Survivor: David vs. Goliath episode 8 preview looks at punishing Reward Challenge

Having emerged from the Survivor: David vs. Goliath merge, the episode 8 preview videos tease the next stage of the game as Strike Force lies in wait.

Warning: This post will show scenes from Survivor: David vs. Goliath episode 8, including parts of the Reward Challenge and who will be representing each of the two teams.

Now that Elizabeth Olson is voted out, we’re at a clear Goliath player majority in Survivor: David vs. Goliath. Though things look dire for the Davids, remember that Jeff Probst teased right off the bat it’s not who has the advantage in the game; it’s asking the question of what the advantage is. Sometimes, having the numbers can have a negative effect; look at the Healers tribe in season 35.

The Survivor: David vs. Goliath episode 8 preview videos are in, and we’re going to take a look at the Reward Challenge first before heading back to the Kalokalo camp. Here, two teams of six must hold eight bags of sand over their heads, with each bag weighing 10 pounds. Every 15 minutes, one player from each team must drop out and exchange one of their bags to someone else on the tribe.

It’s like a more balanced version of “Shoulder the Load,” but instead of players adding more weight onto players’ shoulders, they are distributing the weight and sharing it strategically themselves. Gabby chose Christian, Alison, John, Alec, and Nick to join her team in a schoolyard pick as a captain, while Mike drew Dan, Carl, Davie, Angelina and Dan to his team.

It fully contextualizes what we saw in the press photos, as now we have the whole picture. I thought it was lucky that one team would have five of six members of Strike Force within, and now we see that it was by design. With Mike being the other captain, it would have been impossible to get the full squad together.

The second Survivor: David vs. Goliath episode 8 preview video shows Christian and Mike discussing the fallout of the previous episode, basically agreeing that Angelina’s a dead woman walking. Christian brings up the Strike Force alliance and how this vote will be a “pivotal test of trust” for the alliance to rebalance the voting structure at this time.

It will be interesting to see if they pull the trigger now with an even number of players left. It could be a unanimous vote towards Angelina, but considering how many power players are left in the game, we could see Christian, Mike or someone else targeted by the end of this week’s episode.