The sweatiest place on Earth is Tribal Council — at least it is on June 2, 2015, the night the first player leaves Survivor: Cambodia — Second Chance. On this night, ten people wait with bated breath to find out which one of them will be named the 31st first boot in Survivor history. There are no obvious frontrunners, because the Ta Keo tribe was sent straight to Tribal after their loss at Quest For Fire, without any time to strategize — but over the course of the evening, two people look like they’re in danger: Abi-Maria Gomes, the Brazilian firecracker from Survivor: Philippines, and Vytas Baskauskas, the brother of Survivor champion Aras and the reformed bad boy from Blood vs Water. In the days leading up to this moment, I have been touring the Survivor location with a vested interest in Vytas’ survival. He’s my winner pick for the season, based on a fantasy draft I conducted with Jeff Probst about 48 hours earlier. You can imagine the heat and horror hitting my face as I watch Survivor after Survivor walk up to the Tribal Council voting booth, write down Vytas’ name, and calmly stuff the ballot inside the urn. My shock is nothing compared to what Vytas feels when Probst turns over the final vote, snuffs out his flame, and sends my winner pick on an early vacation, walking away from Tribal Council with his torch still smoking. “You were in trouble early on,” Probst tells me, referring to our draft, as we sit down by the hottest fire at Tribal, mere minutes after Vytas and Ta Keo went their separate ways. “I sensed that, but I didn’t want to say anything.” Even I sensed that calling Vytas as the season’s winner was an overreach — I entered the draft planning to select Ciera Eastin, but Probst picked her first — but I certainly did not expect to see him knocked out right away. In the afterglow of the Tribal Council fire and Vytas’ Survivor demise, I’m starting to question everything I know about the show. But Probst doesn’t think it’s such a grim picture. “I don’t think this is indicative of anything other than he came up on the wrong side of the numbers,” Jeff says about why Vytas went home. “It’s a game. You take your shot, and you’re right or you’re wrong, and he was wrong. But Vytas is a good player. He could come back again and win.” In fact, in his own way, Probst is as puzzled as I am about how and why Vytas was sent home. “I think the question that I’m uncertain about is, what really happened?” he wonders. “Was there truly a tribe division tonight, or was Jeff Varner really a swing vote?” Indeed, Varner is the big curiosity of the night — and it’s for reasons you did not get to see. ON THE NEXT PAGE: The Elephant In The Room

Jeff Varner, the man who flipped off a pole for peanut butter fifteen years ago, flips Tribal Council on its head with a single question. In the final minutes before the vote, Varner pipes up and asks Probst if he can pose a question to his tribe mates. Probst obliges, turning the floor over to Varner, who proceeds to ask Peih-Gee Law and Kelley Wentworth if they are still sticking to a voting plan they told him about earlier in the day. They both reaffirm their commitment to this unknown plot, which is good enough for Varner. It’s not so good for Terry Deitz. He stiffens, the signature Deitz grin whacked right off of his face, as he asks Varner to explain himself. Varner gives no clear answers. “It’s my second chance,” Varner states with no-nonsense confidence. “I don’t want to screw it up. This is an important night.” And so the voting begins. Abi votes for Vytas. Vytas votes for Abi. Spencer Bledsoe votes for Vytas, albeit nervously. (“Tonight I learned that Jeff Varner is a crazy person,” he declares.) Deitz votes Abi, also nervously, referring to the final moments of Tribal as a “Varner bomb.” Consider the bomb deployed, as it goes off in Vytas’ face, blasting the man Varner described to me as one of “the good souls” straight out of the game. Probst does not know if Varner voting out Vytas means he’s cast his lot in with any particular alliance. “I wouldn’t necessarily draw a conclusion that there are two alliances right now,” he says, and I agree with him to a point. In the moment, it looks like there’s a fairly clear split: Spencer, Wentworth, Peih-Gee, Abi and Shirin Oskooi on one side, with Vytas, Deitz, Kelly Wiglesworth and Woo Hwang on the other. Varner told me he has a pre-game alliance with Deitz’s crew, but he also told me he has loyalty to Wentworth. Which way should he go? I believe the tie-breaker, funny enough, is the threat of a tie. If Varner sides with the old schoolers, he’s forcing a five-five vote — and despite his colorful wardrobe, Varner is a man who has no interest in ties, given the way he exited the game the first time, and given what he told me during our chat at Ponderosa. “I’m not going to draw a rock,” said Varner. “There will be no chance. I will make my own choices and my own decisions. I will not draw a rock. If I have to flip a vote, I’ll do it. I can’t imagine going home because I drew a rock. How stupid would that be? This is my second chance. I’m not doing that.” I can feel Varner’s thought process at Ponderosa alive and well during the first Tribal Council of the season, as he steps up to the voting booth, visibly shaking, pausing for what feels like an eternity before he finally writes down “VYTAS” on his parchment, whispering his reasoning behind the vote at such a hushed tone that I can’t even hear the words. “The walls have ears here,” he once warned me. When I recap what I saw from Varner in the voting booth for Probst, he grins big and shakes his head, responding with a single word: “Wow.” It was a big decision for Varner, and Probst loves it. “Varner seems like a guy who is really swinging for the fence,” he says. “Even though what he did wasn’t precedent setting, the way he did it felt fresh. It felt like he just laid it down differently. It might’ve been the confidence with which he did it. There was a sense of: ‘I’m in charge. I’m about to make a decision. I’m about to ask you a question, and I’m going to read your answers and decide what to do.’ That’s what I thought was happening. It’s like he was still wondering: ‘What am I going to do?'” “I love Varner,” Probst continues, smiling ear to ear. “He’s one of the highlights of the season already. He’s just a blast to talk to.” Probst contemplates Varner’s next move, and he’s not so sure the Australian Outback alum will continue on with Shirin’s Army: “I wonder if he made one vote tonight, and then he’ll go back to camp tonight and say, ‘Okay, now I’m looking for a new group.'” This would be very good news for the people who were on the wrong side of Ta Keo’s first vote — someone like Kelly Wiglesworth, for instance. ON THE NEXT PAGE: A Tale of Two Kellies

On the first day of Second Chance, taking place exactly fifteen years after the Survivor series premiere, Kelly Wiglesworth is the first person to make a move. The Ta Keo tribe assembles all of their items onto their raft and sets a course for the smaller fishing boat with rice, long before Bayon is able to get their act together. (It’s impressive, too, considering Terry takes the time to hop off the vessel and swim back to his boat, pick up his missing sandals, then swim all the way back and depart before Bayon even comes close to starting.) Once the Ta Keo raft is within range, Wiglesworth dives into the water and makes a break for it, trying to swim to the boat. But like Stephenie LaGrossa in Survivor: Palau, Wiglesworth went for it too soon. It takes little time before she runs out of gas — and thankfully, Woo Hwang manages to hop in the water and secure the rice for the tribe. A few days later, Wiglesworth finds herself in the hot seat again, tasked with completing the Jailbreak portion of the Quest For Fire challenge. She fails, falling against Joe Anglim, who wins the challenge for Bayon without breaking much of a sweat. Probst does not think there’s too much of a story in Wiglesworth’s loss at the challenge, but he does think she’s in trouble in terms of her readiness for the game. “I think Kelly is still a little behind,” says Probst. “I’m kind of surprised that when you ask her a question about what she’s learned and how she’s adapted, she’s still like, ‘I don’t really want to talk about it. I just want to be in the here and now.’ But the whole point is, if you haven’t learned anything since then, how will you do in the now? I’m not sure that Kelly’s got her feet solidly on the ground here on day three.” Even if she doesn’t, it feels like the rest of Ta Keo has their feet on the ground for Wiglesworth. There seems to be some sense of reverence for the Borneo runner-up, respect for her work ethic around camp and even her challenge prowess, despite her role in the tribe’s loss at Quest For Fire. Probst does not believe that the reverence will last forever. “Right now they do seem to have a lot of Wiglesworth love,” he says, “but man, you lose another challenge and suddenly they’ll say, ‘Yeah, we still love you, and we’re writing your name down.'” Getting rid of Wiglesworth would make life a little bit more convenient for Kelley Wentworth, at least in the sense that she would become the only KW on the season. Not that Wentworth needs too much help in the game right now; she’s in possession of the only hidden immunity idol currently in the game, having snatched it up while no one was looking during Quest For Fire… …no one, that is, except for myself and Parvati Shallow, Survivor champion and now Survivor press member. We both excitedly watched Wentworth as she grabbed the idol while her tribe was distracted, even though it initially looked like she wasn’t going to make the move. The image of Wentworth tucking the idol into her shorts and letting out an enormous sigh of relief will forever be burned into my brain. “Kelley’s here to play for sure,” says Probst. “She was on our list early because we felt like she got a raw deal with her dad, in that her dad was struggling and she got sucked into that vortex. She’s proving that she is here to play. She was very confident at Tribal. She has the idol. I don’t think anybody saw her. I like Wentworth. I like her a lot as a player. If she can stay in control of her alliance and make the moves that she needs to, she could be here for a while.” I agree. Between finding the idol without any help from anyone, and finding herself on the right side of the vote without appearing like she’s in a leadership position, Wentworth looks as strong as anyone right now. With Vytas gone, Kelley’s my new winner pick… and given my track record, that’s probably very bad news for Kelley. I hope Drew Christy is better at this than me. But even looking beyond my cosmic luck and Christy’s clairvoyance, there are still so many ways for the season to break moving forward — and in the wake of Vytas’ exit, Probst’s wheels are spinning as much as anyone’s. ON THE FINAL PAGE: The Quest For Fire Continues