As you probably know by now, the Survivor 51 cast list has been revealed and I’ve already spent way too many hours analyzing our players, but there’s even more to the season that we need to talk about besides our 21 new castaways.
Alongside the official casting announcement, we got a behind-the-scenes sneak peek at the new Tribal Council set by none other than Jeff Probst himself, who talked us through the theme of the season: whales.
“This is a village where whales are revered,” the long-time host and showrunner begins to explain as we get close ups of the details of the Tribal Council set, "because thousands of years ago, in our telling, they were the saviors. And that is the theme of this whole season.”
So get ready to see whales everywhere, according to Jeff; in the imagery of the season, in the sets, in challenges…everywhere.
Now, the interesting thing about what Jeff says is that this is all Survivor 51’s telling of whales within the culture of Survivor. In general, whales tend to symbolize wisdom, longevity, and connection due to the fact that they live long lives in pods. So I understand how that could tie back into outwit, outplay, outlast, but it’s interesting to see Jeff hint at the show creating its own lore, built around saviors—because over the last 50 seasons, that’s exactly what it’s done.
And if you look back at the Survivor 51 teaser trailer (below), you’ll see that the season was officially “brought to life” by an egg cracking and a “51” appearing inside of it. But whales are mammals, which famously don’t lay eggs (not including monotremes—the few mammal species that lay eggs). So where is the egg coming from?
In the teaser, Jeff specifically says, “A new crop of players is about to birth a new kind of game,” which is a very interesting choice of words. Obviously, he’s hinting at the latest evolution of the game, which they’re calling the open era, but one of the biggest things when reviewing the cast announcement was that I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of these new players felt like new age versions of some past iconic players.
So could Jeff literally be hinting that we’re about to take things back to the beginning with casting choices that more closely resemble some of the most legendary players? Based on first impressions alone, I noticed immense similarities between some of our castaways and icons like Cirie Fields, Parvati Shallow, Boston Rob Mariano, J.T. Thomas, Amanda Kimmel, Jeremy Collins, Russell Hantz, John Cochran, Benjamin “Coach” Wade, and Tina Wesson, to name a few. And I’m not just talking about appearance. I’m talking about personal and professional social approaches and possible gameplay styles.
And remembering that the symbol for Survivor 50 was a phoenix—which I initially assumed would be tied into the rebirth opportunity for the returning players, but was never truly addressed—I can’t help but wonder if season 50 was the symbolic death of the series followed by season 51’s symbolic rebirth.
We’ll see if this is the case as we’ve been told many times that this new “open era” of the game could incorporate anything that’s previously gone down in Survivor history as well as new opportunities for gameplay. But based on all the clues we’re getting, it feels like production is telling us that the Survivor we once knew is gone, but this new evolution is going to be here for a long time to come, just like the whale—the longest living of which was recorded at 268 years old.
So while it might feel like Survivor doesn’t know what they’re doing as they foray into both new and old territory, the theme of Survivor 51 sings a different (whale) song that tells us they know exactly what’s about to go down in the latest era of our favorite competition reality show.
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