The tribe swap has a long history on Survivor.
It’s one of those “twists” that almost isn’t even a twist anymore because it always happens. And in the new era—and now the open era—it seems to almost always fall in the same place in the game season-after-season.
So fans were a little disappointed when, in episode 4, “That’s the Magic of Survivor,” the moment for a tribe swap came and it… just happened. Nothing groundbreakingly different than any other standard tribe swap. The only “twist” on it was that Rob Antonson had quit the game and left an uneven distribution of players across three tribes.
However, that only assisted in reminding fans why they hate having three tribes in the first place. With a divide of 6-6-5, we basically were all having flashbacks of a new era episode 2—after the first tribe that loses continues to lose and gets sent back to Tribal Council to grow smaller and smaller while the other tribes just hang out and get to switch between who competes in the challenge.
Because, of course, the tribe of five players was the one who lost and went to Tribal Council last night. And of course that was the tribe that Jenna Doore and Devin Way were randomly chosen to go on together. And of course the other Toka player on the tribe was Devin’s ally Angelica “Jelly” Loblack. And of course, of course one of the Savu players to join was a member of the helicopter alliance.
So the day after Jenna was finally officially in the majority—and not seemingly on the bottom—of Toku, the tribe swap essentially put her in the worst position in the game because of a random draw.
That might have flown in the past, but it’s the open era of Survivor! Nothing should be based on chance anymore and everything that happens should put some power into the hands of the players. That’s what fans have been loving so far about this season after all. The players have been the one making the calls in the first three episodes. But now, this tribe swap basically took all that away and left us wishing things could be different.
And it’s not just because I was rooting for Jenna to win that I’m not thrilled with this week’s episode. Truly, it’s still so early in the season and I already have some of the highest expectations I’ve ever had for Survivor simply because they’ve been consistently delivering so far.
So I was shocked we didn’t get more than a tribe swap in episode 4. What I was personally hoping we’d see was a variation of the Blood Moon twist, Earn the Merge twist, or the Double Duo twist.
Could you imagine how interesting it would have been if players had to earn a tribe swap in one of those ways? Stripping everyone of their buffs early and forcing them to pair up to compete in duo individual immunity challenge and then attend a Tribal Council all together, eliminating one pair, just for them to then randomly choose buffs and be re-distributed again?
Just like at the beginning marooning and then later the mutiny, the idea of bringing people together and then forcing them apart has been such a benefit to the season so far. So a lackluster redistribution without additional consequences or chances felt…boring to say the least.
Hopefully this isn’t a taste at what’s to come for the rest of the season…
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