Survivor Micronesia’s biggest moment: Erik and the immunity necklace

If you have a passing familiarity with Survivor history, then you know about this huge moment with Erik and immunity from Micronesia.

All of the penultimate episode of Survivor: Micronesia builds up to a key moment. Even the recap of the previous episode talked about Erik’s skill at winning individual immunity challenges. Pay attention, as you rewatch, to how much words like redeem and redemption come up.

Five people remained in the game. Erik said, “Amanda made me feel like a fool” in a confessional and spoke about how much he needed the idol on top of it to Natalie, and oh, Natalie listened. Meanwhile, the three favorites — Cirie, Amanda, and Parvati — hatched a plan to convince Erik to take Amanda on reward and send Parvati to Exile Island on the reward challenge.

As the reward challenge itself consisted of Survivor trivia, is it any surprise that Erik won? He ended up listening to Amanda, taking her on a spa-type reward and assigning Parvati to Exile. She whispered to him that he “totally redeemed” himself.

Back at camp, then, Cirie had the opportunity to listen to Natalie fume and drop a few more tidbits about Erik’s perceived betrayal since he didn’t take Natalie on reward.

Cirie also helped Natalie get some more ammo on Erik as he said he wanted to take Cirie and Parvati to the finals. He knew he made a mistake, and then Amanda got to twist the knife further by telling him to stop flipping.

The only wrinkle in the plan, seemingly, was that Erik won immunity in a digging challenge with coordinates. The last puzzle even showed the phrase “Guaranteed: final 4!”

So, in the post-challenge confab, Cirie asked if they could somehow convince Erik to give up immunity. It seemed ridiculous, and then the four of them devised a plan to tell Erik that if he handed it over, Natalie and Cirie would help him get rid of Amanda, with that ever-present word redeem thrown around. Erik initially shot the idea down, but she dangled the jury in front of him.

Even though Natalie started to pull Erik in, this move belonged to Cirie from start to finish. Her assurance she’d vote for Amanda or Parvati helped pull him in, and her direction to Parvati and Amanda to “blast him at Tribal” probably represented a major body bloy, because they took that and ran with it. Erik started using redemption himself at Tribal! When Cirie had a chance to speak, she also casually said things signaling him to do as they’d planned without actually saying it as the finishing blow.

And so, Erik actually handed the immunity necklace to Natalie. For once, the show allowed all five votes to be shown, and then we got to see almost all of them again as Jeff Probst read them. Erik garnered four votes to Parvati’s one.

The Black Widow Brigade waved goodbye as Erik ran off.

Quick notes:

• “If It Smells Like a Rat, Give It Cheese” is the rare episode named by two players: Natalie said the first portion, and Cirie the second in their conversation at camp.
• On the jury, James said “I’ve lost my reign as dumbest Survivor ever.”

Next: Game of Thrones, Survivor-style

We’ve already made it to the finale of Micronesia … at least we will in our next look back.