It may only be the second week of Survivor, but our players are going hard early. Considering the players are "only" on the island for 39 days, it makes sense. They don't have as much time to prove themselves or to further their own games.
The real hope in episode 2 is that we either don't see any more epic breakdowns, or we see some big game moves. After all, if you are going to play hard within the first five days of Survivor, we need epic blindsides, new alliances, and stunning idol finds.
So what went down in episode 2 of Survivor's 47th season?
WARNING: Spoilers from Survivor 47 episode 2 are below.
Survivor episode 2 started with all the idol insanity and Beware Advantage hunting
Right off the bat, we had plenty of idol hunting across the tribes. And right away, over on the Lavo tribe, we saw Rome finishing what he started in the premiere. It seems that in the middle of the night, Rome found the box housing his idol. But since he could not see what the box said, he hid it for the morning. But he also shared with his tribe mate, Teeny, that he had found the Beware Advantage.
Telling Teeny might have been a big mistake for Rome since she decided to share that with Kishan. And of course, she got caught red-handed by Rome showing the other man the Beware Advantage box. Honestly, this was such a mess. But Teeny tried to play it off.
In the end, Rome decided to stick with the idol he earned and not take on tasks to make it more powerful. Considering Teeny broke his trust, it sounds like that made sense for him to stay with the one tribal idol.
Turning to Gata, they were still trying to recover from their immunity loss and sending Jon home. But the problem with that is the fact that they still had to deal with Andy, who had such an epic breakdown in the premiere. And they didn't want him to have a chance to protect himself from being voted off the island.
While the ladies of Gata are off trying to keep Andy from finding an idol, Sam was technically meant to be his babysitter. Too bad Sam had to go to the bathroom, leaving Andy with the chance to go off and find the Beware Advantage. But then he decided to leave it behind because he didn't think anyone was looking for the idol (it's like he has never watched a single episode of Survivor).
This is basically when everything devolved at Gata because Sam ended up finding the Beware Advantage while off grabbing water for the group, leading to a mad dash to follow the clues leading to the idol. But since Sam wasn't alone when he went off to get the water for the group, now everyone (except Andy) knew about the Beware Advantage in some way.
When Andy decided to go off to try and grab the hidden Beware Advantage clue after a few hours, he found that it was gone. He had no idea that Sam had actually found the key to the Beware Advantage, and Andy decided to confide in his tribe mate by telling him that he had found the Advantage but now it is gone and one of the women must have found it. This leads to Sam believing he might be able to work with Andy, even if he didn't tell him about finding the advantage.
But who does Sam include in finding the idol? That would be Sierra. They opened the box only to learn that there was a chance to make the idol more powerful with another task. Surprisingly, Sam decided not to power up his idol and kept it as one tribal idol.
With both Rome and Sam finding the idols at the start of episode 2, and keeping them as single tribal idols, this definitely added a bit more excitement to the immunity challenges. After all, they had a bit of protection on their side, even if it was only usable for a single vote.
The Immunity Challenge
As Gata walked up to the challenge, both tribes were shocked to see Andy walking up, with Jon having been voted out. And even Jeff commented on the surprise from Lavo and Tuku.
This immunity challenge was definitely a challenging one, as the teams started in the water, where they had to get a heavy bag of rice off a platform in the water. From there they had to get to the wall where they shoved the rice through a hole and the team climbed over. Once they got passed the water wall, they took on a puzzle door that they were solving blind in order to free a key. Once the key was free, they could move on so they could rip open their rice bags and get the ball they needed for the table challenge.
With Gata down a tribe member, both Lavo and Tuku needed to sit someone out. So Lavo sat out Aysha, while Tuku sat out Sue. This challenge was certainly worth winning since it came with a reward of fishing gear for the first two teams to finish, so having the right team was important.
Gata ended up being the first to make it to the table challenge. But Tuku was right behind them. While Lavo was not far behind them, it was Gata and Tuku going neck and neck. While Tuku ended up dropping, Gata kept going strong and ended up winning! This means that it was between Lavo and Tuku for second place and the smaller reward.
In the end, Lavo was able to keep their ball moving safely and it was Tuku who ended up losing the immunity challenge. Tuku's drop of the ball was definitely a challenge they were unable to overcome.
After the two winning tribes left the challenge, Jeff spoke to Tuku about the loss. Obviously, it is never fun to lose, but this time things got a bit heated as TK made a very bold statement about how he didn't want to play with people who were willing to smile after a loss. He wanted to play with people who wanted to win and in saying this, he basically threw Tiyana under the boss.
The Tribal Vote
Back at the Tuku camp, it was clear that there was a bit of division after that loss. People were upset that TK went off and Tiyana felt disrespected. But after a bit of a chat, it seemed that these two were able to push past that because it was not about hurt feelings. It is about making the team strong. TK wanted Sue to go home and he told Kyle and Tiyana that is who he wanted to vote for. And they seemed to agree.
However, the other side of the tribe wanted TK out. And they wanted to convince Tiyana to vote with them. But did it happen? Was there a blindside? With the way this Survivor season was going just two episodes in, we could see it happening.
From the start of Tribal, it felt very clear that it was either going to be Sue or TK going home. This was especially true when they interacted with each other and it was clear that these two did not have a connection with each other.
During the tribal chat, TK kind of explained why he went off at the end of the immunity challenge after the loss. But at the same time, we heard a storm roll in and it just felt so fitting because this is one of those tribals where we could've just seen an epic blindside happen.
TK was the second player voted out of Survivor season 47
While Gabe used his idol to protect himself, the votes really were between Sue and TK. And in the end, Kyle looked confused and TK took being voted out with grace. He even shook Gabe's hand as he was gathering his belongings.
It was a wild night of Survivor. But in this new era of game play, we expect nothing less.