The following contains spoilers for Episode 12 of Survivor Season 42.It feels like the season has only just begun, but somehow the game is already at Final 6. Perhaps it’s a combination of the game’s length being cut down by a few days, or just the accelerated pace of modernSurvivoritself, but every season seems to pass by more quickly than the last. This penultimate episode of the season brings a shift in the tribe dynamic that has been long building, ending in a Tribal Council where one player finally gets to make their big mark on the game.
The episode begins with everyone discussing how wellthe previous Tribalwent, because their plan to vote Drea out despite her Knowledge Is Power advantage succeeded. Lindsay in particular is happy because this means her amulet is the only one left, which makes it a full immunity idol. Mike reveals that he doesn’t think that Omar, one of his close allies, will want to keep him around much longer because Mike’s likeability in the game will be a threat in the end, and so he plans to vote Omar out at the next opportunity.
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The episode moves fairly quickly into a reward challenge that Omar manages to win (if only this could have beenthe Immunity Challenge, for his sake). He gets to choose the reward, either Sustenance (which would provide nourishing food like grilled chicken) or Decadence (which entails chocolate cake and cookies), and each reward comes with a different number of people he is allowed to bring with him. Omar ends up choosing Decadence because he can take more people with him and give more people opportunities to eat, and he asks Romeo, Maryanne, and Mike to come along with him.
This is actually a good strategy, as it not only puts him in the good graces of those who haven’t gotten rewards yet, but it also puts the two biggest challenge threats - Lindsay and Jonathan - at a disadvantage because they haven’t gotten to eat. This season has done a much better job than the last one at showcasing the struggles the players are going through from lack of food. Season 41 touched on it, but not enough for it to be a big feature of the episodes, whileSeason 42has made the hunger issue basically front and center every time.
Apparently, Omar taking Mike on the reward still wasn’t enough to get Mike back to his side, as Mike starts formulating a plan to get Omar out if Lindsay doesn’t win the Immunity Challenge. If she does win, he realizes, she’ll have bothan Immunity necklaceand an idol, which she could absolutely play for Omar. He tries to get Maryanne on board with this plan and lets her know about Lindsay’s idol. Maryanne is hurt that Lindsay, who is supposed to be her ally, never told her about the amulet. This is the beginning of Maryanne realizing that her alliance perhaps does not value her as much as she thought they did, and that she needs to start making moves if she wants to win this game.
The Immunity Challenge is a very tight race between Jonathan and Lindsay (as usual), but Lindsay manages to pull ahead and claim the victory. This, of course, is the worst-case scenario forMike and his alliance, and they begin scrambling to come up with another plan. Lindsay and Omar’s plan is to vote for Jonathan and then tell Jonathan the vote is Mike, so that if he plays an idol or advantage, Mike would go home. For them, it seems like a win-win scenario.
Unfortunately for that duo, the rest of the tribe seems to be on a different page. Maryanne wants to vote for Omar because she (rightly) perceives him as the biggest threat. A lot of players keep claiming that Jonathan is a big threat, and though he does well in challenges, he’s not liked by the Jury and probably wouldn’t bea threat to win at the Final Tribal. Maryanne has noticed how good Omar’s game is (and hopefully Drea’s comments from the last Tribal weren’t the only thing that clued everyone in to this), but when she pitches the idea to Mike, he’s scared of the possibility of Lindsay playing her idol for him. In his mind, it’s safest just to put four votes on Romeo and get him out.
Maryanne, however, has the idea to work with Romeo to vote out Omar. Maryanne has an extra vote, and if she uses it andshe and Romeo vote Omar, it would be enough to get him out as long as no idol was played. It was so fun to watch Maryanne finally step up to the strategy plate this episode and take matters into her own hands when the rest of her alliance won’t listen to her. It makes a lot more sense to vote Omar at this point, rather than voting out Romeo who likely wouldn’t get the Jury votes anyway.
Also, unbeknownst to everyone else, Lindsay and Omar have discussed her playing the idol for him, and seem to have decided that it wouldn’t be wise, since the idol would just go back into circulation for someone else to find and use. This was the first signal that these two were really unaware of the waythe vote would go,because they felt so confident in their plan and their trust in the rest of the tribe that they didn’t think Omar might actually get voted out. They are “Survivor confident”, as Omar coins later at Tribal, and it really does end up being his downfall.
At Tribal Council, Romeo points out that there is a shift in the play style where players aren’t just thinking about which person they want out this week, but are starting to think long-term about who they want to be sitting next to at the end. Other players attempt to claim that this thought process started much earlier for them, but it’s true that the last few episodes of every season see a real increase in the players seriously considering who theirideal Final 3would be. When it comes time to vote, Lindsay does not play the idol for Omar, and it results in him being voted out in a 3-2-2 split.
When he sees the writing on the wall, he turns to Maryanne and says, “You did it?” and she replies “I did” in a giddy voice. It was a perfect move on her part, and because of Omar’s acknowledgment and the fact that Jonathan and Mike refused to go along with her plan, she’ll get all of the credit for it, as she deserves. It was unfortunate to see Omar goafter the great game that he played, but at least he went out with an exciting vote and a good blindside.
Next week is the finale, and it seems like Lindsay and Maryanne are the front-runners to win. There’s a chance it could be Mike as well, but his strategic gameplay hasn’t quite been up to par, and his likeability amongst the Jury may not be quite enough to give him the win. Maryanne would actually havea great winner’s edit, as she’d been present as a character all season, but has the arc of not being taken seriously until later in the game when she pulls out some great moves. It will be interesting to see if the final vote for the winner feels satisfying or like it came out of the blue, but this is certainly a group of players with very different play styles that will be going head-to-head.
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