Most memorable moments from Survivor: Ghost Island

Survivor: Ghost Island was the 36th season of the show and aired in the spring of 2018. When looking back, what do people remember the most about Ghost Island?

This was the fourth straight season filmed in Fiji and gave us the third straight season with the season’s theme in the title. This time around, the theme involved players going to Ghost Island, which we’ll tackle first in the most memorable parts of this season (and as you’ll find out — there weren’t many).

Ghost Island

For those who familiar with the older seasons of the show, Ghost Island was essentially Exile Island on steroids. It was filled with relics from past seasons and players had a chance to win advantages if they correctly won whatever game was in front of them.

Some of the relics on Ghost Island included the Legacy Advantage from Game Changers, Andrea’s unplayed idol from Caramoan, Ozzy’s fake idol from Micronesia, and the immunity necklace that Erik famously surrendered to Natalie in Micronesia.

Ghost Island was an interesting concept but there were too many advantages put into the game as a result and hey — That seems to be the new-school way to play Survivor so maybe that’s exactly what production was hoping for.

Double Elimination

On Day 29 when there were 10 contestants remaining in the game, Jeff Probst dropped a bombshell that Lavita (the merged tribe) would be split into two tribes who would run the challenge separately. One person from each of the five could win immunity but the other four would be vulnerable at tribal council. Both sets of teams would attend tribal council but would do so separately.

There was another version of this twist done back in Survivor: Fiji but the winning team didn’t have to go to tribal council, so this was the first time that this particular twist was done. It was revisited three seasons later in Island of the Idols.

Invisible Cast

I don’t know about you all but when I look back at Survivor: Ghost Island, the first thing that comes to mind for me is — Who the heck were most of these people?

The season ignored a large majority of the cast while Domenick dominated the airtime, only to not win the game. Wendell, the winner of the season, received decent airtime, but nowhere close to what Dom received. The only other people we really heard from were Donathan and Laurel. Everybody else was basically invisible.

Jacob, who was voted off second, had 14 confessionals during his two episodes while Angela, who made it to the final four, received two fewer confessionals. Chelsea, who made it to the final eight, had only four confessionals during the entire season.

This was a bad cast and maybe that’s why the editing sucked so much, but it’s hard not to point this out when discussing the season.

Tie Vote at Final Tribal Council

For the first time in Survivor history, there was a tie when determining a winner. It seemed suspicious when Jeff returned from “tallying the votes” and said he was going to read the votes right then and there (stunning Dom in the process). Shortly into him reading the votes, we all knew why this was the case, as it went back and forth between a vote for Dom and a vote for Wendell, eventually evening it up at five votes a piece.

The tiebreaker in this scenario was that the third-place finisher, who — in this case — was Laurel, got to cast the deciding vote. She voted for Wendell, which crowned him the winner of Survivor: Ghost Island.

I’ll be curious to see if we ever have a tie vote when determining a winner ever again or if this will be the only reason Ghost Island is ever brought up.

What did you find to be memorable about this season of Survivor?