For the fifth time this season, a player in Survivor 46 has been voted out with a hidden immunity idol in their pocket. It's a new Survivor record! Q Burdette is the most recent player to be eliminated after finding a hidden immunity idol. In a recent episode of his podcast, On Fire with Jeff Probst, the host of every season of Survivor defended players voted out with hidden immunity idols.
Had Q played the idol, Q would not have been voted out during episode 12. Instead, Charlie Davis would have been voted out and Q would have been sitting next to Maria, Ben, Liz, and Kenzie during the Survivor 46 finale, which airs on Wednesday, May 22.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Probst hinted at a little armchair or couch psychology and revisionist history as one reason a lot of players take a lot of heat for going home with a hidden immunity idol.
"When players are playing at this level, the blindsided player never knows it's them. And I know from the couch you might think, 'I would know,' but I doubt it. Getting voted out with an idol is rarely due to a truly bad game decision by the player. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it's the result of great gameplay by the other players. That's why it's called a blindside."
We've gone back and forth about the poor gameplay vs. epic blindsides in the past at Surviving Tribal, but I do think Probst has a great point. If it were so easy, would five players, even if they are the worst players in the history of Survivor, go home without playing their idol? I don't think so.
Sure, there are instances this season where it was an obvious idol play, and the player refused to play the idol. Hunter McKnight should have played his idol. It was a Survivor 101 split-the-vote situation. He and Q were very clearly on the outside, and there were enough players to pull off a split vote ensuring that either Q or Hunter would go home.
Then, we have instances of players overplaying their hand. Jem Hussain-Adams tried to play too aggressively and got caught. She was the first to go with an idol in her pocket. Venus, in my opinion, was another instance where she overplayed. She needed Charlie to trust her, and instead of doing it organically, she hinted at an idol or advantage. That uncertainty caused Charlie to panic a bit, and he and Ben agreed that Venus had to go.
With Tiffany, I think, Q obviously blew up her game, and Kenzie's to a certain extent, when he revealed that Tiffany had an idol. She threatened to use the idol at the tribal council when Hunter went home. She should have seen the blindside coming. It's obvious how big that target is when you have an idol, but I also don't blame Tiffany because, as she revealed to Entertainment Weekly, she had a plan with Charlie to take out Maria using that idol. It was a pretty cold-blooded move for Charlie to withhold that information from Tiffany, but hey, that's the blindside!
Now to Q, it makes a lot of sense why Q didn't play his idol. Maria was convinced, 100%, that Liz and Kenzie were voting with them to take out Charlie. She would not have voted for Charlie unless she thought it was signed, sealed, and delivered that Charlie was going home. Q, who doesn't have the best relationships with Liz and Kenzie, should have realized that these two have been angling to vote him out for so long. He misread that situation by trusting Maria. Yet, Q was so close to the final four! He was through this vote, and then he had an idol to bring himself or possibly someone else into the final four if he won immunity or used his idol.
Q said as much on Instagram in his post after getting voted out. He claimed it was a "BIG MISTAKE," but he also offered up some reasoning as to why he took that big risk in not playing the hidden immunity idol.
And, that's basically Probst's larger point that he made on his podcast. He doesn't view getting voted out with an idol as a mistake. He views it as a risk that didn't pay off.
"But if you're playing to win, then you're always making calculated risks. That's the cornerstone of any Survivor strategy. You need to be clear about the risk you are taking. Sometimes you get lucky, your instincts were right, everything works out, but more often you're going to make a mistake and it will hurt your game in some way. Hopefully not in a fatal way."
For me, there have been clear mistakes made, but it's hard to fault Q when Maria, who has had his back for four votes in a row basically and went out of his way early in the game to target his top ally in the game in Tiffany to protect her, said he was safe. She genuinely thought he was. Oh, how the turn tables!
The Survivor 46 finale airs on Wednesday, May 22, at 8 p.m. ET only on CBS and Paramount+.