For nearly two decades, the hidden immunity idol was the undisputed gold standard of Survivor advantage. No matter what new twists or advantages were thrown into the game, the trusty hidden immunity idol was always there to save the day or throw a wrench in someone’s plans. And we got to see them evolve with the game both positively and negatively.
We saw production change them up only to decide it was best to keep them as it—we’re looking at you, Super Idol. But we also saw the players adapt gameplay through idols like Ozzy Lusth classicly tricking Jason Siska with a fake idol (encouraging production to start planting fake idol kits in the game) or Russell Hantz being the first player to find an idol without any clues (forcing production to retire clues from the game entirely).
But if you look closely at the most recent seasons, something very fundamental has shifted in Fiji and it’s changing how people view the game.
Do players care about hidden immunity idols anymore?
There is now a double standard of having a hidden immunity idol tied to you. It no longer paints the same target on your back it might have previously. In fact, in the last two seasons of Survivor, the only player anyone was terrified of possessing an idol—forcing her to flush it—was Aubry Bracco. And considering she went on to win the game, it seems they had good reason to be nervous about her having protection.
But then you have Survivor 50 players like Rizo Velovic and Ozzy, both of whom had known idols in their pockets that they had to play on themselves. But no one was targeting them because of it. And of course, the irony of the situation was that just one season prior—though no one knew it—Rizo played the exact same move and had a known idol that went by night-after-night without being targeted.
Less than a decade ago, we had these big idol hunting players like Rick Devens and Ben Driebergen who were only able to stay alive in the game as long as they did because they continuously found hidden immunity idols. They were targeted so hard that they needed the idols to stay alive. People would chase them through the jungle, hoping to get to the idol before them in the hopes of finally being able to vote them out.
But today—except for a very fun episode of Survivor 50 in which Rick Devens relived the glory days of the cat and mouse idol chase—the move is no longer to find an idol to stay alive. The game is about building strong, one-on-one emotional bonds so your social game keeps you alive. Finding an idol is seen more as a cool Survivor bucket list item like making the merge or getting to Final Tribal Council.
So while the hidden immunity idol isn’t completely dead, as we enter the new “open era” of Survivor, maybe we think about returning to the format where idols weren’t so heavily involved in gameplay since they really haven’t been used as such in recent seasons anyway? With the inflation of advantages in recent seasons, the hidden immunity idol just isn’t as game-altering as it once was. But maybe it could be again? If we strip back the game for a few seasons, it could be fun to bring it back down the road and see how the game naturally evolves once more.
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