One of the most interesting factors of Survivor 50 has been seeing the old school players adapting to a new era game. Specifically the idea of voting blocks vs. alliances. While the concept of voting blocks (voting outside your alliance for one or two votes in order to better further your game) has actually existed from the beginning, the idea didn’t become consistent until Survivor: Cambodia - Second Chance.
That season, while the returning players did have alliances, nearly every single Tribal Council vote existed outside of those alliances. And ever since then, we’ve seen this become a trend more frequently. Like, if this was Survivor 15, Christian Hubicki would have stuck with Mike White and Angelina Keeley because he played with them before. But in Survivor 50, because he knew their game, he knew he had to get rid of them earlier in order to further his game the way he needs to for the winning chessboard he’s plotting out in his mind.
But there are two old school players who are clearly doing the best job of this—and have teamed up with a new era player who was a master of voting blocks in his season. Of course I’m talking about the alliance recently dubbed, “Cirie’s Rizard of Oz,” consisting of Cirie Fields, Ozzy Lusth, and Rizo Velovic. Watch the new sneak peek below to see how they’re playing the field:
In the clip, Ozzy comes clean to Tiffany Ervin, saying that he voted for her at the last Tribal Council, which actually gives him trust points with Tiffany. He explains to her that he’s going along with Coach Wade’s plan for now in order to make Coach believe he has Ozzy so that Ozzy and his allies will be able to easily slay the Dragon Slayer when the time comes.
Obviously, Tiffany—who after last week’s vote feels like she’s on the bottom—is completely on board with this plan. In her perfect world, she’ll be waving goodbye as both Coach and Jonathan Young get their torches snuffed, avenging her ally Dee Valladares who was voted out last week, becoming the first member of the jury.
Ozzy goes on to explain how he and Cirie are “playing the middle” with Rizo and that they can’t take out Coach just yet, they need to build up to it with a couple more votes, first eliminating a couple of people “playing in the middle.” And either the irony of that statement is lost on him or Ozzy just sealed his own fate and predicted that someone’s going to catch wind of him basically being an informant in the “honor and integrity” alliance and blindside him very soon.
Honestly, I could see that happening—though I have a strong gut feeling that at some point we will eventually see Rizo and Ozzy go head-to-head in a power battle to become Cirie’s top ally. But for this week, has Ozzy predicted his own elimination? Or will we see one of our beloved swing voters like Emily Flippen, Rick Devens, Aubry Bracco, or Christian Hubicki be the next on the jury?
We'll find out in Survivor 50 episode 8 on Wednesday, April 15, at 8 p.m. ET on CBS and Paramount+!
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