More on one of the episode 13 challenges in Survivor: Game Changers

The photos for this week’s episode of Survivor: Game Changers reveal just one of the challenges instead of both, and there may be a reason why.

Survivor: Game Changers has set something of a routine when it comes to releasing photos. For this entire season, yours truly has broken down the challenges — and it’s usually two — and tried to predict what’s happening. This isn’t to say that episode 13, “Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow,” won’t have any challenges at all. However, CBS’ official photos only show one. Let’s start there.

A quick count of the masts shows that this is the final eight immunity challenge, so it should happen quite early in the episode.

We assumed this challenge was a “house of cards” challenge based on the 20-second preview. However, these stills give us a better look at what’s actually happening. As Troyzan here is demonstrating, players will have to stack their tiles up one-handed, while using the other hand to keep everything steady. That adds another level of difficulty to an already-tough challenge.

Here’s Sarah with a slightly different angle on the challenge. Pay attention to her hairstyle. It’ll be relevant in a couple photos.

Somebody must win eventually though. Alas, there’s no way to really lip-read a still and pick out whose name Jeff Probst is likely shouting in this photo.

In that same analysis of the 20-second preview, we also surmised that Sarah and Cirie might start talking about Michaela’s presumed actions, because engineering Michaela’s ouster requires more than just Sarah herself to work on it, vote steal or no.

The person whose face we can’t see has the same shirt, so it’s Cirie, presumably checking to see who may have seen her and Sarah speaking. (It doesn’t look like she’s looking at someone else that’s not in the frame; the angle seems a bit off for that.) Apparent proof of two conversations between Cirie and Sarah starts to produce implications about what’s going to go down over the next three days of the game.

Additionally, Sarah has her hair in braids, which suggests that this takes place on the same day of an immunity challenge.

Basically, to wrap back to why CBS isn’t showing the presumed second immunity challenge, there’s very little way to do so without spoiling who goes home in the first Tribal Council. The synopsis explicitly states two Tribals, so two immunities seems like a safe bet.

Here’s Cirie talking to Michaela. In fact, of the 12 “camp life” photos released this week, Cirie is in five. It seems Cirie is about to play a major role.

That expression seems to suggest that Brad is not happy about whatever he’s being told, and that would make sense, again considering the preview. He throws around the word “blackmailing,” and in relation to himself. It’s not a great position.

Not even Andrea looks particularly pleased. Note that we don’t see anyone else in the frame, meaning she may be observing a conversation or otherwise just sitting and thinking about her options.

Who is Aubry talking to here? Unfortunately, there aren’t any hints in the frame. It’s probably not someone much taller than she is, just based on the angle of her head, but that doesn’t winnow the field much at all. If we had to guess, it’s probably Sarah, Cirie, or Andrea.

Next: Game Changers: Episode 12 power rankings

All of these predictions could be blown completely out of the water by the episode itself, though.

Home/Season 34 Game Changers