‘Survivor 46’ makes history in ‘My Messy, Sweet Friend’ with 4 players blindsided holding idols

“Survivor 46” has made history with the most number of contestants voted out with an immunity idol in their pocket. This is the third consecutive episode where someone was blindsided holding a playable idol — Venus Vafa, Tiffany Nicole Ervin and Hunter McKnight — and the fourth overall after Jemila “Jem” Hussain-Adams. That breaks the record held by the 39th season, “Island of the Idols,” where three contestants left with trinkets (though one player left with two idols), and the first season with back-to-back-to-back idol holder boots. Amazingly, that was not the only embarrassing part of last week’s 11th episode. With this many blunders in such continuous fashion, let’s break down all of the events that led up to this record-breaking elimination in “My Messy, Sweet Friend” as well who might win “Survivor 46.”

Maria Shrime Gonzalez immediately became the prime target once everyone returned from tribal council after her blindside of Tiffany Nicole Ervin, while Kenzie Petty was tearful that she was left out of the vote, but also extremely bitter that she would not receive credit for this as she claims the move was originally her idea. Maria had such a spotlight on her that her longtime ally Charlie Davis considered turning against her. Because Tiffany’s idol was confirmed public knowledge, everyone went to search for the re-hidden one the next morning. Venus ended up finding it, wisely continuing to search with others after the discovery – with Kenzie firmly convinced that Venus would not be the one to have found it – while declaring that “the worst thing would be if [she] went home with an idol in [her] pocket.”

But before we get to that, we had a reward/immunity challenge where another first happened. Maria edged out Venus to win a very close challenge, giving her immunity and the option to pick two other people for the pizza reward. While her first choice was quickly Ben Katzman, she had a harder time picking between Venus, Q Burdette and Liz Wilcox as her second. She made each of them state their case, with Liz of course stating her lack of food intake due to her allergies and also not having been on a reward, as evidenced by her exploding meltdown last week when Q didn’t pick her. Twisting the knife even further, Maria made the error of telling Q and Liz to play rock-paper-scissors, where Q won to join her and Ben on reward, making her look especially bad since she opened with wanting to pick “who [was] physically falling apart.”

Even though Liz did not go for round two with Maria the way she did with Q last week, she had plenty to say at camp, launching into a soliloquy that ended with her concluding that her multiple allergies are somehow attributed to suppressing her emotions and not truly expressing herself. But on a social level, Maria taking Q on reward and the way she did it, did not sit well with anybody else as no one respected his game, to the point where everyone not on reward wanted to vote him out. But Maria proposed voting out Venus, who was another liability in the game. Despite Charlie toying with the idea of working with Kenzie and Venus, he was wary of the latter after she hinted to him about having “something up [her] sleeve” without telling him about her idol, giving him pause. Venus also considered not playing her idol as she wanted to rely on her “social game” to get her further instead, despite that aspect not doing her any favors in the past.

At tribal council, Jeff Probst brought another snack (licorice) with him to munch on, as Venus and Q went at it. She also took shots at Maria for the reward challenge – along with Liz elongating her melodramatic groaning – claiming that if the roles were reversed, she would possibly take either of them, with everyone (including the jury) not believing that for a second. But Venus thought the plan to take out Q would work as she did not play her idol to her detriment and was blindsided by a vote of 5-1-1, with Ben oddly voting for Kenzie.

We are now in the Final 6, and according to the “Next Time on ‘Survivor’” teaser, it is setting up to be another blindside with Kenzie still vying for Q, Charlie realizing he needs to get rid of Maria, and Maria getting emotional. As it stands, Maria is now in the prime position to win the game as she is arguably the only cast member left who has made a significant move, but many people are realizing that so the question is will she make it to the Final Three? As for the rest, the clock is ticking as they all have yet to take any kind of solid, visible control in this game, and are mostly playing with their emotions rather than strategy, wanting Q out (who has gotten votes at the last three tribal councils). At the same time, realistically he is not likely a threat to win (unless you’re Kenzie), so it will be interesting to see what moves are made with only six days left to go. And there is still the possibility of another idol lurking around now that Venus left with hers, which can last be played at the Final 5; will it claim another victim?

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