How Is Survivor 50 Going to Handle 24 Players in 26 Days?

24  Players… 26 days… one huge logistical problem. 

Since Survivor returned with the New Era for Season 41 the length of the game has shortened from 39 to 26 days. There was hope within the fandom that 39 days would return when the restrictions surrounding quarantining were lessened but it seems CBS sees no reason to spend more money if the audience isn’t turned off by the shorter game. Admittedly the truncated day count doesn’t really come through when watching these newer seasons and that’s mostly due to the 3 tribes of 6 players format. Long gone are the days of 2 tribes of 10 players, the New Era doesn’t have the time for the two additional spots. While the production team has the schedule down pat with only a single round of double elimination involving a demerge into two “teams” rather than a tribe swap, repeating the same format each season has kind of caused the New Era to blend together. 

Season 50 with returning players won’t be in danger of blending into other New Era seasons, but the 24 player cast does raise one huge logistical question, how are they getting rid of all these players in only 26 days? The American version of Survivor has never had a cast larger than 20 players, unlike Australian Survivor which regularly has 24 but also lasts longer than even 39 days. It seems that Survivor will be forced to hold double eliminations regularly until they widdle the cast down to a more manageable size. So I felt like it would be prudent to go over some of the ways they have handled double eliminations in the past and see which method plays best as a fan. 

Right off the bat the absolute worst double elimination format was seen in Survivor Palau, the 20 castaways were marooned on an island together with one man and one woman earning individual immunity by being the first of their gender to reach the beach from their row boats.

These two players would become team captains and select their tribemates, however the last man and last woman remaining would be eliminated. Unfortunately for Johnathan Libby and Wanda Shirk their Survivor journey ended before it really began. This twist still feels immensely unfair and started the season off on a down note. 

Fortunately the next time they did a double elimination that season it was handled much better. The two tribes faced off in a reward challenge with the winning tribe getting to sit in on the losing tribes tribal council while dining on stew. The dominant Koror tribe which to that point was 4-0 in immunity challenges emerged victorious and were able to cut their tribemate Willard who was seen as dead weight. They also got to throw a wrench into the plans of Ulong who intended to vote out Ibrehem due to his poor performance in the challenge but was saved when Koror awarded him immunity. This resulted in Angie being the 6th person voted out of the game. I didn’t hate this version of the double elimination, though it of course felt a bit wonky due to the immunity vote. 

A twist that they’ve done several times is having a surprise vote after they already voted a player out. This was handled the worst in Survivor Cook Islands which saw the Raro tribe lose immunity to Aitu at the final 11 and be given a message in a bottle not to be opened until after they voted a player out. I think many viewers and the players likely believed this was going to announce the merge, final 10 was a pretty common time for the merge in the early era of the show. However that wasn’t the case, Raro instead found out that they would have to immediately vote out another player, which takes a lot of the tension out of the pre tribal scramble, as Rebecca and Jenny were both potential boots with Jenny surviving only to get voted out anyways due to the twist. 

Fortunately they iterated on the surprise vote in future seasons with immunity challenges being held after a vote. Both Redemption Island and South Pacific hastened their Pagonings by having double eliminations with an immunity challenge at tribal council. In both cases the boot order was fairly set in stone resulting in Ralph and Steve being voted off in Redemption Island and Dawn and Whitney in South Pacific. In the New Era this kind of a chaotic twist could result in a live tribal council and a surprise elimination. 

The very best way that Survivor has done a double elimination in my opinion is having an intertribal individual immunity challenge during the premerge. The most memorable instance of this was in Heroes vs Villains as both Candice and Boston Rob won immunity and likely saved themselves from elimination. Candice was on the bottom of the heroes tribe and we get several confessionals about how she is next to go before she pulls out the win and ends up staying in the game all the way to the final 8. James was ultimately voted out in Candice’s place due to his knee injury sustained in the most dangerous challenge ever run. As for Boston Rob, he was the head of a powerful 6 person alliance but was firmly in the crosshairs of Russell Hantz who had an immunity idol. Heading into the tribal council the 6 had a foolproof plan to flush the idol and vote out either Parvarti or Russell, but Tyson proved himself to be the ultimate fool when he flipped his vote from Russell to Parvarti, Russell played the idol for Parvarti and Tyson was eliminated 3-2-0 with the 4 votes for Parvarti being blocked. Had Rob not won immunity it is likely that Tyson’s swap would have resulted in Rob getting the 3 votes and being voted out. This blew the game wide open as Tyson was the glue holding the 6 person alliance together and with him gone Jerri and Coach flipped on Rob the next round.  

In Season 50 we could see any of these previously used double eliminations make a return but there seems to be an easier way to get rid of players quickly. Provided that the three tribe format returns with 8 players on each tribe. They can have several rounds with two tribes losing immunity and two players being eliminated. It will feel a bit rushed compared to an average season but with the 90 minute run time it shouldn’t be too bad. We’ve seen this format on Winners at War and while we devastatingly lost both Sandra and Parvarti in that episode it worked well.

I doubt that they will include this in the first episode, there is something almost sacred about having a well defined first boot but after a few rounds of double eliminations the season should be low enough to return to a fairly standard elimination rate during the second half of the game. Which of these is your favorite double elimination format? Let me know in the comments. 

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