Survivor 50 is right around the corner! Over the past couple of weeks, journalists from the competition reality beat like Mike Bloom, Dalton Ross, and Shanon Tharp among others have been releasing interviews with the players that they conducted before the game started. I can be tough on the New Era, but I’ve always enjoyed these pre-season and post-season interviews. The players are fun and interesting people. It’s really the edit and the production that has gotten stale in the New Era.

I’ve now gone through all of Mike Bloom’s interviews that he did for Rob Has A Podcast and I’m feeling excited for a new season. Bloom always conducts great interviews and he played a game with all of the contestants where the interviewee had to declare each of their other cast mates a friend or a foe. The results of the game can be seen here, and I will be loosely referring to them throughout this post.

I really enjoyed hearing from all of the players, even the ones that I wasn’t as excited to see on the cast list or the ones that I wasn’t sure if I cared to see again. Overall everyone did seem like they were ready to play hard and have fun, which I can appreciate. All of the returning players who have played before seem to be returning with a sense of self-awareness. They all realize that something about their game needs to change for them to win the game. Will they be able to overcome their past obstacles, or will they inevitably fall into old habits? I think that will be an interesting thing to track throughout Survivor 50.

Returning player seasons tend to have a different edge to them. I think some of the hurt feelings can be cast to the wayside, but there’s also the element of pre-gaming which I think some fans feel hurt seasons, at least in the way they’re portrayed. The Survivor watch party circuit is an interesting beast. Many of these new players and some of the old ones have been mixing and mingling over the past couple of years. I’ll be interested to see how it all plays out.

Overall, it does feel like production built the starting tribes to stop an old school vs. new school narrative from playing out immediately. Can they mitigate it entirely? Probably not. Initially though, each tribe has a relatively even split between old school and new school, and all of the tribes seem relatively even physically. They all have two strong men, one, if not two, strong women, and at least one potential weak link whether they are a man or a woman. So that’s the groundwork. Let’s take a look at the tribes.

Cila Tribe

For the first time since Survivor Panama, Cirie might be finding herself aligning more with men. The women of this tribe don’t seem too keen on working with her but Joe, Christian, and Ozzy feel differently. In their interviews, both Cirie and Ozzy spoke about how working together could be like bridging the gap between two ends of the Survivor spectrum, and that maybe now is finally the time to do it. Despite people already looking over their shoulders at Cirie, I can see Ozzy, Cirie, and Christian being the central alliance of this tribe, while the former news anchors Savannah and Rick may find themselves quickly on the outs. If this group goes to Tribal Council early, I could see Savannah being an easy consensus boot.

Vatu Tribe

This feels like the disaster tribe to me, if there is one. There’s big personalities colliding in this group. There’s erratic players colliding in this group. Genevieve and Kyle were two players catching a bit of heat in the pre-season with about 35% of the rest of the cast pinging them as a foe. However, among this group, they are well received. After Survivor 47 Genevieve talked about how she wished she had found Sam Phalen earlier in the game, and that if she ever played again she would look for that #1 ally sooner. In Kyle’s interview, he spoke about being willing to be that person. He doesn’t mind working with scary players, so the two of them could end up being a strong duo and the central alliance from this group. Will Q be able to stop himself from leading? Will he clash with Colby? Will Stephenie and Angelina whip up drama? Will the R-I-Z-G-O-D, Riz God, baby ingratiate himself enough to this group to stick around? Only time will tell, but I think this group will probably be fireworks. If this group goes to Tribal Council early, I could see Rizo being an easy consensus boot or an early war between Colby and Q resulting in either of their eliminations, or perhaps Stephenie as collateral.

Kalo Tribe

This is the tribe I have the most questions about. This group of people feel pretty positively about each other across the board, especially compared to the other two tribes. The person this tribe will revolve around, though, is Coach. I don’t think anyone on the entire cast named Coach as a foe. I don’t think anyone even leaned more negative on him. Coach might just be the most popular person on this beach, and he’s basically got the pick of the litter in terms of allies. My guess is that he and Jonathan will gravitate toward each other. From there it feels like a bit of a toss up. Will he pick up winner Dee? His own #1 fan girl Kamilla? Friend of a friend Charlie? This is the group I’m most looking forward to seeing getting fleshed out because at this point it’s the one that seems like it could go in the most directions. Where will The Dragon Slayer lead us in Survivor 50? If this group goes to Tribal Council early, I feel like Kamilla and Mike White are in the most trouble due to their reputations as more “sneaky” players since they’re on a tribe where I think the words “honor and integrity” are going to be thrown around a lot.

Based only on the pre-season interviews I don’t think I have a singular winner pick. It’s hard not to veer into wish-casting. Instead I’ve broken the cast down into tiers based on what I feel their likelihood of winning is:

The pre-season content has got me excited for this upcoming season. Hopefully the show can deliver us a solid product for such a landmark season. I’m looking forward to seeing which first time returners will cement their legacies into Survivor history, and which multi-time returners will be able to change their stripes just enough to finally get the job done. Who will redeem themselves? Will anyone fall on their face? These are the fun questions we get to ask on a returning player season, and I’m excited to see what happens.

**Images from Survivor CBS