In Survivor 49 episode 5,the Uli majority drew a line in the sand and officially waged a war against the original Hina by voting out Jason Treul.
So upon returning from Tribal Council in the next episode, Survivor 49 episode 6, as Jawan Pitts takes note that now Sophi Balerdi seems to be the odd-man-out, clearly unaware that his fellow Uli members were debating writing his name down over Jason's.
Down to 12 players, everyone is hoping to go into a merge now, but Savannah Louie makes it clear that if they attend another Tribal Council, he's the one on the chopping block.
Spoilers ahead for Survivor 49!
Another shake-up changes tribal lines instead of a merge
Our two tribes approach the challenge arena that's clearly set up for three tribes, and Jeff Probst announces that while this would be a great time for a merge, that's not what's happening. He reveals they're doing another tribe swap, dividing into three tribes of four players. After a random draw, our castaways are distributed into their new tribes:
New Kele: Shannon Fairweather, Sage Ahrens-Nichols, Steven Ramm, Jawan Pitts
New Hina: MC Chukwujekwu, Sophi Balerdi, Rizo Velovic, Savannah Louie
New Uli: Kristina Mills, Nate Moore, Sophie Segreti, Alex Moore
Kristina moves over to the Uli mat and looks about ready to pass out as Jeff is asking the other players what changing tribes right now—instead of merging—means for the game. She needs to take a seat and Jeff calls in a doctor, who determines she was overstimulated by the excitement of the swap and the heat, and she just needed to take a minute. Once she's good, Jeff explains the reward challenge.
Back in three tribes, players are fighting for a grilled cheese picnic. As if nothing changed, Uli and Hina are back in the top starting spots, neck-in-neck during the first phase of the challenge as Kele falls behind. But Steven quickly catches up for Kele and passes both Uli and Hina before Hina gets back in the game and Rizo dominates the final phase, winning reward for Hina. Uli catches back up, and it's down to the last second, but they beat out Kele and take second place, putting Kele back on the bottom with another tribal loss.
Who is in the most danger?
During the reward feast, MC connects with her new tribe mates, but understands that she's in the scariest position in the game. She's clearly on the outs and also, because of the beware advantage, she doesn't currently have a vote. MC pulls Rizo aside to inform him that after the first tribe swap, Sage told all of new Kele that he has an idol, essentially meaning everyone in the game now knows he has an idol.
Over at Uli, Nate is on the bottom of the new group and works to convince them that he was trying to pull off a move with Jason the Tribal Council before in order to make them think that he wasn't just slowly picking off Hina as the minority. But Sophie, Kristina, and Alex don't feel like his story adds up and determine that he won't turn on Uli until he absolutely has to. But when Kristina pitches using Sophie as the decoy name for Nate, Sophie turns to Alex to concoct a plan against Kristina.
The new Kele tribe gets back to camp to find their chickens have escaped and while catching them, Steven acknowledges that even though he'd been connecting with both Shannon and Sage over the last couple of days, with Jawan joining the group, it's now three Uli against one Hina.
Steven works to bond with Jawan, and while they're clearly developing a relationship, Shannon reminds Jawan that it's Uli strong and Steven will be on the bottom if they lose. And now that they're no longer on the bottom, Shannon wants to work with Sage again, but Sage isn't ready to forgive and forget after she threw her under the bus with the last Kele tribe.
A fight to avoid elimination
In a challenge ending with one of the hardest puzzles in the game, the labyrinth ball maze, Hina starts ahead and stays heads the entire challenge, claiming first. Kele keeps a steady second place as Uli falls behind while Kristina busts on putting together a pole to grab a key in phase 2. She eventually gets it and meets Kele at the final puzzle, where Jawan drops the ball—literally—losing their lead and allowing Uli to forge ahead and take second place, sending Kele to Tribal Council.
After the loss, Shannon decides Jawan's fumble in the challenge and his inability to stay calm under pressure will be a real hindrance to her game and realizes that working with Steven over Jawan will be a better path forward for her. She connects with Sage to confirm a plan to vote out Jawan, but Sage takes this information and tries to get Jawan to understand how dangerous Shannon really is and vote her out with her and Steven.
Jawan isn't sure if now is the time to act on Shannon as Savannah, Rizo, and Nate are all really close to Shannon and might view him voting her out as an act of defiance, and he's afraid of no longer being included in the Uli majority alliance.
Shannon Fairweather is the 7th player voted out of Survivor 49
In the end, loyalty to self won out over loyalty to original tribal alliances and Jawan, Sage, and Steven teamed up to send Shannon home. This marks the official start of the strategic game, especially with the merge looming around the corner when Uli comes back together and the majority alliance no longer has one of their strongest members.
This could be the beginning of the end for Sage and Jawan, or the start of the downfall of Uli.
We'll have to wait until next week to discover how this blindside affects the trajectory of the rest of the game when episode 7 of Survivor 49 airs next Wednesday, Nov. 5 on CBS and Paramount+.