Survivor Winners at War: Fire tokens are becoming prominent to the narrative

Prior to episode six of Survivor Winners at War, viewers didn’t know much about fire tokens other than that voted off contestants had to give them to someone remaining in the game. That all changed after this week’s episode.

In the season premiere of Survivor: Winners at War, Jeff Probst explained to the contestants (and to us) that everyone in the game would start off with one fire token. When they were voted out, they had to “bequeath” their fire token to someone still in the game.

We learned when Natalie got to the Edge of Extinction, however, that opportunities would come where the voted off castaways could receive fire tokens for different tasks. Whether it’s hauling logs up and down a hill all day to the point of exhaustion or having to gift a contestant still in the game with some sort of advantage and hoping they accept, fire tokens could be had by exiled players.

We didn’t really know if the tokens would have much use to the players still in the game other than that they needed them in order to get advantages that exiled players presented them with. For instance, Jeremy had to surrender one of his fire tokens in order to accept his Safety Without Power advantage.

Survivor: Winners at War episode 6, however, gave us a whole new twist on how fire tokens could be used, and it ended up being huge.

Sandra had a Hidden Immunity Idol that she had surrendered a fire token for. With her, Tony, and Kim having the numbers on the new Dakal tribe, Sandra felt safe enough to offer the idol to Denise because she didn’t want Denise to go home. In exchange, Sandra wanted two fire tokens from Denise.

This was the first time the concept of bargaining in the game using fire tokens was really brought to light, and it’s definitely something that will continue to occur more and more. We also saw Tyson earn a fire token for giving Parvati an Idol Nullifier that he decided to spend on a jar of peanut butter.

Some people used their fire tokens in a strategic way, whether it’s accepting an advantage that could save them or bargaining with another player to help their cause and others – like Tyson – use it to get comforts such as food. At some point, fire tokens are going to become a huge part of the game, but right now, we only see the beginning of the twist.