‘Survivor’ Needs to Cut 1 Twist After Season 44
Survivor fans have many gripes with the “new era.” It’s full of new advantages, lost votes, and extra flair, when most people just want the CBS reality competition series to return to the basics. But out of the game’s new features, Survivor Season 44 has made it clear which twist should be the first to go before the next season starts filming.
The ‘Survivor’ Season 44 cast continues the ‘new era’ tradition of going on summits
When Survivor 41 premiered in the fall of 2021, host Jeff Probst announced that the show had entered a “new era.” The earlier Survivor seasons featured summits, but those were mostly to facilitate merges or tribe swaps. Now, the journeys were all about gaining advantages in the game.
Castaways and fans dubbed the summits’ destinations “Shipwheel Island.” For seasons 41 and 42, two or three designated players would privately have to turn a ship wheel to protect or risk their vote.
If every player chose “protect,” nothing would change. If everyone picked “risk,” they would lose their vote at the next Tribal Council they attended. But if one or two of them risked their vote, they would gain an advantage. This format slightly changed in season 43 because the castaways had to reveal their decision publically. And only one player who risked their vote would obtain an advantage.
Season 44 completely changed the rules of the summit, though. Now, they don’t have a choice and must risk their votes (at least for the first journey). During the Survivor Season 44 premiere, Lauren Harpe, Matt Blankinship, and Sarah Wade went on a summit and took separate paths that led them to a bag full of possibilities.
Two packages in the bag would make them lose their vote, while only one contained an advantage. If they chose the advantage first, they won. And if they picked a “Lose a Vote,” they would lose their vote at the next Tribal Council. But they could draw again to try to get the advantage. Unfortunately, if they chose another “Lose a Vote,” they couldn’t reach back in for the advantage. The castaways learned that they had to participate regardless of whether they wanted to.
And for the second summit of Survivor Season 44, Josh Wilder, Jaime Lynn Ruiz, and Carson Garrett automatically gained an immunity idol. And they discovered that they were all switching tribes. So who knows what the next summit will entail?
Future seasons shouldn’t feature summits
The fact that Survivor Season 44 castaways don’t have the option to protect their vote on summits is ridiculous. Your vote is arguably the most sacred thing you have in the game, and producers forcing players to risk it is unfair. We know that Survivor isn’t designed to be fair (especially in recent seasons), but there comes a point when you just have to let the contestants play the game.
Who knows? Perhaps if Sarah hadn’t lost her vote, Helen Li wouldn’t have gone home in episode 2. But the summits change everything, and not always for the better.
Oh, and players shouldn’t be handed idols (even if they’re about to head into the lion’s den). They need to earn their advantages because nothing should come easy in a game for $1 million.
Honestly, all of the new advantages and idols are exhausting. We have a hard enough time keeping up with tribe dynamics. But adding in who has what, who doesn’t have a vote, etc., is the last straw.
It’s time for Survivor producers to retire “Shipwheel Island,” especially because there are only so many ways to change it to surprise future players. And the most recent modification in Survivor Season 44 is mindboggling, so we don’t care to see what else the producers have up their sleeves for summits.
‘Survivor’ fans are also tired of the summits in season 44
Following the medical evacuation of Bruce Perreault in Survivor Season 44, one fan started a Reddit thread detailing how it highlighted the problematic summits.
“Looking back on it, the Bruce medevac really magnified an issue with the first ‘Shipwheel Island’/summit in my mind,” they wrote. “I didn’t love the fact that players were forced to risk their vote at the first Shipwheel Island this year. But the fact that it forced someone in a tribe of five to take that risk is pretty tough.”
They continued, “I’ve always thought the potential of losing a vote in a group of six is much safer than a group of five. In the previous seasons of the new era, players have been able to play around it by not risking their vote. Sarah and Helen (and Carson to some degree) were put in a tough spot even though they had seemingly won the ‘social battle’ and sat in a 3-2 majority.”
A Reddit user added, “If you choose to risk your vote, fine, I have no problem with it. That is on you. But I have no clue why production decided to force the players to take the gamble this season.”
“It also just highlights the increased variance that comes with these six-person tribes,” someone else pointed out. “I’d love to see them go back to two tribes of nine, as I find that easier to follow, and I think it gives players some room to maneuver socially/strategically. With the three-tribe setup, it seems much harder to get to know the players and their social dynamics pre-merge, as we will go whole episodes with minimal coverage of a tribe.”
New episodes of Survivor Season 44 air Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.
