[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Survivor Season 49 Episode 4, “Go Kick Rocks, Bro.”]
The two-person Kele tribe finally caught a break in Survivor49‘s fourth episode. After Jake Latimer was medically evacuated from the game after a dry snake bite and Jeremiah Ing was voted out in Episode 3’s Tribal Council, Jeff Probst announced an early tribe swap before a “fake-out” challenge in Episode 4. Uli is no more; only Kele and Hina remain, with Alex Moore staying at Kele and Sophi Balderi going to Hina.
Unfortunately for the Kele alums, only having two tribes left, with one of them on each, meant that one of them was heading back into Tribal Council for the fourth consecutive episode. Fortunately for them, a Kele alum was not voted out for the first time this season. Fortunately for viewers, we finally got to see some new players show their skills in the voting process and Tribal Council interviews, and one player who’s seemed cool and collected all season showed their fiery side. And one strong player ended up on the minority side of the vote, while their two strongest allies left on their team were on the majority. None of these three were voted out, but this is a noteworthy divide.
Probst told the players that there was always a tribe swap planned for Survivor 49 once the cast got down to 14 players. They just didn’t expect to get to 14 so quickly. Production gave the new teams time to get to know each other before the immunity and reward challenge, which the new Kele won thanks to MC Chukwujekwu’s physical prowess (she’s clearly the challenge beast of the season, even before Jake was sent home).
Sophi was back in Tribal Council mode post-challenge and made a quick ally in Savannah Louie, whose Uli alliance included Nate Moore and Rizo Velovic, who are now on Kele with her, and Shannon Fairweather, who’s now on Hina. Jawan Pitts from Uli, plus Jason Treul and Matt Williams from Hina, made up the rest of the new Kele group. On the new Hina are MC, Alex, Shannon, Sage Ahrens-Nichols, Sophie Segreti, Steven Ramm, and Kristina Mills.
Matt and Jason were quickly identified as the possible eliminees after Savannah, Nate, and Jawan helped Rizo get his vote back by finding the map to his hidden immunity idol, which was in a treasure box lodged in shallow water on the beach.
Robert Voets / CBS
Matt took the Sandra Diaz-Twine approach and said he’d vote for “anyone but me,” and Nate took that to mean he would vote for him as well.
Nate’s name got thrown around but was never really in danger. But he wasn’t afraid to show his intolerance for his name being floated during the Tribal interviews. The Marvel producer called Matt out calmly but directly in Tribal talks, and when he cast his vote for Matt, he said, “Go kick rocks, bro,” for trying to get him out. It was very Cirie Fields of him.
Nate, Rizo, Jason, and Jawan were the majority vote that sent Matt packing. Notably, the tribe’s only women, Sophi and Savannah, voted for Jason, who intentionally made himself look like an undesirable vote by promising to play his Shot in the Dark. He didn’t, but the protective move worked.
Savannah sensed that Jason was still Hina strong, and she didn’t like that. Sophi wanted to side with Savannah to further cement her new No. 1 alliance. With that, Savannah didn’t vote with her former Uli alliance. How will this changeup shift things for Savannah, Rizo, and Nate?
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