How can Survivor let its winners play again?

Survivor winners have come back after earning the title of Sole Survivor in their original season, but should that continue?

Ever since Survivor All-Stars, it’s been clear that players who win Survivor don’t have to end their careers there. In fact, Sandra Diaz-Twine made her way into Survivor legend by being the first and only player who has actually won the million dollars twice. (Well, that and the whole beating Russell Hantz to win the second time.)

But after a season which, as my colleague ably notes, saw all the winners go out early again, the case has to be growing for Survivor to change how it treats former winners. There are three paths that we can see going forward.

The first is to simply not let winners play again at all. This seems most unlikely of the three options, because Survivor has never done this. All-Stars was the first returnee season, and it had three winners play again: Richard Hatch, Tina Wesson, and Ethan Zohn. All three of them went out quite early in the game based on the sentiment from other players that they had had their chance already.

The second is to only allow winners to play with other winners. While this would help avoid the problem of non-winners targeting winners, it would also likely make seasons more difficult to produce. In 34 full seasons, there have been 33 winners. That’s a small pool to pull from. And when you’re trying to get everyone to go for filming a new season at a specific time, the coordination becomes even harder. This doesn’t rule out an all-winners season, but it means it’s probably going to be a long time coming if it ever comes at all. If Survivor makes it to season 40, that’d be the next “natural” time to do it. That’s still three years away, assuming the usual two-a-year pace.

The third is to continue on as Survivor has done since All-Stars and simply let winners and other returnees play together. This is the “inertia” option. Of course, the show has changed before. It’s entirely possible that it’ll do so again. However, for the above-mentioned scheduling reasons, it seems like this may remain in place.

Whether or not it’s fair is another question entirely. On one level, the idea that winners have had their chance, something espoused by other returnees, makes sense. On another, however, fans celebrate Sandra’s two wins, because the second really shouldn’t have happened based on that concept.

Next: Who should return from Game Changers?

In fact, it might be more unfair to the winners, not other returnees, since winners are playing on a harder difficulty in some respects. This is something that winners like Sandra and Tony both brought up during Game Changers during their early attempt at an alliance.

So, what’s a show to do? Unfortunately, the “inertia” option is probably what’ll end up happening for the near future, much as we might want a winners season.