If you missed it, at the end of the latest episode of Survivor 50, “Did You Vote for a Swap?,” Q Burdette was voted out of new Vatu after a tribe swap changed up the game. His unpredictable gameplay style made the new majority alliance of Mike White, Angelina Keeley, Christian Hubicki, and Emily Flippen nervous.
And despite Q’s attempts to sabotage Tribal Council—in which he couldn’t participate because he sold his vote to Ozzy Lusth to gain supplies at the beginning of the game—by trying to get Mike to split the votes between himself and his ally Stephenie LaGrossa Kendrick, he was sent home 5-1.
Now, in an exclusive interview with Entertainment Weekly, Q is spilling the beans on how things truly went down on the island before his torch got snuffed. Because, according to him, the edit that the fans at home saw didn’t reveal the truth in a few different instances.
Before even meeting his new tribe, Q feared he was going home because, “the second I drew that buff, I knew I was kinda screwed.”
A huge part of playing on a season of returning players is relationships. Not just building ones in the game, but reconnecting with the ones you’ve made outside of the season because of the game. And we all know Christian, Mike, and Angelina played together on Survivor: David vs. Goliath, giving them an instant bond this season, which only solidified when they were placed on a tribe together.
Because of the pre-established relationships in the game, “it was like Russian roulette,” Q tells Dalton Ross of EW, “the bullet went off on me.”
Mike also revealed last episode that he and Ozzy knew each other from Los Angeles, and Q goes on to share that there’s a third pre-game relationship amongst new Vatu we weren’t aware of. Apparently, Christian and Emily play video games together online.
After all the discord around Survivor 49’s pre-gaming scandal, there’s always the wonder of how real-life relationships will enter the game during a returning player season. Because even though Mike announced he was voting for Stephenie simply because he couldn’t write down Christian or Angelina’s names, that was just the story he told publicly in order to evoke his strategy.
So while Q might think he went home because he wasn’t a part of a pre-game friendship, the reality is, he was a threat to everyone else on his tribe. Mike said it himself in the episode. He said Stephenie’s name because he needed the votes on Q to be a total blindside; there was always potential for Q to do something outrageous and blow up the game to change the outcome at Tribal Council.
We all remember the chaos he caused back on Survivor 46, imploding his own alliances and voting out his number 1 at the drop of a hat. Gameplay like that is very concerning for calculated players like Mike, Angelina, Christian, and Emily, who like to have a plan with purpose and follow-through.
Though it’s no secret that pre-game relationships exist in Survivor 50, it’s also very clear that the winner of the season is not going to be impacted by who is friends with who outside of the game. Each of these players came to win and they’re willing to take down anyone they need to in order to make that happen.