Survivor Island of the Idols episode 7: The castaway has spoken

The first member of the Survivor: Island of the Idols jury shed light on possibly throwing his last Immunity Challenge and his conversations with Jamal.

This article discusses the events from episode 7 of Survivor: Island of the Idols.

It’s official, we’re getting another large jury on Survivor and Jack Nichting is the first member. Once again, we had an epic Tribal Council in this past episode of Island of the Idols, leading to another blindsided castaway. Jack got a chance to share his thoughts with Rob Cesternino on RHAP, and here are some of the highlights.

Did Lairo throw the Immunity Challenge?

After Elaine played her Block a Vote advantage and took out Jason, for the first time original Vokai members were in a minority. Lauren, Tommy and Dan were up against four united Lairo members. As a result, Jack mentioned how they were concerned about their Vokai numbers.

Since Jack’s tribe had an overwhelming majority of five Vokais to two Lairos, they did consider throwing the Immunity Challenge to guarantee that they kept their numbers up going into the merge. Although Kellee liked the idea, Jamal and Jack were against it.

During the final puzzle stage of the challenge, Kellee stopped for 10-15 seconds to tie her shoe! It turned out that their tribe lost by mere seconds. So was Kellee subtly trying to intentionally lose immunity? Jack didn’t think so, but we’ll never know for sure until Kellee sheds more light on this.

Jack and Jamal’s open conversations about race brought them closer

One thing Jack mentioned before he made his inappropriate comment to Jamal, was the fact that they already had a very tight bond. They even made Final Four promises with each other. At first, Jack didn’t realize the significance of his do-rag joke, but he was happy that Jamal wasn’t afraid to explain why it felt like an insult to him.

Realizing his crucial mistake, Jack literally took a step back from the game to mend the situation. Taking a break from his social and strategic gameplay, his entire focus was on understanding the insult he made and conveying to Jamal his genuine regret for his comment. Jack said that this incident didn’t weaken his relationship with Jamal at all, if anything, it made the pair closer.

Nobody thought Dean had an idol

Jack and Jamal considered the possibility of Dean playing an idol, making them wonder if they should throw two votes on Karishma or Noura just in case. However, they thought that was unnecessary. Everyone on that tribe believed that Dean would have played it last Tribal Council if he had one. That explains the shocked reactions and comments after his idol play.

It’s also of note that Jack had a particularly close bond with Janet that the edit did not show, even leaving her with his jacket after the last vote was read. It seemed to him that Jamal, Janet, Kellee and himself were a tight four that called all the shots, but he didn’t expect Kellee to make the move that she did.