DISCLAIMER: I know the identities of the two players in this cast that will be playing on Survivor 50. I know the identities of both players that were last minute alternates that were added to the cast of Survivor 49. I do not know anything else about the outcome or boot order or events of Survivor 49, but will be referring to the above information in my analysis. If you don’t want to know any of that information, turn back now!

It looks like the merge is around the corner!

Below are my Edgic rating chart and contender lists for the season thus far.

Next are my quick, mostly vibes-based takeaways with little bits of analysis from all of the pre-merge episodes as I was watching them.

Episode 2 - Kele is this season’s Disaster Tribe™. Maybe they’ll have a Yanu-like surge, but things aren’t looking great for them. This episode didn’t do much in terms of moving the needle for any of the players, in my opinion. The only thing I’m considering at this point is exchanging Savannah and Sophi’s places in my contender list. Savannah could go down a rank because maybe she’s perhaps too much the main character of Uli already. Maybe this was supposed to be Sophi’s pre-merge danger? I’ll wait another episode or two to fully decide. Shoe bandit is not funny to me. Gen Z vs. Millenial conversation was rough. Is Alex the Charlie or Shauhin of this season? Those two are not quite the same, I know, but I could see Alex fall into one of those two categories. Maybe more into the Shauhin bucket at this point. It feels hard to believe that the winner could come from Hina at this point. I really liked MC in this episode, but it just feels like the whole Hina Tribe is so far behind the other two in terms of quality content. I’m not sure if it’ll carry her far enough. Perhaps they go into the merge as the majority that the other two tribes work to pick apart. I did find it interesting that Jawan choosing the good of the group over self-preservation was portrayed positively, while Sophi considering stealing the idol seemed to be getting a mixed energy. I suppose that’s the “paradox of the game” there. My thought is that at different stages of the game, one versus the other option may be considered more optimal in the eyes of the edit.

Episode 3 - Um… What is happening? How did production let Kele participate in the challenge with only three people? How did they let them get down to two tribe members? Utterly wild. Scary what happened to Jake, but probably 25% of the episode was spent on his medical emergency and having the same details repeated five times. I’m glad he was able to see the birth of his child. Low key was judging him a bit for being willing to be out of town for that, but it all worked out the way it was supposed to I guess. Another 25% of this episode was spent on group idol hunts with Uli deciding to have it be a public Beware Advantage, while Hina kept it private between MC and Steven. The rest of the episode was spent on the woes of this Kele tribe. Sophi still feels well positioned and has taken over the top contender position for me. She executed a necessary move to survive the round and move forward in the game in a good position. Savannah is my clear number two, but I wonder if she is coming off a little villainous? I like her, but I must consider that she’s supposed to be a little bit evil and I don’t think winners are evil. This episode also sets up the looming “war” between Uli and Hina. In the next episode there will be a tribe swap and it actually looks like it might be two tribes of seven with only a yellow and blue tribe. My only nailed in contenders are Sophi and Savannah at this point. Shannon is rising, but everyone else is unconvincing. So far Uli feels like the complex tribe, but there’s a lot of potential for things to change with the upcoming tribe swap. Let’s see if things change and some quieter players rise to the top next week.

Episode 4 - Finally we get to hear from some of the other players on this season! It still feels like a two horse race between Savannah and Sophi. However, both have a couple of things that I’m curious about. Sophi didn’t get a post-Tribal Council explanation of her vote, but she did explain it later to Savannah. She also is really leaning into the loyalty thing and people are perceiving her as such, but her opening confessional was about manipulation and blindsides. Savannah is still just so prominent as both a narrative and strategic talking head. Again slight villain vibes. She and Rizo also seem to imply that they would rather take out Jason over Matt, but Matt ends up going home. Both are still playing well, seem in control, and in good positions. I think that Steven had some good content and Shannon continues to emerge as a prominent, powerful character. The way things ended up in the swap don’t necessarily lend themselves to anything super interesting right now, but the merge/mergatory is another episode or two away and this OG Uli vs. OG Hina war is simmering under the surface.

Episode 5 - An entire tribe shown sleeping, plus Sophi and Jawan? A fly lands on Savannah? Yet, still no one else really feels like a viable contender. What’s going on here! I’m enjoying the two tribe format so much more, but this episode was overall a bit boring due to the way the tribe swap panned out. The Tribal Council was so straight forward they packed the episode with fake drama and New Era propaganda to fill time. The challenge looked legitimately hard though. If I was MC, I would have been sitting that one out after lifting all those sandbags beforehand! This felt like a bit of a cool down episode for Sophi. Savannah continues to seem a little villainous/mean girl but this episode she got some solidly positive vibes by being identified as the person in the power position by a couple of other castaways. I don’t really feel like this episode gave me enough to change my stance on whether Sophi or Savannah is leading the race, but it did give me enough to eliminate Shannon again. She is not my cup of tea but I hope she makes the merge because I think that she will be a polarizing player and hopefully create some conflict. Still waiting for this horror movie analogy and monster theme to appear…

Episode 6 - This was probably my favorite or second favorite episode of the season so far. It’s still really a two horse race for me between Sophi and Savannah, but they had a bit of a cool down in this episode. Probably to their benefit. My other possible contenders are Sage, Steven, and MC, but there is a lot of space between any of them and either Sophi or Savannah. MC’s content has been great in the limited time we get to see her and it’s been on a steady rise. This was a great episode for Sage, actually. I immediately ruled her out when she was discussing pee, poop, and blackheads. To be fair, I still am wary of that, however, she’s so far had character moments, a sob story, pre-merge danger, pretty good strategic reads, and an aggressive, successful play. She actively built the trust necessary to execute her plan, and you could say that as the season approaches “act two” of this horror movie, she’s growing into the monster. Not too bad at all, and with the looming “Uli vs. Hina war” it’s very possible that Sage’s story arc doesn’t end in episode six. I really hope that wasn’t the completion of her arc because she is funny and is clearly not a gamebot. I think if her star continues to rise through the merge she could break into the upper tier but she’s got work to do.

Overall we are looking at big themes of trust and the pursuit of greatness. I think we can look at all of the players who have been eliminated and see where they fell short thematically.

Players that seem to be playing well so far like Savannah, Sophi, Rizo, Steven, MC, and Sage have all found ways to demonstrate that they are trustworthy to their key allies and have all been successfully putting in the work either physically, socially, and/or strategically to ensure that they are insulated, or at the very least, safe.

Besides the sea krait, what we haven’t quite seen yet is the theme of “the monster,” although I would argue that perhaps that was part of Sage’s emergence in this most recent episode. However, Jawan indicated during Tribal Council that this horror movie is supposedly moving into Act II so hopefully we’ll see this theme take shape a little bit more.

Coming next is a deeper dive into the Edgic of the merge episode and a midseason check in. Hopefully things will start to heat up now that Jawan and Sage have helped in voting out Shannon. Stay tuned!

**Images from Survivor CBS