Savannah Louie made it 26 days on Survivor 49 without getting voted out. After winning the season and immediately appearing on the next season of the show with no connections and a massive target on her back, Savannah was voted out of Survivor 50 in episode 2.
After playing two seasons of Survivor in a three-month period, Savannah isn't planning on heading back to the islands of Fiji to play again anytime soon. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Savannah revealed there's only one way she will return to play Survivor.
"What's interesting is that for 49, I told you that I felt like I was gonna win 49. I felt like I can freaking do this! For 50, I very much went in thinking, I'm not gonna win this. I'm gonna go for the experience. I'm gonna have fun. And so if I ever get asked to go back, I need to be in a place where I feel in my bones that I am going to win. I don't wanna be rude. I love Survivor. I love the game, but I don't wanna just go to have fun. I wanna go to win. Like, I got bills to pay, you know what I mean?"
That's such an interesting perspective. We hear so much talk about the experience of Survivor 50, and it has this sort of celebratory quality that's been part of the game in the new era.
I'm sure if you look back at the first 39 seasons of the show, you'll find a lot of gratitude among the players for getting this experience, but the show, at least in my memory, always felt ultra-competitive in a way that was not really embracing these moments.
So, you have a player like Savannah who wants to win, but she's just won. She's already at the top of the world, and she has to put that energy back into a new game, one that also has this celebratory vibe to it. I can see how it was hard to recapture that desire to win again in such a short time.
Do I think that this is the last time we'll see Savannah on Survivor? Absolutely not! We already know Jeff Probst has teased more returning seasons after Survivor 50.
Savannah is one of those competitive players with a following who people want to see play this game. And, even though she won, I don't think we've necessarily seen just how high she can fly in this game from a strategic perspective. Survivor 49 was a little bit of a weird season because there were basically two groups competing against each other. The chips fell Savannah's way after the merge, largely because of how she performed in challenges and used her relationships to swing the game. She can play a better game, in my opinion, than what she showed us in Survivor 49, and I think that eventually she'll be motivated to do that again.
It's going to be really interesting to see where the series goes from here, though. Survivor 50 does feel like the changing of the guard in a lot of ways, but it also feels like there's so much more potential when you bring back fan-favorites from previous seasons.
Stay tuned for more news about Survivor 50!