Survivor: Winners At War Premiere Recap
The Greatest of the Greats
Holy moly!
We actually just saw the premiere for Survivor’s all-winner season. A season we’ve been anticipating for more than a decade. And even more importantly: the premiere managed to match the hype it created for itself and in a lot of ways, exceeded it! Coming off the slog that was the previous season, it feels like we’ve more than earned this moment but seeing it deliver was so satisfying.
We all know that Survivor: All-Stars didn’t end up playing out how many of us would have liked. But, if you go back and watch that season’s premiere, it’s one of the most solid episodes of Survivor you can find. The love for the show’s history and its legends was present from the very beginning and it made that episode special. That is exactly how I felt watching the men and women of Winners at War pulling up on that sand dune to meet Jeff. It felt like it was put together by a production team that loved its product as much as the fans did.
My brain could hardly make sense of the fact that I was looking at Tyson Apostol standing next to Tony freaking Vlachos. Or that Ethan Zohn was actually back on my screen after everything he’s been through (and looking damn good, might I add). Or how about Parvati Shallow’s reaction to seeing Yul Kwon back on the show? Forget the Avengers, this is the most ambitious crossover event in history!
The biggest takeaway from this episode was how good the legends of the game truly are. Like for example, when Rob and Ben had a casual conversation strolling down the beach.
Rob: Hi Ben
Ben: SOMEONE SAID YOUR NAME
Rob: dude, relax, I was just seeing how it’s going
Ben: IT WAS ONE OF THE GIRLS
Rob: are you okay Ben?
Ben: IT WAS DANNI. ALL DANNI. PLEASE DONT HURT ME.
Ben in a confessional: Man, Boston Rob sure is good at this game right?
Obviously, it didn’t play out exactly like this. Boston Rob realized his name was being thrown out there early and he applied some casual pressure on Ben to get him to spill the beans. Still, how effective and how quick it worked showed that Rob doesn’t just talk the talk. There is legitimacy to the aura that he gives out, his presence is intimidating, even when he’s looking more like day 1 Survivor: Samoa Russell Hantz than day 1 Survivor: Marquesas Boston Rob.
And then, for Rob to go straight to Danni and not only get confirmation of Ben’s information, but flip Danni onto his side in the process? Masterful. Credit also goes to Danni for not lying about something so trivial this early and managing to land on Rob’s good side. This was a rare win-win scenario for both players. It also felt like we got more Danni in this episode, especially in confessionals, than we did all of Survivor: Guatemala. So that was fun!
And look, I made fun of Boston Rob as much as anybody for not being in the same shape he’s been on Survivor in the past… but damn! He absolutely was a monster in both challenges in the premiere. Wrestling with Tony and winning the only point for his team in the opening challenge and being the sole reason his team managed to catch up in the second challenge. He was honestly killing it. I guess muscle memory doesn’t leave you after so much time spent doing these Survivor challenges.
Seeing Parvati and Rob awkwardly agree to team up was also the stuff of fanfiction. Not only did they join forces, they then somehow managed to escape having a target thrown onto their star-studded combo. And then, Ethan joined that duo and they still managed to escape any heat! I am all about this Danni/Ethan/Parvati/Rob crew on Sele. If they can gain control of that tribe (assuming we don’t swap which is unlikely), that’s a combination for a good season right there.
On Dakal, we got to see Yul step into Survivor after a 14 year absence and play like Cook Islands had never ended. I mean, the guy is an absolute genius. Right away, he figured out that the people who didn’t have any real association to each other outnumbered the people that did. He wasted no time in going to Sophie Clarke first, the most analytical person on his tribe other than himself. When she was locked in, he secured Nick Wilson and Wendell Holland. From there, that nucleus of four people became the key in swinging the votes between the Sandra/Tony/Sarah trio and the infamous poker trio of Tyson/Kim/Amber. Simply brilliant early gameplay from Yul.
It’s doubly impressive when you consider that any heat from the Amber boot is going to be sent right at Sandra. Rob has no reason to think that this move was spearheaded by Yul, but he might see a universe in which Sandra ordered the execution. And with Sandra’s ego wanting to get as much credit in this season as she can, she’s not going to want to push that onto someone else. Essentially, Yul gets to knock out a key cog in Rob’s game and come out of there with his hands squeaky clean.
You have to give credit to Sandra for knowing how to apply pressure. When she sensed that Amber’s name was potentially floating out there, she smelled the blood and moved in for the kill. Yul set the move in motion, but Sandra was like Mariano Rivera, stepping into the game in the last inning to finish the deal.
Then, Sandra managed to get an idol sold to her by Natalie. What a great deal! A three tribal council idol for a simple fire token? Sign me up. I am excited to see what Sandra cooks up with this idol, because she’s at her best when she’s scheming something in the dark. Yes, Sandra’s cockiness has gotten maybe too much in the last few seasons in that it can cloud her judgement, but she also showed in this premiere why she deserves her spot as one of the greatest players of all-time.
