After a rough Tribal Council where the last crumbs of Kele voted out Jeremiah Ing, the two remaining players were still getting beaten up. Back at camp and opting to sleep on the beach, they were woken up by the tide completely soaking then and pulling their boat out.
After running to secure their boat, Sophi Balerdi realized the ocean had also swallowed her shoes while she was sleeping. So even with Jake Latimer out of the game, the Shoe Bandit managed to strike again.
Spoilers ahead for Survivor 49!
The tribe swap comes and creates a power imbalance on multiple levels
All three tribes gather at the challenge stage and receive an inspiring speech from Jeff Probst about the importance of numbers in the game of Survivor. Most specifically for them, the number of players currently in the game: 14.
He also announces that they are officially switching things up and everyone drops their buffs—the two remaining Kele playings adding a little extra flair to the exiling of theirs.
As everyone opens their new buffs, it's obvious only two colors are in the mix: blue and yellow. Jeff confirms that Uli is gone and we are now 7 and 7 Hina vs. Kele.
New Kele: Alex Moore, Steven Ramm, Kristina Mills, MC Chukwujekwu, Sophie Segreti, Shannon Fairweather, and Sage Ahrens-Nichols
New Hina: Rizo Velovic, Nate Moore, Savannah Louie, Jawan Pitts, Matt Williams, Jason Treoul, Sophi Balerdi
So now we have two tribes with even Hina and Uli majorities—4 to 2 each—and one Kele. But the Hina majority is returning to the Kele camp (aka the bare bones, worst camp) and the Uli majority is returning to the Hina camp (with all their rewards and luxuries).
The game resets on the outside, but maybe not actually?
The players arrive at their new camps and immediately start acting like they're back on day 1. Sitting around their shelters voicing about how excited they are to all play together and sharing their backgrounds like it's the first day of summer camp. Sophi is living the good life as she welcomed to the Hina camp with coconuts and hammocks, but Alex is haphazardly showing his new tribe around the desolate Kele camp.
While it seems everyone still assumes tribe lines are in play, they're also jumping all over and around them like it's a double dutch competition. Everyone is approaching everyone on opposing original tribes about how they are so happy they ended up together because they wanted to work together. Sophi, especially, enacts a plan to approach every Uli member and pitch herself as a number to take out Hina.
Kele wins the evenly matched challenge, but it comes down to the wire
Both tribes were in it from the beginning and without a mental puzzle at the end, there was no doubt it would take a lot for one tribe to fall too far behind. As both tribes approached the second stage of the challenge—the balance beam—Matt caused the Hina tribe to fall behind as MC stormed forward and helped the Kele tribe get to the final stacking challenge first.
Eventually Hina caught up and both tribes were neck-in-neck, truly down to the last two blocks when MC just barely stacked hers first and secured the first win for the Kele tribe of the season.
Idol hunting is easy, but decision-making is hard
Back at the Hina camp, Rizo's beware advantage is officially activated and with the whole of Uli behind him, Savannah and Nate are digging up his clue at the water well while he's sharing the information of advantage with Sophi. With the assistance, it took him all of two (television) minutes to find his idol and regain his vote. Uli even specified that they don't care about finding the idol, they just want to make sure Rizo has his vote tonight.
And while Uli couldn't care less about the advantage, they spend their time with Sophi trying to figure who from Hina is best to move forward with. They learn Matt is trying to put together a blindside of Nate by pulling in Jawan and Sophi, but when they approached Jason about writing down Matt's name, he was super cagey about working with them in the long run, which none of them responded well to.
Matt Williams is the 4th player voted out of Survivor 49
Right at the start of Tribal Council, Nate shares that on the surface Uli has the majority and also discloses that they welcomed Sophi into the fold, putting Matt and Jason on the bottom. Conversations were tense with both Matt and Jason confusedly listening as Uli described the two different chats had in the afternoon and not knowing who they were even talking about.
But in the end, Matt's clear disloyalty and attempt at a blindside proved he was not someone the majority alliance wanted around.
We'll see what's next for our castaways when episode 5 ofSurvivor 49 airs next Wednesday, Oct. 2 on CBS and Paramount+.