Survivor 48 has been one of the most interesting seasons of Survivor that I can remember. I don't think we've had this much discussion about the gameplay, or lack thereof, in a really long time. There's been a lot of talk about the edit of the season. It feels like the audience is missing key bits of information.
There are probably many reasons Survivor 48 is playing out the way it is, but everything we've watched so far is only pointing to one conclusion: Kyle Fraser will win Survivor 48.
I'm definitely one of those Survivor fans who tries to draw conclusions from what we see and don't see, what moves make sense, and what context we could be lacking throughout the season. While I don't think anything nefarious is going on from CBS, the Survivor storytellers, or anything like that, I do feel like there's a story being told over the course of the first 11 episodes, and for the most part, that story is revolving around Kyle.
Kyle has been a central character from the first moment on the beach when he helped Kevin Leung, who was injured in the first challenge of the season, finish his task and win supplies for the Vula tribe after Kyle accidentally broke the jug he needed to fill up.
We saw Kyle find the Beware Advantage and work with Kamilla Karthigesu to turn it into the hidden immunity idol that he would use to save himself in the game after the tribe swap. We've seen so much time devoted to this secret alliance between Kyle and Kamilla while other known alliances haven't gotten much screen time at all.
We've seen Kyle connect and open up to Joe Hunter, the person he probably has to betray to win this season. We've seen Kyle agonize over this decision in multiple episodes. It seems that this season is going to come down to Kyle making a decision, and now, the perfect blindside is set up if Joe or Eva Erickson doesn't win immunity in episode 12.
There's been so much talk about the majority alliance so far. If you were setting the season up, narratively, for Joe, Eva, or Shauhin to win, you would probably show more conversations about just how amazing that alliance is. You would show all the times that someone tried to take out the majority alliance but failed. We're getting a little bit of that, but so far, the only real set up heading into the last two episodes is about Kyle's decision to go with Joe, Eva, and Shauhin, but more specifically, Joe and Eva, or for Kyle to betray them and go with this day-one-number-one, Kamilla. That's really the only conflict we're seeing so far! Everything else is just the normal, day-to-day paranoia of Survivor.
So, I do think all of this talk about can a majority alliance make it all the way to the end and win is a little bit misleading. That's literally how the season has played out so far, but I really feel like we'd be seeing more of the wheeling and dealing going on against that alliance if we were just walking right into a Joe, Eva, Shauhin, and Kyle party at the Final Four. I don't think that's going to happen at all, and I think it's going to feel like an even bigger move when that blindside happens because of how the season has played out so far.
In Survivor 46, the narrative was clearly about Charlie Davis and Maria Shrime Gonzalez. Kenzie Petty, who won the season, was not a key part of that drama, but when Charlie and Maria controlled the game and flipped on each other, the viewers saw how a partnership started, thrived, and came crashing down right at the end of the game. Kenzie made all the right moves late in the game, but we still got to know her over the course of the game, specifically through her interactions with Ben Katzman and how Kenzie helped him through his panic attacks. Then, Ben wrote Kenzie's name down at Tribal Council, which was devastating for her.
In Survivor 47, Rachel LaMont basically went full underdog to crawl all the way up from the bottom to win the season. There was a moment, I think it was in episode 8 or 9, when Rachel looks around and she's the only person at camp before Tribal Council while everyone else is scrambling about the vote. That probably happens often in Survivor, I'm assuming, but why did they show that particular scene? It was the perfect shot to show just how isolated the Survivor 47 winner was at that point in the game.
Looking at Survivor 48, it just feels like those moments are setting up Kyle winning this season. We always get that moment, for the most part, where the eventual winner looks around and has that darkness before the dawn moment. I think we just saw Kyle's moment in episode 11 when he talked about betraying someone to improve his life and his family's life. Now, it's just up to Kyle to fulfill his destiny and become the winner we know he is going to be.