After the original Uli alliance was blindsided at the last Tribal Council, some major conversations immediately occur as our merged castaways return to camp in Survivor 49 episode 8, "Hot Grim Reaper."
Jawan Pitts starts right in on his need for damage control with his former Uli tribe mates—explaining why he had to go against them all and vote for Nate Moore. Rizo Velovic decides he's going to use being on the bottom to his advantage and pivot his game strategy so he's on top even while being left out of the vote. Savannah Louie, on the other hand, shares a deep concern for their place in the game and worries about what this means now that she's in a completely opposite spot that she's used to.
Savannah becomes episode 8's main character
Alex Moore recuits Steven Ramm and Kristina Mills to help look for MC Chukwujekwu's used idol in a play for defense, trying to prevent Savannah, Rizo, or Sophi Balerdi from getting it as protection. Kristina finds it and Alex decides he has a lot of power knowing that she has it—he can use her loyalty for future protection or throw her under the bus if he needs.
Sage Ahrens-Nichols discusses the threat of Savannah with Sophi on the beach, and Sophi lets her know that she's not attached to Savannah. She ultimately asks Sage to trust her moving forward, letting her know she'd totally work with her. Then at the water well, Savannah tells the two that she feels awkward after last night's blindside and tries to get information out of Sage. Sage flips the script and attemps the same strategy on Savannah, but both keep on their poker faces, not revealing anything.
However, during a confessional, she gets really emotional talking about being on the outs. She turns to Steven and reveals that she had a traumatic work experience where she was iced out by all her co-workers, who chose to hate her from the very first day. The stress of the event impacted her body and changed the course of her life, and she opens up that being out here is bringing up a lot of old traumas for her.
A challenge for redemption
In the closest thing to a saving grace any Survivor player has ever seen, Jeff Probst meets the castaways at the challenge arena and informs them today's immunity challenge is going to be a little different. Instead of individual immunity, players will be randomly divided into two groups of five players, who will compete against each other in an individual team challenge.
Winning tribe—with the last person standing—gets immunity and reward and will not be attending Tribal Council. On the counter, the losers will be the only players attending Tribal Council, and all of them will be vulnerable. The castaway that lasts the longest in the endurance challenge also wins an advantage.
Yellow Group: Savannah Louie, Sophi Balerdi, Steven Ramm, Kristina Mills, Alex Moore
Blue Group: Jawan Pitts, Rizo Velovic, MC Chukwujekwu, Sophie Segreti, and Sage Ahrens-Nichols
Our castaways get set up to stand on pegs of decreasing sizes, trying not to fall. Yellow loses the first two players and Kristina drops, shortly followed by Alex. Rizo then drops first for blue, quickly followed by MC. Steven, Jawan, and Sage all drop, leaving Savannah against Sophie (last week's individual immunity winner). After both women push to their final limits, Sophie just can't last another second longer and Savannah wins immunity.
The winners are sent home for their reward feast while the losers are sent back to the old Uli camp, isolated and unable to allow the winners to influence the vote.
One idol, lots of panic
The losers return to camp, and Sophie immediately decides she needs to create a plan. She pulls in Sage and Jawan and tells them that their only chance to survive Rizo's idol is to tell him that they want to get rid of Sophie, making him feel safe so he doesn't feel the need to play his idol.
Sophie tells MC that she's going to put a vote on Jawan in case Rizo does play his idol so that it goes to a tie and the three remaining players have to vote to send only one of the two home. MC agrees, but immediately turns around and tells Jawan of Sophie's plan, working to regain his trust after she lost it a little bit when playing her idol at the last Tribal Council.
Jawan isn't a fan of being the scape goat and doesn't think he can trust Sophie as she's playing too hard. He fears she's more strategic than she's letting on and that is causing him to think she's more dangerous than he initially suspected, and it might not be smart to move forward with her.
Over at the winner's feast, the safe players discuss what they think will happen. They assume Rizo will play his idol and Alex and Steven agree Sophie is most likely to go home as everyone probably views her as the biggest threat having almost just won two individual immunities in a row.
Savannah learns her advantage is that she will be sent to the losing tribe with her immunity necklace to help influence the vote. She will be safe, but is given a vote to help vote out a player. Or when she's in the voting booth, she can choose to pocket the vote and save it as an extra vote later in the game.
Jawan has no clue who to vote for, but approaches Sage about keeping Rizo though she wants to keep the vote on him. Sage turns around and tells Sophie that MC shared her plan with Jawan. Sophie immediately turns around to do damage control with Jawan, apologizing for throwing his name out. She swaps her viewpoint with Jawan, telling him that she thought she could trust MC, but now isn't so sure.
Savannah and Rizo are reunited with full control
The losing group is shocked when Savannah arrives wearing the immunity necklace. Sage is less than thrilled and fears that their chances at getting rid of Rizo just immensely decreased. Savannah shares her additional advantage with Rizo as well as the conversation they had at the reward. Upon hearing other people are gunning for Sophie as a threat, Rizo decides the best next step is to convince Sage and Jawan that MC needs to go home.
He turns to Sophie and tries to convince her to vote MC in his attempt to save her, wanting to gain her as an ally for the next vote. Sophie meets up with MC to tell her that she thinks all four of them should just straight vote for Rizo now that she knows he's voting for MC and her neck isn't on the line. MC doesn't trust Sophie's sudden change of heart and asks her what she's learned that makes her want that, questioning if Sophie is going to vote for her.
Sage and Jawan are now between Rizo, Sophie, and MC and are afraid to make the wrong decision because everyone is on a different page. Voting for Rizo possibly takes out an idol with him. Sophie is good at challenges and could be a physical threat moving forward. And neither of them know if they can fully trust MC after she played an idol at the last Tribal Council.
MC Chukwujekwu is the 9th player voted out of Survivor 49
In the end, the group decided that it was safe to keep someone the winning players didn't necessarily trust and voted out MC. Even with the first live Tribal Council of Survivor 49 where MC jumped up right before Jeff announced it was time to vote and started sharing new information with Jawan, Rizo, Sage, and Savannah, it wasn't enough to convince them to keep her over Sophie.
Probably the most intense back-and-forth we've seen at a Tribal Council so far, but this vote definitely helped to give Savannah and Rizo the leg up from the bottom that they needed.
We'll find out what they do with this new power next Wednesday, Oct. 19, when a new episode airs on CBS and Paramount+.