All season long, Sophi Balerdi has done a fantastic job keeping to her initial strategy: never let anyone know you're the smartest person on the beach and live in the shadows of bigger threats. Now as the only remaining original Kele member, no one realizes just how powerful she is in the game. She has a little piece of everyone's ear as well as an unknown Knowledge is Power advantage.
So far, she's played the perfect "under the radar" game, but in a new sneak peek for Survivor 49 episode 10, "Huge Dose of Bamboozle," she might be ready to go from the ensemble to center stage as it appears she could be embodying a similar main character energy as the one Savannah Louie's been hosting in the last couple of episodes.
Spoilers ahead of Survivor 49 episode 10!
After last week's Tribal Council, it seems like Sophi, Savannah, and Rizo Velovic have a pretty strong hold on the direction the game is heading. They have a strong number in Sophie Segreti who is so upset with her former Hina tribemates that she will happily make a move against them with this core three and while Sage Ahrens-Nichols and Jawan Pitts continuously say they're not still a part of the original Uli alliance, they've voted with them more often than not at this point.
So that leaves Steven Ramm and Kristina Mills on the outs with potential semi-turncoat allies in Sage and Jawan leaving us with a four v four match up. Each side has an idol—though not everyone is aware of Kristina's—and no one is aware that Sophi has the power to steal one at Tribal Council if she asks the right person currently in possession.
So when Sophi pulls Sophie into a post-Tribal Council huddle (in the first look clip below) and asks her who she's thinking next, Sophie immediately throws out Kristina's name because socially she's who she was most upset with based on reactions after MC Chukwujekwu was eliminated. But Savannah, Rizo, and Sophi know Kristina's not the bigger threat of the two, and they throw out Steven's name.
They say Kristina will make a good decoy, and they can blindside Steven who is a good social player, won the last immunity, and could prove to be a strategic threat down the line. On top of this, Sophi isn't too happy that he wrote her name down at the last Tribal Council—despite the fact that she previously placed a vote on him, too, the night Nate Moore was blindsided.
In order not to raise suspicion that anything could be amiss, she pulls him aside and when he tries to apologize, she immediately shuts him down and lets him know that she understands the position he was in and jokes that they're, "Even Steven," turning on the charm. But her confessional is anything but charming, proving she feels very strongly about getting Steven out next. Maybe so much so that she's ready to unveil her Knowledge is Power advantage and put it to action?
The only other time we've seen Sophi this set on someone's elimination was very early on in the game when her closest ally Jake Latimer was growing super close to Alex Moore and she wanted to find a way to get the friend of her friend out because she say him as an enemy. While that situation didn't pan out the way she originally planned, things seem much more aligned for her this time around.
We won't know for sure until Survivor 49 episode 10 airs this Wednesday at 8 p.m. EST on CBS and Paramount+!