for an appearance, because they could have participated.
- ChW%: Challenge Win%. Simply, ChW% = ChW / ChA.
- SO: The number of times a contestant sat out of a challenge.
- Tribal
Council stats
- VFB: Votes For Bootee. The number of times the contestant has voted for the person who was ultimately voted out. Applies only to initial votes (no points for revotes in case of a tie). Special case: In a final three TC, where only one vote is cast (by the F3 IC winner), only that vote counts.
- VAP: Votes Against the Player. The total number of tribal council votes cast against the contestant. Again, only initial votes count (no penalty for revotes), and here a hidden immunity idol (if played) erases the votes. In the special case of a final three tribal council above, only the F3 bootee receives a vote against.
- TotV: Total votes cast during the tribal councils the player has attended (again, only initial votes count). Used to adjust for different vote totals as tribes shrink.
- TCA: Tribal council appearances. The number of times a contestant has attended tribal council (at which they voted).
- TC%: Tribal Council percent. Attempts to reward voting for the bootee (which players controlling the vote almost always do), while punishing receiving votes yourself. The formula is: TC% = [VFB - (VAP/TotV)] / TCA.
- wTCR: weighted Tribal Council Ratio. Very similar in intent to TC%, but calculated as a ratio of VFB to VAP, while also scaling to a uniform number of TC appearances. The formula is as follows: wTCR =2* [VFB / (4+VAP)] x (14/TCA). I originally tried (1+VAP) to avoid dividing by zero, but this overly rewarded getting zero votes against relative to just one vote against, which seemed silly. (4+VAP) scaled that effect back comfortably. 14 was used as the scaling factor for TC appearances because there are usually 14 episodes, then a final scaling factor of 2 to bring maximal scores up to roughly even with ChW and JV% high scores.
- Jury
stats
- JVF: Number of jury votes for the contestant to win. Maximum nine (Earl Cole, Fiji), theoretically.
- TotJ: Total number of jurors. Necessary to not punish unanimous 7-juror winners (JT Thomas, Tocantins).
- JV%: The percent of total jury votes cast for the contestant, or Jur% = JVF/ TotJ. This number is used, raw, in SurvSc, and is scaled in SurvAv (multiplied by six) to make it similar in size to ChW and wTCR.
- Overall
scores
- Survival Score (SurvSc). It's simply the sum of Challenge Win% (ChW%) + Tribal Council% (TC%) + Jury Vote%, for a maximum possible score of 2 (3 after the finale).
- Survival Average (SurvAv). It's a simple sum of fractional Challenge Wins (ChW), weighted TC Ratio (wTCR), and (eventually) a weighted Jury%. The latter two max out at six points total, for a theoretical maximum score of around 18 or so.