After Survivor 50 episode 3, "Did You Vote for a Swap?" aired, long-time Survivor fans are beginning to notice how the earlier part of the game, pre-merge, has evolved. Though the game of Survivor is always changing with twists at every turn, one particular strategy change amongst the players has stood out.
In the early years of Survivor, the pre-merge strategy among players was to keep their physically strongest players around to help the tribe win challenges to avoid going to Tribal Council and plan to take them out later in the game after the merge. The logic was that the less you are at Tribal Council, the less chance a player has of getting voted out. In that case, pre-merge votes in the past were primarily focused on getting rid of the weakest players who were causing the tribe to lose.
In recent seasons, fans have noticed a shift in strategy. Modern players would rather get out threats earlier in the game. Even if a player is a challenge beast, or that player is also considered to be strong socially or strategically, then that makes them a bigger threat and should be considered the main target at the next Tribal Council.
Throughout season 50, there are a few instances where it can be seen that players chose to vote out the threats first, even if that meant losing a challenge and going to Tribal Council.
In episode 2, viewers see the consideration to take out Cirie Fields, on the Cila tribe, due to her being the reason the tribe lost the challenge. But after discussion at camp, that later got flipped to Savannah Louie, who happens to be a player strong in challenges, due to her being a threat in the game.
We see it again in episode 3, when Ozzy Lusth and Emily Flippen were discussing the upcoming vote for Tribal Council between the new Vatu tribe, which was ultimately between Angelina Keeley, Stephanie LaGrossa, and Q Burdette.
In one of Ozzy’s confessionals, he stated that Angelina is a strategic threat and that it made sense to take her out now. Later in the episode, after discussing the upcoming vote again with Emily and the talking point being to vote out Q, Ozzy mentioned in another confessional that he’d rather keep Q, who is a physically strong player in the game, to continue winning challenges and avoid another Tribal Council in the near future. This could have been Ozzy trying to protect Q, but Emily still persuaded him to change his vote, leading to Q going home.
Voting the physically weakest players used to be the obvious move in the early days of a Survivor season, to keep the tribe strong enough to continue winning challenges and increase the chance of making it to merge. Though, as the game is constantly evolving, the player’s strategy seems to be as well.