Eva maintains a significant power position in the game
Hello! It’s been a couple weeks but the Survivor recaps are back as Eva Erickson, Georgia Tech grad, is still alive in season 48 of Survivor. Our last recap was episode seven, which you can check out here. We did not have a recap last week as yours truly got to experience the immensely fun Ron Clark watch party, where I got to meet most of the cast, including Eva herself! If you can get tickets to next year’s party, it’s 100% worth it for fans of the show, old and new.
Ok, on to this week’s episode!
SURVIVOR 48 EPISODE 9 SPOILERS AHEAD
In the week we’ve missed, Eva won an immunity challenge, got a clue to another advantage, and helped orchestrate the vote out of Chrissy, who became the second member of the jury. That vote revealed the first true crack in the Strong Five alliance of her, Shauhin, David, Joe, and Kyle as Kamilla’s name was brought up as a serious contender to be voted out, but Kyle’s deflections to the idea were so strong that questions were raised.
After the dust of the Chrissy vote settled, it seemed like the rough patch the Strong Five went through to arrive at the Chrissy vote was mostly gone, reinstating the Kamilla idea now that there wasn’t another immediatly great option for them to go with.
That night, Eva gets to use her reward she found in last week’s episode, which requires her to sneak out of camp in the night to go to a station near their camp to collect her reward. As she leaves, Shauhin catches her leaving, but doesn’t stop her. He does though tell Joe about it (smart move, do what you can to drive a wedge between them, even if it’s ever so slight and potentially inconsequential as this).
When Eva arrives as the station, she’s presented with an extra vote, or can gamble with 50% odds to earn a Safety Without Power advantage, allowing her to leave a tribal council before voting but not being vulnerable. She successfully earns that advantage, but then is presented with a 1⁄3 chance to earn another immunity idol, or lose her advantage she just won. With an idol already in her possession, she sticks with Safety Without Power.
What she does the next morning is big though. Initially, she had planned to not tell people about this advantage, but instead tells Joe, Shauhin, and Kyle about her new advantage, which critically gives Shauhin peace of mind that Eva is still firmly with her even though he knew she snuck out. Kyle tells Kamilla about the advantage, which likely means most if not everyone at the camp knows about it by the end of the day.
Amidst all of this David still is spooked by Kyle and Kamilla, correctly ascertaining that they’re working together. He brings this to Joe and Eva, which rubs Joe the wrong way after David tries to pin Joe on flipping on his word when he had agreed with the original Kamilla vote in the previous episode. For Joe, it’s the first major red flag he’s seen from him, which in effect means Eva has to consider that as a working partner with Joe.
At the immunity challenge, the strong men are at an advantage in an endurance, muscle burn style challenge. Joe barely beats out David, getting his second immunity win and keeping Eva in a prime power position going into tribal council. A food reward is also attached to the challenge, to which Joe brings Mitch, Shauhin, and Eva. The idea to vote David is thrown out there by Mitch, but isn’t seriously considered until they come back to camp and Kyle mentions the same idea to them.
Between Kyle not really having a working relationship with David anymore and Mitch more than happy to go with that plan, it puts the onus on Joe and Eva to make the swing vote decision to go with David or not. They end up voting David, with only Mary and Star left out of the vote.
What does this all mean? For now, Eva maintains a significant power position in the game. She has done a miraculous job making no outward enemies and sticking with people who are winning challenges. Joe at this point is the odds on challenge favorite any given day. Kyle is right behind him. Eva also has an immunity to her name. On top of that, she’s got two advantages that can keep her safe twice up through final five. Her Safety Without Power advantage can’t be played past final seven.
That means she only needs to outright “survive” two of the next four tribal councils to make it to final four as there’s eight people left. Then if she pulls off a challenge win somewhere in there, she in theory will only be vulnerable once in the next four tribal councils. That’s one of the best arsenals this deep into the game anyone has had in the new era. If she can hold on to her alliance with Joe (not breaking), Kyle (and by extension, Kamilla), and Shauhin, they can pick off Mitch, Star, and Mary to get them to final five.
Personally, I’d do everything I can to get rid of Kyle, Kamilla, and Shauhin at this point. Eva will most likely beat Joe no matter what. Mitch has severely fallen off lately. Mary kinda just rode David’s coattails up to this point, and Star…I literally don’t know what her strategy is beyond “as long as it isn’t me.” Eva’s Strong Five (now Four) has been so strong that they’ve just ridden that wave until it couldn’t last any longer, and to make it to the final nine with that was truly impressive. It may have been “predictable” Survivor, but it’s Survivor that worked for them.