Seeing Natalie Anderson and Amber go home definitely confirmed my fear that every episode is going to hurt. Natalie is one of my favorite newer winners and seeing her leave so early was painful. I’m not even that big of an Amber fan but getting her back on after so long and seeing her leave so early, it felt unfair. But then, I wasn’t willing to lose Tyson or Kim above her either. This cast is so good that every boot is going to be emotional.
And yes, we have the edge of extinction, so the players aren’t really out of the game. But the edge doesn’t feel like it’s part of Survivor. We don’t get to see the players having to handle the social aspects of the game, they’re mostly just surviving boredom until they get their shot at coming back. I like that the edge is shot in such a different way to the main game, but most of the content that comes out of there is milquetoast.
It was interesting how scared everyone was at that first tribal council. You wouldn’t expect a bunch of winners to have their nerves frazzled like that. I think that first tribal council really hammered home the stakes of this season. Going home first in a season of all-winners is so much bigger than going home first on a regular season. It’s almost like getting rejected by your pears and being told you don’t belong in their club.
I made fun of Ben earlier for spilling everything to Rob but I do think he deserves credit for flipping the target away from Adam. It was such a brutally stupid mistake of Adam and Denise to just go missing for so long. Both of them know the game so much better than this. Props to Ben for recognizing worth in playing with Adam’s Survivor knowledge and convincing the old-schoolers to focus on another target instead.
And Adam was right. Jeremy and Natalie as a pair are much more threatening than Adam and Denise. The latter had only just met. The former are both complete challenge monsters. I think it was mostly the convenience of Adam and Denise having a reason to be sent home. Props to everyone involved in the flip for recognizing that sometimes convenience isn’t the best way to decide who should go home.
It’s an interesting parallel that in Survivor: San Juan del Sur, Natalie was fuelled to win because she wanted revenge for Jeremy. Now, the shoe is on the other foot and Jeremy is the one with a blood feud. Can he pull off the same thing his buddy did back in the day?
Then you have the second tribal council. I thought it was a fun contrast that one tribe focused on a pair that may have formed in-game while the other was laser focused on an alliance that may have been born outside of the game.
Credit needs to be given in this moment to Survivor production for going there with us. They could have found some lazy workaround to avoid talking about pre-game relationships. Instead, they steered right into the curve and even showed us footage from the poker game (that most hardcore fans knew had happened and had factored into potential pre-game alliances). It was the most Yul thing ever to not only know that this game had occurred but also, that Tyson had said they would be a power alliance if an all-winners season ever happened. Yul never forgets.
For landing into a tough spot without a lot of control over the situation, I think Tyson handled things the best out of the three. He recognized right away that there was momentum working against him and quickly abandoned any plans to save Kim or Amber. He immediately pledged allegiance to Yul and Nick, told them he would vote Amber and then stayed calm, cool and collected. I believe his quote was “I’ll forfeit the battle to hopefully win the war.” That showed maturity and patience from Tyson we may have never seen before. Which is why I’m not worried about his prospects moving forward.
I am little bit more worried for Kim. It was almost jarring seeing her on the bottom of a vote after dominating One World to such an insane degree. She had no clue how to act from the bottom and it was tough seeing her get shunned out of conversations and not knowing how to deal with it. If there’s anybody I trust to rally from this moment, it’s a legend like Kim, but it was honestly a rough premiere for our GOAT. Seeing her and Sandra trade snippy comments at tribal council was the stuff of legends though. I hope we get as much of that as possible.
Can we also all celebrate the fact that Tony made it out of the premiere alive? It was wild to me that he managed to avoid any real heat from his tribe. I love that his version of being calm was telling his tribe that he was only being calm because he had to be. Like, Tony was itching to go running around so badly that he couldn’t stop himself from telling his tribe he wanted to go run around. And his tribe still ate it up!
That’s the beauty of Tony. Yes, he’s flashy and fun but people underestimate the guy. After Game Changers, he became a caricature of himself. He bought into the Team TV persona a little too much and lost what made him so great in Cagayan. Tony isn’t just flash. He’s also incredibly smart, manipulative and good at reading people. The fans have sort of forgotten that over the years and think of Tony only as a joke. But he’s a legitimately great Survivor player and this season makes me think he’s going to remind us of that.
I don’t know where we go from here. The preview didn’t indicate a swap was coming next episode and I hope that remains true. We have some fun dynamics brewing at both tribes. It would be silly to throw that away to “mess” with these players. They know to expect swaps. They know how to deal with them. I would much rather see these guys figure out their tribe dynamics and see if the likes of Jeremy, Kim and Tyson can bounce back from their false starts.
Still, no matter what happens, it feels like this season will be an immediate classic. I had goosebumps almost the entire two-hour premiere. The episode went by so quickly I was almost disappointed it was already over. I’ve already watched it twice (having a baby that wakes up at odd hours isn’t so bad when you can watch Winners at War again at the same time). Production seems hellbent on giving us a good season too. We’re in good hands and I am just so giddy at knowing we have another 13 episodes of this legendary season to go.
