On this week's episode of The Pod Has Spoken, hosts Tyson Apostol (winner, Survivor: Blood vs. Water) and Riley McAtee welcomed the winner of Survivor: Africa, Ethan Zohn, to chat through episode 12 of Survivor 49, "The Die Is Cast."
The three discussed how theatrical this season of the game has been, namely Rizo Velovic's performance week-after-week with his "hidden" immunity idol, all agreeing that it's his game to win at this point having executed perfect strategy at every vote to ensure he's made it this far without ever having to give up his advantage that guarantees him a spot in the Final 4.
But as we go into next week's finale, the three and two-time Survivor players—respectively—touched on the one aspect of the game that hasn't changed since the very first season of the game: the jury. Specifically, the fact that there's a game within the game that the audience never sees, often leaving the Final Tribal Council vote and the choice behind the Sole Survivor an unclear mystery to the viewers at home. See the full discussion at the video below.
"The jury has so much power at Final Tribal Council, and they just come there with their decision, yet we as an audience don't get to see them make that decision," Ethan starts, going in on the additional factors of Ponderosa—the site where the jury stays after they are voted out—and how the game is still going on with people campaigning and discussing who they think should win and why.
After almost 50 seasons, he thinks it's time to change up the jury structure for the sake of the audience and mirror it to a traditional American court jury by giving the final members of the jury 24 hours to sit together and make a unanimous decision on which of the finalists should be named the Sole Survivor. He alludes that this would be its own episode, allowing the viewers at home to see the true process that goes into selecting the winner.
Tyson, however, very quickly disagrees by claiming, "That takes the suspense out of reading the votes one-by-one." He'd rather see the jury's voice immediately integrated back into the game instead of being the silent listeners on the sidelines until the very end, letting the voted out players get one question for the remaining castaways at each Tribal Council to keep stirring up the game.
But they both agree that the jury's involvement in the show needs to be more than just the few minutes at Final Tribal Council as well as overall more visible for the audience than what it is now. With all the changes we've seen to the show's format over the years, I think switching up the way the jury participates could be exciting, especially as we approach a new era of Survivor once season 50 has aired.
While the heart of Survivor is still the element of flipping the script and giving the decision of awarding the winner to the people who personally removed them from the game, there are definitely ways to reignite and reframe the current structure—even more so than going from jury members speaking individual to a forum-based environment.
Maybe in addition to the intro statements, discussion, and final remarks, they could add one more Final Tribal Council element where the finalists are required to ask the jurors specific questions about how they perceived their game? Or there's a final advantage in the game that includes an additional time allotment for finalists to influence the jury at the end? Or the jury collectively agrees on a rubric for "outwit, outplay, outlast" before Final Tribal Council and must score each player based on that guide, with the title going to the person with the most points?
If a change is made to the jury, we probably won't see it for a few seasons. We know Survivor 50 is already set to air Wednesday, February 25, 2026, and both Survivor 51 and Survivor 52 have been greenlit and are in pre-production—back-to-back seasons usually feature similar formats, so those are likely locked by now. So if we do see the show shake things up it probably won't be until at least 2027 when Survivor 53 will most likely come out.