During an era of unique themes, Survivor: Ghost Island definitely piqued everyone’s interest as a season that had high expectations of one set up for big gameplay moments and exciting opportunities. Advantages and relics of the past were brought back into the game as new castaways were banished to Ghost Island to find them and rewrite history.
With the idea of reversing the curses of the past, fans were excited to have new players relive some of the most iconic moments in prior seasons and possibly create different gameplay decisions with the enhanced strategy the players had produced in the game over the years.
And with the upcoming introduction of the “open era” which Jeff Probst has described eerily similarly, we’re wondering if Survivor: Ghost Island might be a good season to revisit before we enter this new era, in order to set up our expectations of what’s to come.
But in the end, did Survivor: Ghost Island turn out to be a strategic masterclass or a predictable re-enactment of the worst parts of past seasons? We break down the reasons why you should—and maybe shouldn’t—rewatch the 36th season of Survivor before we enter the “open era.”
The Storytelling
If there’s one thing specifically that Ghost Island did well, it was the early game storytelling. Before the merge hit, we had brilliantly paced episodes that featured every tribe dynamic and really explored all the different angles of the set-up of the season. The early downfall of Malolo, the frantic strategizing on Naviti, the intense tribe swap that highlighted the high stakes of mixing up the two alliances. The early days of the season were electric and actually some of the best narrative storytelling in all of Survivor history in my opinion.
But once we hit the merge, we unfortunately fell into predictability that caused the entertainment to lose its shine. The Naviti tribe performed a classic “Pagonging” that effectively steamrolled the rest of the votes without a single effective blindside—or even an attempt at a blindside. Week-after-week fans sat at home and hoped that someone would make a move against the obvious leaders of the majority alliance only to watch the people at the bottom get picked off easily in an old-school strategy that just isn’t fun.
The Final Three Alliance
One of the most strategically dominating alliances in Survivor history, Domenick Abbate and Wendell Holland ran the game with Laurel Johnson by their side. While at first, their dominance can appear oppressive, after analyzing the way they adapted the “meat shield” strategy for modern gameplay, their brilliance absolutely deserved to get them to the finale. Knowing that they were the two biggest targets on the beach, they exploited everyone’s fear by flipping the switch and coming off as so powerful that everyone continued to wait “just one more week” to pull the trigger on eliminating them.
However, the Laurel of it all was frustrating to watch because she confessed the entire time that because of this, she knew she couldn’t beat them in the end. She had the power to take them down from the inside, yet she never did. Vote-after-vote, instead of fighting for her own game, she chose loyalty, effectively handing them $1 million. Well, effectively handing Wendell $1 million. Because in the end, the season had the first ever jury tie in Survivor history. This caused Laurel to become the final member of the jury and forced her to cast the tie breaking vote. Of course, that immediately gave it away who won as her loyalty had always been stronger towards Wendell. So again, that only contributed to the post-merge predictability.
Advantages, Advantages, Advantages
The “ghosts” of advantages past were everywhere this season, and it was very fun to walk down memory lane. Not too dissimilar to the flashback clips intermixed into Survivor 50 recently, Ghost Island gave us explicit video reminders as to what happened previously with advantages when they were distributed to players. For us longtime fans, it felt like a time capsule of iconic memories being opened. On top of that, production design was top-tier, making everything appear more cursed and haunted than they actually were and amplifying the lore and easter eggs shattered throughout the beach for added nostalgia effect.
However, the gimmick caused an inflation of advantages that all included cinematic introductions that took screen time away from social interactions and strategizing back at camp. Episodes were over saturated with Ghost Island’s games of chance—similar to today’s journies—and incredibly long player monologues about past seasons which left little room for the actual gameplay of the current season to exist unhurried. The show started to feel more like a video game cut scene being quickly clicked through to skip rather than the social experiment that it is.
So in the end, while the season had great potential—as I know the new “open era” does as well—almost no one actually “reversed” any curses or “fixed” any of the past mistakes made by other players. In a theme of redemption, modern castaways ended up simply reliving the errors of the past without even attempting to play the game for “today.” It felt like a big setup that ultimately fell flat. Hopefully the show has learned from the past itself and the “open era” doesn’t make the same mistake twice. We’ll find out soon when Survivor 51 premieres this September.
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