Is Survivor season 35 editing foreshadowing a medevac?

By Daniel George | Nov 18, 2017

Screen Grab via Global TV /

A lot of interesting editing cues involving energy and hunger have us guessing whether Survivor season 35’s Devon Pinto will make it through the game.

Ever since the brutal slate of Survivor Kaoh Rong medevacs, the game has not seen a player leave due to medical pulling them out ever since. It’s a great thing, as you do not want to see someone have to visit a doctor because a bug bit them, but due to their gameplay. However, there is speculation online that we could see a player from Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers leave before their torch is officially snuffed.

People who pay attention to edgic (determining who wins through the logic of the game’s edit) are more keen at noticing foreshadowing done by the editors than the usual Survivor fan. For example, I was predicting that Desi Williams would be voted out as a sacrifice for Joe Mena ever since the editors kept in Probst’s weird analogy about “going after the wife to take out the villain.” Four episodes after Probst made that comment, that’s exactly what happened.

In the last two episodes, Devon Pinto’s been getting a sudden influx of editing focus, even when he doesn’t have much to say. While I believe it’s more because he’s getting the patented post-merge winner’s edit push, an alarming trend comes with each of these episodes; a dire lack of energy.

The camera crew broke out the drone camera for the Survivor season 35 merge episode, but its first example was dedicated to showing how little energy he had. The entire intro of this episode was dedicated to how dire things were for Levu in general, but Devon was downright zombie-like in appearance, stature and voice. Ashley even noted that if the tribe didn’t get a reward, they could die.

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In of itself, it isn’t enough to have long-term fears for Devon. Just like the rest of Solewa, he got to enjoy some Thunder from Down Under and some ribeye steaks from Outback Steakhouse™ at the merge, meaning he should have been good to go. However, the Survivor season 35 episode 8 Tribal Council from earlier this week included an odd passage from Devon; one that didn’t need to be included at all.

“I think this game just chips us down, and we really are exposed,” he says of the toll Survivor has on the players. “Like today at camp, we got back from the Immunity Challenge, and I was just lying in the shelter dead, just like *blegh*. I don’t want to be like that. I feel like I’m always a positive, high-energy person, just loving to smile, laugh and have a good time, all the time. I don’t want to be a zombie; I like being a bright, beautiful light.”

While that’s a heartwarming message of sincerity, it also came out of nowhere; completely separate from the main conflict of Tribal Council. It spun out of Ben’s conflict with Joe, as the two spent the episode sparring a war of words against each other. Tribal Council lasts like two or three hours a night so the editors can spin any story they want.

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That leaves us with the question; why do the editors want us to know just how tired and drained Devon Pinto is at this stage of the game? The prevailing theory is that he could be medically evacuated in a later episode as part of the show’s love of foreshadowing players’ demises. However, that may just be people trying to look too much into the tea leaves.

Right now, with ten players remaining, there are at least four more one-hour episodes’ worth of content confirmed on CBS’ schedule. Even if Survivor season 35 ended on December 13 on episode 13, they would be left with a Final 6 situation (assuming one person eliminated each episode). If the season ends on December 20, that’s a Final 5 situation, and both scenarios are commonplace for this game’s Finale in the modern age.

A medevac to bring a Final 4 in that situation has only happened in modern times with Kaoh Rong, and that was due to fact three players were evacuated, and one came on Day 34 to leave four players left in the game. It’s that exact reason why CBS doesn’t plan to have so few players by finale time; anything can go wrong fairly quickly.

What’s more likely is that we are starting to see Devon emerge as a player capable of winning the game. You can see that his Levu tribe cares for him before the merge, and even though he mumbled a bunch of nonsense in the latest Tribal Council, not only were others reacting to him positively, but Jeff Probst was reassuring him, too.

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As Ben, Chrissy and Ryan continue to have their early-game momentum chip away, Devon is slowly, but surely, being molded into a character that fans can root for at home. He needs a lot more personal content and a challenge to overcome; perhaps his biggest challenge will be overcoming his own failing body, as nobody else may stand in his way.

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