Given the physical nature of the game, injuries are not an uncommon occurrence on Survivor. Sometimes these injuries are minor and the players are able to push through with a fast recovery, but other times the injuries have led to players’ removal from the game due to injuries sustained during the game. The last thing any fan wants to see when watching the game is for a player to go down during a challenge, so when Kevin Leung suffered a shoulder injury during the first episode of Survivor 48 fans were understandably concerned.
During the first challenge of the season, Kevin injured his shoulder while making his way through one of the course obstacles. While Kevin vocally spoke about the injury during the challenge and within the episode after, the show did not seem to make a major deal about the injury with the challenge seemingly played out without any interruption.
Interestingly, following the premiere, host Jeff Probst revealed that they did indeed have to pause the challenge so that medical could evaluate Kevin’s injury. He then went on to suggest the reason the editors chose not to include the moment in the actual episode was that Kevin recovered quickly from his injury and hinted the injury wasn’t severe or impactful enough to warrant inclusion in the premiere.
“In Kevin's case, he did recover pretty quickly. I'm not saying it wasn't bothering him, but it was not so severe. We've seen in seasons past where you think the player is now not able to help their tribe, but this was more of an annoyance. So the decision to pull it came from the fact that yes, it's dramatic and it speaks to how intense Survivor is, but in terms of everything else that was happening, it was not that impactful,” Probst told Entertainment Weekly.
Given Probst’s comments and the fact that Kevin seemed to compete in the episode’s other challenges without being hindered by his injury, all signs suggested the injury was indeed nothing to worry about. However, according to the first castaway of the season, Kevin’s injury might have actually been more serious than the show made it seem.
Following her elimination at the first Tribal Council of the season, Stephanie Berger spoke with Entertainment Weekly about her time on the show including the challenge that resulted in Vula Tribe heading to Tribal Council. During the conversation, Stephanie openly reflected on the challenge and, in doing so, she seemed to not so subtly suggest that Kevin’s injury was worse than the episode led fans to believe – hinting that it played a major role in Vula losing the challenge.
“We were super behind, and Kevin is more injured I think, than what immediately came across in the episode. And then he and I are also the ones on the puzzle. Those puzzle pieces are heavy! It is hard to do that puzzle with four good arms on no food, day three, beating sun, your heart going 175 because you've just lifted all this stuff up to the top. It's already hard. And we were doing it with three arms!”
Not only did Stephanie hint that Kevin’s injury set them back in the challenge, but in a second interview with Parade, she also mentioned that the injury was so bad Kevin actually had to wear a sling – something else that failed to make it into the premiere.
“But you don't get this moment of Kevin and I in the sand. Kev has his arm in a sling, but he doesn't want folks to actually see it in a sling. He's worried, and he has me put his sling on. And we have this really special moment in the sand,” Stephanie recalled discussing the moment which was left on the cutting room floor.
Our hope remains that the injury isn’t something that will hinder his game, but it’s a bit interesting that the show went out of its way to edit the episode around Kevin’s injury by not discussing how it impacted Vula’s performance in the final challenge of the premiere and how it required him to wear a sling temporarily.
Even if the injury wasn’t too severe, the fact that his shoulder had to be popped back into place suggests Kevin would have some lingering side effects and need time to recover. We’ll just have to wait to see whether the injury does in fact cause any harm to his performance in the game and whether it’ll be mentioned beyond the premiere.