Survivor Heroes vs. Villains and how to flip someone over

Pulling someone out of an alliance and into yours while playing Survivor is huge, and Heroes vs. Villains has two ways to do it.

Even when you know you’re likely to have the numbers in Survivor, it never hurts to try and further weaken the opposing alliance, especially when you’re not so sure your alliance is completely secure. Episode 11 of Heroes vs. Villains is a textbook case of all of this.

Now that the Heroes had taken a body blow in the form of J.T. going home, Russell turned his attention to flipping Candice in particular, because they didn’t need Sandra’s vote anymore. The Heroes, however, did need Sandra — and Amanda and Rupert had a conversation about it.

The nine players played Survivor‘s take on shuffleboard, which Jeff Probst explicitly namechecking the game, in three teams. Danielle, Colby, and Amanda ended up pulling off the victory, with Colby leaving it to the very end for the most dramatic victory possible.

While ostensibly learning about Robert Louis Stevenson and checking out a movie on reward, Danielle grabbed a clue in a bowl of popcorn that Colby didn’t notice … but Amanda did, and she stole the clue. It was not a good scene.

Russell was far better at subterfuge than Amanda turned out to be, since he found the idol without Danielle seeing it, and used it to entice Candice further to the Villain side. Meanwhile, though, Colby went to talk to Sandra.  Granted, he came to the conclusion Danielle had the idol, but the idea itself was sound … even more so when Russell told Sandra there was a traitor, because she ran to Rupert.

Pulling someone over to your alliance can be difficult, but the Heroes honestly had the easier job of it just because Sandra actually wanted to play with them to destroy Russell! That doesn’t always happen, though. Picking out the weak link of a tribal alliance, though, can be as simple as social observation to see who’s most obviously on the outs.

However, Russell admittedly had a lot of leverage to pull Candice over as well. The idol’s always been good for that; Yul did it with Jonathan in Cook Islands.

Building a 10-foot tower of tiles turned out to be Jerri’s forté, so she took immunity.

The problem, though, was that Candice tattled to Russell about Sandra’s plan to switch sides, who went and huffed at Sandra, and Candice just wanted to go along with the Villain plan of Amanda.

Even better, Russell publicly knocked Sandra at Tribal Council. Just to be sure, he played the idol … although no one actually voted for him. Instead, Amanda got six votes, and he had a grumpy Parvati on his hands (especially since she had three votes).

Quick notes:

• The idea of “Jumping Ship” came up in a conversation between Russell and Candice, but then Sandra also said it to Candice.
• The board in the reward challenge was a world map marked with the locations of every single Survivor season to that point.

Next: Ranking Survivor's winners

Heroes vs. Villains is about to get very panicky in the next few episodes.