With the tribe swap in Survivor 49 episode 4, it was the first time the original Hina and Uli tribes have officially had to put on the gloves and get into game mode. And now that the engine is revved, there's no stopping our players from speeding on ahead—whether they should or not.
Of course, four players were unlucky enough to be randomly put in the worst position after the tribe swap—Hina's Matt Williams & Jason Treul and Uli's Shannon Fairweather & Sage Ahrens-Nichols—as the minority duos on the new tribes. With Jason unwilling to explicitly tell the Uli majority he was okay going against his Hina ally, fans were left wondering if the same would be true of Shannon and Sage as they were pretty close over at Uli beach.
But an all-new first look at episode 5, "I'm a Wolf, Baby," suggests that her life in the game matters more to Shannon than any relationship she's developed. Watch below.
In the clip, Shannon discusses the "Survivor love language," aka strategy, as she goes around to Alex Moore—the lone Kele member remaining on the blue tribe—as well as the majority Hina players to share that she is with them and has no problem voting out Sage, seemingly completely unprompted.
So far, her strategy seems to be a combination of coming off authentically relatable and likable to her new tribe members before casually tossing in those heavier gameplay notions of strategy, as to not appear too forward or aggressive. But I can't help but wonder if her plan to offer up Sage's name willingly won't go over well with her new tribe mates.
In this game, there's a big different between saying you'll vote for someone after being given a name and saying a name. The fact that Shannon is so easily able to dish up a name—especially the name of her former Uli tribe mate—has high potential to come off as untrustworthy and might paint her as someone Hina doesn't want to work with. They can like her and enjoy being around her, but if she's so willing to throw someone under the bus, what would stop her from saying one of their names in the future when she's reunited with her Uli tribe after the merge?
It's a dangerous line she's walking that will either reward her well, or send her packing far earlier than she'd like.
We'll have to wait to find out just what's in store for Shannon and whether the rest of the new Kele tribe speaks the same Survivor love language that she does. Tune in this Wednesday at 8pm ET on CBS and Paramount+ to see how things play out!