Jeff Probst calls Survivor 41 ‘a monster of a season’

Survivor 41 finally has a premiere date. The season kicks off on September 22 at 8 pm with a two-hour episode.

Now that we know the date, Survivor host Jeff Probst has put out a new video hyping up the season. In fact, his latest comments go so far as to say this new season is the start of “a new era” in Survivor.

How hard was Survivor 41 for the new players?

To some degree, we’ve known this for a while. Survivor 41 is going to be a shorter season and production is dropping the theme altogether. That, by itself, is going to greatly change how the game is played. However, Probst called Survivor 41 “the monster in a horror movie” as a way to say this season will test players like never before.

Of course, that could just be marketing speak, but there’s likely some truth to the statement. After all, as Probst points out, the crew has had more than a year to think up new twists and design new challenges. That extra time in the think tank is sure to produce some devilish new ideas that could really push the show forward.

On top of that, knowing the contestants won’t have to play as many days could mean the challenges will push them even further. That’s not to say Survivor has ever taken it easy on players, but they had to program around players dealing with less than ideal conditions. Now, they have to worry about that less and can really take each challenge’s construction to another level.

It will be very interesting to see if Survivor 41 can actually turn Survivor into a “brand new game.” The potential is there for this to be a season like nothing we’ve ever seen before. However, production can’t drift too far without losing the audience. Hopefully, Probst and his team are able to Nale this one.