That’s another episode of Survivor 46! The dreaded mergatory is over and the game enters the individual phase… even if everyone is just sticking with their tribe. Let’s dive into the episode.
Nami vs. Siga, With Q Bringing the Heat
Was this the most dynamic merge episode we’ve ever seen? Certainly not. The dominos basically fell the way you would expect. With five people in both Nami and Siga, the tribal lines felt natural for the newly merged group to draw. This was great for the Yanu three, who were perfectly situated to align with whoever they wanted.
There was another world where the tribal lines would have quietly broken apart early with Q’s “Plus One/Journey 6” Alliance (pick a name Q) if certain people were a bit more willing to take risks. Q in general was everywhere on the beach as by far the most active player in the tribe. He was quick to rendezvous with Hunter and Tim to confirm their cross-tribe alliance, but was dissatisfied to find out that Tim didn’t actually talk to his plus one at all, and in general seemed to sit on the fence about the whole alliance.
Tim’s hesitancy to separate his individual game from a “Siga Strong” strategy catalyzed the mild witch hunt against the Siga group which snowballed into the result of this episode’s tribal council. The recent trend in New Era Survivor has been the tribe strong strategy at the merge. Nami, a socially fractured tribe, and Yanu, the minority in the group, saw Siga’s unity as a threat based on recent seasons and capitalized at the merge by teaming up and pressuring Siga to eat one of their own. Siga in turn did not do enough to make people believe they weren’t one solidified voting group, therefore painting themselves as a threatening group to break up.
Venus: Too Hot to Handle
Look, I love that Venus is leaning into being the villain… but it has clearly ruined her game. Venus came into the merge in a great position to approach any non-Nami member and say, “Please allow me to join you, I’m on the bottom of my tribe”. Instead, she continued to lean into this aggressive, headstrong, stand-offish attitude that isn’t going to make anyone want to trust her, and she continues to languish at the bottom of the social totem pole. She must be aware that her former Nami tribe is going to paint her as this uber-intense gamer who can’t stop trying to play mind games and deceive and argue with people. The smart move would be to cool off for a few days and prove herself as an asset, then once on safer ground she can go back to trying to blindside every threatening player she wants to. Instead she played right into Nami’s description of her, and in some ways made it worse.
When Venus hears that she is on the chopping block and it is either her or Moriah going home, she decides that she needs to start her own blindside plan against Charlie, because Charlie is a bigger threat than Moriah. In a vacuum it’s a good idea: Moriah is only being called a threat as a reason to justify making an easy vote, while Charlie is actually a threat as someone central to the Siga alliance. But Venus is the worst possible messenger for this new plan as a walking Survivor red flag, and she only made it worse by wrapping this new plan in feminism and “strengthening a possible women’s alliance”. There’s no women’s alliance to be made right now so of course her strategizing gets relayed to everyone in the tribe, and Venus’s hopeless resistance makes people want to vote her out, despite the fact that Venus is powerless at this point.
Venus is in a tough spot. It would not surprise me if she is being kept out of the loop in all real voting conversations so she must feel she has to make something happen just to avoid being voted out. However, this first merge vote was a test to see if Venus could submit to being told what to do and just go along with the plan, and she failed.
Passive Mo Had to Go
While Venus didn’t understand she had to sit back, Moriah didn’t understand that she needed to put herself out there to save herself. Moriah knew she was clearly at the bottom of her tribe after her number one ally Jem was voted out. Whether it was poor strategic judgment or clinging to the friendships she made the first twelve days, she chose to stay on the bottom of the Siga tribe once merged, put up a false united front, and hope for the best. The other two tribes pressured Siga to give a name to vote out, and for self-preservation the Siga tribe sacrificed their least important member to get a merge buff. By the time tribal council came around it was way way way too late for Moriah’s truthful confession that she didn’t have a true alliance with her Siga tribemates. This “big reveal” fell flat and spat in the face of days of affirmation that she bled Siga green.
The near unanimous vote (with Charlie throwing a Shot in the Dark security vote at Venus) is telling of the true, less exciting story of the Survivor 46 merge vote. Siga realized that Yanu had aligned with the Nami majority and did not want to fall on their sword to keep Moriah, who really wasn’t part of their alliance anyway. Now they live to fight another day, and if this double tribal council splits up the group in a favorable way, the Siga alliance can take out a big threat in the next vote.
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Biggest Letdown: Random, Uneven Teams in the Most Important Challenge of the Season So Far
Why can’t we get rid of the random draw in favor of a schoolyard pick for a challenge that requires such physical strength and has such large stakes. I think we would all love to watch a close back and forth challenge, rather than this forced David vs.Goliath spin. Not to mention that a schoolyard pick tests social dynamics and infuses strategy into the proceedings (do you stack your team with all your alliance members? What if you lose?).
The challenge did end up being closer than expected because of a puzzle playing equalizer… but regardless of the result having to watch a randomly drawn women’s team fall way behind in a physical challenge that simply favors the men is a bad look.
The Lack of Commitment Award: Tim
Tim is not a socially savvy Survivor player. Make note that it is a stupid decision to tell people that want to make an alliance with you that you need to “take some time to think about it”. Tim’s noncommittal posture towards Q is probably a big reason everyone turned against Siga this vote. Just say yes to every alliance and decide later if it is something worth honoring.
Survivor 46’s Past Castaway Callback of the Week: Aubry
It’s such a Q thing to ask someone who their favorite castaway is, and then take it so seriously that you use it against the castaway as a reason to vote them out. Is “She’s an Aubry” the new “She’s a Parvati”?
MVP of the Episode: The Yanu Three
Two straight episodes of not having to sweat over a vote in this season deserves a round of applause for the Yanu three. Their luck has really turned about, as Kenzie told us at least five different times this episode.
Goat of the Episode: Venus
Someone please take the shovel out of her hand so she stops digging her own grave.
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PLAYER TIER LIST:
OUT OF THE GAME
18. Jelinsky
17. Jess
16. Randen
15. Bhanu
14. Jem
13. Moriah
BOTTOM OF THE TOTEM POLE
12. Venus
IN AN UNCOMFORTABLE POSITION
11. Tim
10. Ben
9. Charlie the Swiftie
8. Maria
Until it stops becoming a tribe strong game and starts becoming a true individual game, I consider it to be open season on voting out former Siga tribe members.
IN A GOOD SPOT FOR NOW
7. Soda
Most likely to be blindsided out of nowhere.
6. Q
Most likely to be blindsided for doing too much. Q was incredibly active strategizing this episode and it has to be painting a target on his back
5. Liz
She’s playing a surprisingly good under-the-radar game… I don’t feel like playing under-the-radar is going to be the formula to win this season but it should help her get far.
IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT
4. Kenzie
3. Tiffany
Yanu is in a great position, as Kenzie told us, and with Q doing so much it takes the spotlight off of these two castaways.
2. Hunter
1. Tevin
Nami won the battle over Siga. Do they win the war? We will find out.
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This merge vote was a simple one… let us hope the upcoming split double tribal council spices up the game a bit.