Ranking every all-returnee season in Survivor history

Photo: Timothy Kuratek/CBS Entertainment ©2020 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Photo: Timothy Kuratek/CBS Entertainment ©2020 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved /
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Contestants Keith Nale, Kelley Wentworth, Kimmi Kappenberg, Jeremy Collins, Latasha “Tasha” Fox and Spencer Bledsoe attend CBS’s “Survivor: Cambodia – Second Chance” photo op (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images)
Contestants Keith Nale, Kelley Wentworth, Kimmi Kappenberg, Jeremy Collins, Latasha “Tasha” Fox and Spencer Bledsoe attend CBS’s “Survivor: Cambodia – Second Chance” photo op (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images) /

All-Returnee Survivor Seasons – Number 2: Cambodia (Season 31, 2015)

Survivor did something really cool with their 31st season, which was a chance to allow fans to vote on who they wanted to see come back and play for a second time. The ballot consisted of one-time players only and had players from as recent as the 30th season to as old as the show’s debut season back in 2000.

That gave us a nice mixture of returnees, as we had the show’s first ever runner-up in Kelly Wiglesworth and also had a few players from season 30. Cambodia introduced the voting blocks concept, which actually didn’t end up sticking in future seasons surprisingly.

Each episode really felt like no one was safe because these players were in it to make the most of their second chances and were willing to take out anyone who got in their way.

Something I liked about the cast selection process was that it wasn’t just players who made the merge in their first season. Instead it was opened up to anyone who had played in the past 30 seasons and that helped turn former pre-merge boot Kelley Wentworth into a legend.

The editing wasn’t great in Cambodia, as Wiglesworth was invisible until her boot episode (and for being a huge jury threat apparently) and several others were kind of just there. It did give us a fun season though because everyone there was in it to win it and those are the best kind of seasons, when everyone is taking the game seriously and not just being a game bot.