Hello Survivor friends!

Reversing the curse hasn’t gone too well thus far in Ghost Island…

Lots to cover today but I’m going to mainly focus on some of the strategic moves that I think made an impact in this episode and will affect the atmosphere of the game moving forward.

I’m going to start with tribal and work my way backwards because I feel like that’s the easiest thing to do. The edit gods at CBS really had me going, I seriously thought Bradley was going home. If you refer back to my episode 4 prediction post, I had Bradley way down at the bottom thinking the 4 former Malolo would target him and I was right (!!). However, they couldn’t find s crack in the majority, Michael’s idol play wasn’t correct, he didn’t reverse the curse of James’s idol, and Brendan got sent home after the 5 former Naviti voted strong together. A serious tip of the hat to Michael though, I thought his tribal performance was absolutely brilliant. The way that he lied about the idol’s powers, spoke toward Chelsea and Sea bass, and articulated his points was super convincing and very well done, even if it wasn’t enough to get someone to flip. Michael’s stock as a threat in the game has moved far beyond just a physical threat after that display. I seriously thought that Sebastian was flipping especially when he said “I agree with you” to Michael and his voting confessional of “I don’t know what just happened.” Overall, this was a good move for the 5 former Naviti to pick off one of the strongest guys on island, but I was disappointed to see Bradley still there because he’s not my favorite. His “I want to play like Boston Rob or Kim Spradlin” comment honestly made me laugh. I don’t see Bradley getting to the merge, but hey I guess he’s entertaining for the time being since he’s stopped complaining.

Working backward, there must have been an opportunity for Michael and crew to try and scare the majority 5 with his idol and play some game back at camp. We didn’t see that happen at all, or even try to pitch to Sea bass or Chelsea the opportunity to flip. Even though I love a live tribal, and I really thought someone would flip on Bradley, the Malolo 4 probably could have tried to swing a little more pre-tribal.

Another aspect of this vote was Kellyn’s decision to pass on the game of chance and keep her vote when she arrived at Ghost Island. That move ended up being a great one in the short term, because otherwise it seems a 4v4 vote would have ensued. Because she kept her vote, her majority was able to remain a majority, but let’s hope she won’t regret not having that advantage down the road. Now that folks will head to Ghost Island in between the reward and immunity challenges, that changes a whole lot in regard to strategy, because the tribe will get that person back for the vote and they won’t be immune like the previous three Ghost Island attendees.

Moving over to the Naviti tribe, their comeback was insane and super fun to watch during the Immunity Challenge. You kind of knew it was coming though, because the whole first half of the episode was focused on the Naviti tribe, and all of the previews showed lots of Malolo scenes that we hadn’t seen…so it was predictable for those who were paying attention.

I love seeing Laurel getting more screen time with her reward challenge performance and strategy scenes to see that she’s actually playing the game. Relationships are so much more fluid on their side of the island compared to Malolo, with multiple partnerships and conversations happening within the tribe. I like that Laurel and Donathan are taking the initiative to try and work both sides (Angela/Chris and Dom/Wendell) to evaluate all their options before just working with Chris’s plan of splitting votes on Dom and Wendell if the time comes. Dom and Wendell obviously felt pretty f***ed coming back from tribal knowing they had no immediate allies. After being super visible in episode 3, we hear almost nothing from James and Libby, which makes me wonder where they lie in regard to the different voting block options that they have and that Donathan and Laurel are exploring.

Overall, I think the 3 original Malolo are in a really bad spot obviously, with a 5-3 minority and one of their more physical members gone. However, this could be a good time for one or two people in the majority to flip and vote out an old Naviti, especially if they anticipate another tribe swap at 15 players remaining and the merge at 13. The likelihood of that happening based on previous events and the 5 voting strong against Brendan is, in my option, slim to none. On the Naviti tribe, I still think the 4 old Malolo are in a great spot, both of the old Naviti pairs want to work with them to get out the other, so I think they have an opportunity to really make a dent in getting rid of threats prior to a swap or the merge.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for my expectations for episode 5 and power rankings next week!