Survivor: Winners at War Tribal Council visit hints at voting shenanigans

With the voting booth set in a shack above the castaways, video of the Survivor: Winners at War Tribal Council teases unsanctioned tomfoolery ahead.

Since the game of Survivor has taken up a seemingly permanent township in Fiji during filming, one thing that has become remarkable is just how hard the set designers try to make Tribal Council feel special, different, and varied. If you just saw the conversations taking place before the votes, you would assume that the game had been taken far and wide when it’s been anything but the case.

With Winners at War setting up players to really go to war over a two-million-dollar prize, Tribal Council will become a battleground, with competing sides ready to let loose the dogs of war (not Wardog). As shown off in a visit with ET Canada, Jeff Probst is excited to reveal a set that looks like an armed conflict of a forsaken time period left its remains where the players will make their cases.

Actively working cannons, adorned crossbows, castle or fortress walls with protective netting, crosshatched fencing with wooden spike creating barriers; Tribal Council once again looks like a shipwreck similar to Game Changers down to its barrel and crate seating. This time, however, it looks a lot more nefarious, as the stakes have been raised for the show’s important 40th season.

Where things get interesting is when Jeff and ET Canada host Sangita Patel head up to the voting booth overlooking Tribal Council, as players will use what little energy they have to trudge up the stairs. However, Probst noted that sometimes, because of the secluded space, there could be something awaiting a player as they enter the booth, be it a twist or something to change the game.

Our very first season covering Survivor was Game Changers, and these discussions bring up an old memory of production potentially hiding a Hidden Immunity Idol within the voting area as a way to change up the game. With Fire Tokens in play, as well as people on the Edge of Extinction willing advantages to castaways still actively playing, it seems as though the voting booth could be a place where deals are made from beyond the ether.

We already know that Edge of Extinction is going to drive a lot of the conversation in the early days of Winners at War, but with voting shenanigans actively taking place from behind closed-off doors, we could see twists layering twists upon twists to the point where it becomes less about the players and more about playing a lottery game.