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[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Survivor Season 47 Episode 7.]
A reward challenge and advantage twist let the safe team not only witness tribal council in Survivor Season 47’s seventh episode, but also protect one player from elimination in secret. This led to a shocking plot twist that left the eliminated castaway in tears after Jeff Probst snuffed their torch. Probst addresses the shocking developments in the new episode of Survivor‘s On Fire podcast (listen to the full episode for free below).
This episode’s tribal council was the last tribal council before the jury starts to form next week. The reward challenge had two sections, one for a group immunity/reward and one for individual immunity. The 12 remaining players were randomly divided into two teams of six for the group challenge, and it was a pure luck that all five remaining members of the Tuku (blue) tribe ended up on the same side, with Rachel as their sixth player. Teeny, Genevieve, Sol, Sierra, Andy, and Sam got the reward and were safe from tribal council. Kyle won individual immunity again, but he was still part of the losing side — consisting of him and Rachel, Gabe, Sue, Tiyana, and Caroline — that had to vote out a player.
As the only one who wasn’t part of Tuku pre-merge, Rachel seemed like the obvious choice for elimination. But most of the former Tukus knew that presenting a “Tuku strong” alliance would put targets on all of their backs, so players like Tiyana and Caroline schemed for a blindside. Tiyana had her eyes on Gabe, but the tables turned on her when it came time to vote. Sol found the Take Your Pick advantage during the reward feast, which gave him the power to send an advantage to a player headed to tribal council. That player then had the option to either block a vote or opt for safety without power. The latter meant that they would be safe from elimination but would have no vote.
When Probst said it was time to vote, Rachel revealed that she received that protection, though she had no idea who saved her. She used the safety without power option, forcing the Tuku tribe to turn on each other. Tense, unexpected deliberations resulted in a unanimous vote to send Tiyana home. She left in shock and in tears.
Robert Voets / CBS
Probst says on On Fire that they left the challenge teams up to chance because it was dangerous, and “on Survivor, danger means fun.” His cohost, Jay Wolff, questioned this reward and advantage, saying, “You decided to plant an advantage that directly affects the vote with the group who you specifically took out of the vote. So I can’t help but wonder, were these two elements always connected?”
“No, these two ideas were not married in the beginning,” Probst replies. “The first part of the idea came during the early days of structuring this season and we decided we wanted to switch it up and put a group challenge at this point in the game.”
“Then months later, the next phase was looking at the season to decide when and how we want to put any advantages in the game,” he continues. “This situation presented an opportunity to do something different and give somebody who wasn’t in trouble at tribal the power to influence the vote for those who were in trouble. Then we have another choice: Do you let them send this advantage anonymously, or do you force them to sign the advantage so the player who receives it knows who got it? You could do that. Then for whoever has the power, they have the choice of who they’re going to give it to. Are they going to help somebody that’s maybe in their alliance and they want to help and strengthen that bond? Or maybe there’s somebody new they want to forge a relationship with. And then you have the person who gets it, the recipient, they have a choice. Which advantage do I use? That’s quite often how advantages or twists end up in the game. It’s part of a months-long, really kind of a stream of consciousness process where we just keep experimenting and exploring until we find an idea that feels right.”
The Take Your Pick advantage is an evolution of a similar twist introduced in Season 44. In response to a question from cohost/Season 46 runner-up Charlie Davis, Probst says player reviews of advantages “absolutely” change the game.
“Now that we’ve seen a player have an advantage and listen to their thought process and interview, they often teach us what works about it and what’s broken with it,” Probst reveals. “And so then we take it back and say, OK, the reason this wasn’t as powerful was it was too public and it limited their ability, or the reason this was too powerful was it was private. Nobody knew they had it. We constantly modify and adapt and try to learn.”
Rachel got her surprise advantage off-camera (at least it wasn’t shown in this episode) just 20 minutes before arriving at tribal. And yet, she played along with the first half of tribal as if she didn’t have a safety net. Davis says this was a really smart move.
“Oh, it was awesome. Her mentality was awesome. She almost made it so there were two tribal councils, so it was really fun to watch,” Davis says. “That strategy served two ends. The first one is, I imagine Rachel sitting there saying, well, first of all, I still have a choice. I can either use safety without power or I can block a vote. So she’s gathering intel … The other side of her strategy is, the longer Rachel prevents Tuku from actually formulating a plan, the more explosive that I guess tribal council part two is going to be when she leaves or if she had decided to block a vote. And then you have to remember those dynamics are on display for everybody in the game to see, so I loved how she played it.”
Davis also praises Sol, who acted dumb in response to Rachel’s twist. “His acting does hit on an important theme that players think about, which is the control of information,” Davis explains. “The more people that know about what Sol did, giving the advantage to Rachel, the less Sol can do with that information to better his own game.”
We’ll find out next week if Sol takes ownership of orchestrating this blindside. Get more insight into Season 47 Episode 7 in the full episode of On Fire, below.
Survivor, Wednesdays, 8/7c, CBS
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