Rick Devens shuts down Jenna Lewis-Dougherty's Survivor 50 pregaming accusation

We're one episode into Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fans, and the returning players from the landmark season are already feuding.

After Jenna Lewis-Dougherty, who was the first boot of the season, accused Rick Devens and others on the Cila tribe for pregaming and snitching to Cirie Fields about Jenna's plans to vote her out, Rick Devens responded on X in a "BIG" way.

"I think there's a BIG difference between playing hard establishing relationships (which the rest of Cila did) and playing hard throwing out names (which ONLY Jenna did before losing the Immunity Challenge)," Devens tweeted. "She also came to this "beyotch" WAY LATE in the process Interview on EW."

Jenna accused the other Survivor 50 players of pregaming

Jenna was interviewed by Dalton Ross of Entertainment Weekly after getting voted out in the Survivor 50 premiere, and she basically tried to make it seem like everyone was talking strategy from the jump, but she was targeted for doing the same thing. She also claimed several players had pregame alliances that helped them in the season.

Here's what she told EW:

"So I was playing no harder than anyone else, but on my tribe there were definitely groups that had a lot of pregame connections that I felt like the second I landed, it was off and I was like, 'Ugh!' I kept trying to find an in, and Christian felt like he was a little bit of an in."

In the edit, it looked like Jenna was the first person to throw Cirie's name out, even though she claimed in the interview that it was Christian Hubicki who actually targeted Cirie in the first place.

She also claimed that Christian was actually working behind the scenes to make Devens do the "dirty work."

"Christian already said in it that he was gonna be Spock and Devens was gonna be his Captain Kirk. And I think he says, 'I'm gonna be the brain and I'm gonna send him to do the dirty work. He's going to do the work.' Then it shows Rick Devens going to tell Cirie. So I think he manufactured a lot of that just to make sure that we weren't being a cohesive group over here. Which is smart."

Obviously, we didn't see all that. We only saw Devens and a few of the other players taken aback that Jenna was already going after Cirie. Devens did tell Cirie that Jenna was targeting her, but I don't think that's out of the ordinary on Survivor. Players hear their name constantly, I assume.

Anyway, it's hard for me to feel anything about this situation. It looks like Jenna is a little bit hurt for being the first person voted out. Devens is literally explaining that she was voted out because of how hard Jenna was playing at the very beginning of the game. Even throwaway comments can come back around on Survivor, and I'm sure Jenna knows that, too.

We haven't heard from Jenna again, but I don't think we can say that other players didn't mention players to her. Christian could have thrown Cirie's name out, and Devens might not know if that's true or not. That's just how it works on Survivor.

Unfortunately, I don't know how much pregaming actually happened for Survivor 50. Many of these people know each other from being in Survivor circles for so long. Many players have actually played with each other, so there are relationships. Sometimes, those relationships are going to help, and sometimes, they are going to hurt.

Now, it's clear that Ozzy and Cirie have something going, but is that because they had a secret plan to work together in Fiji? Or, is it because they are two of the best players the show has ever seen and they're looking at all these other sharks and trying not to get eaten? That's too hard for us to say.

On top of that, it sure seemed like Devens and Christian met for the first time on the beach. I don't know if they are stellar actors, or what, but they seemed genuinely awkward to be around each other. That didn't give me any red flags that these dudes have a super secret plan to get rid of Jenna.

Looking just at what we saw, Ozzy wasn't interested in hearing Cirie as a possible option. We all saw that Ozzy basically shut that down immediately. So, looking at Devens, Christian, Joe Hunter, Emily Flippen, and Savannah Louie, they had to decide: do they oppose Ozzy and Cirie, or do they just go with the plan that's already started?

Obviously, it's a lot harder, for many reasons, to go against a majority that's forming, and it's simply a numbers game with some vibes thrown into the mix. If Ozzy and Cirie pull just two players into their alliance, that's half the players on the tribe. For Jenna, she has to pull four of the five other players to her side to ensure that she doesn't go home. It really seemed like Savannah, Emily, and Joe, specifically, just followed Devens, Christian, Ozzy, and Cirie's lead on this first vote, which is in no way, shape, or form a bad strategy. No one is going to lay down their life in the game in the first vote. That's just Survivor 101.

After watching 49 seasons of this show, it feels like the early votes just come down to momentum. No one wants to be the first boot. If the focus is on another player, it takes a lot of courage, and sometimes stupidity, to try to move that target to another player. The savvy players can do it, but when these people don't know each other well yet, it's easy to let that rock keep rolling down the hill. It's harder to get that momentum to change directions without drawing too much attention.

The problem with Survivor 50 is that these players are all good at this game. We saw just how quickly the game turns. Savannah, who might have been one of the players who wanted to vote out Cirie immediately after the challenge, is now on the chopping block because she lied to her tribe about the obvious advantage she obtained on the Journey.

You underestimate someone or a group of people for a split second, and that flips the game against you in ways you could never expect. That's what happened to Jenna, and that's what will likely happen to many other players this season.

Hopefully, we have more behind-the-scenes drama on Survivor 50! Stay tuned for more news about the season.