It wouldn’t be a season of Survivor if fans weren’t on social media talking about the edit . Ahead of the finale, there’s always some of the most hardcore amongst us pointing to confessional counts or narrative structures to explain why they’ve deduced a particular contestant is clearly going to win. This time, however, things feel a little bit different as thousands of fans are pointing to the finale preview and wondering if the show accidentally gave a little too much away.
We’re going to talk really explicitly about what some fans think the preview shows; so, if you want to go into the finale without any of this noise, then go ahead and bail on the article. It may contain spoilers. It may not contain spoilers. We just don’t know, and if you’re the type of person who doesn’t want that running through your head, you’re not gonna want to read any further.
Good? Now that we’re all here, let’s talk about this much-discussed preview. More specifically, let’s talk about two things the preview seems to show. The first and most obvious one is Kamilla with the Immunity Necklace. It’s not even hidden or in the background somewhere. The preview literally gives us a shot of her talking into the camera while wearing the necklace. The second is far less obvious and is a shot of the jury walking into tribal council, and if you squint closely, it looks like Mitch is walking in with the jury. You can check out the preview in question below, which actually contains a spoiler warning from the YouTube account that put it up…
Many Survivor fans are convinced both of these spoilers are exactly as they seem, and they have spread very widely amongst the fanbase. There are loads of tweets talking about them, one of which has more than a thousand likes . There are Reddit threads covering the topic , filled with comments from fans who believe the spoilers, and there are plenty of articles going around about the seemingly unfortunate editing mistake.
But does that mean they’re for sure true? Not necessarily. Let’s start with the part about Kamilla winning the Immunity Idol. She won the necklace earlier in the season; so, there is certainly a possibility this footage was recorded during a confessional following that victory. It also seems ridiculous to think the editors would so brazenly give away a major plot development. It would be like putting the killer with obvious blood on his hands in the trailer of a horror movie. It’s just so aggressively in your face that I don’t know if I can believe it.
But why would they slap in footage from something that happened much earlier in the season into this week’s preview? That seems like a weird editing choice, and while the quote she’s saying is interesting, it’s not so groundbreaking that it would make sense to include a long time after she said it. So, that makes me think this could legitimately be a spoiler.
Now, the second possible spoiler is one that makes more sense to me. There’s not a clear shot of Mitch walking with the jury into tribal council. There’s a brief flash where you can kinda sorta see Mitch in the background walking in with the rest of the jurors. That feels like the sort of thing an editor easily could have missed, and given Mitch has basically been at the bottom of the alliance since the beginning, he’s a likely candidate to be the victim of some kind of compromise vote. So, I’m not saying he’s for sure going home in fifth place, but I’m very willing to buy that spoiler.
Regardless, I don’t really get what the editors are doing here. Survivor is one of the most obsessed about shows on television. Fans always pour over these upcoming previews to try and gather information. The show knows that by this point. So, either they threw this together at the last minute and didn’t vet it properly or the editors are intentionally trying to confuse fans with a deceptive edit, though exactly why they would do that is unclear.
I don’t suspect we’ll have a definitive answer on what’s true and what’s not until the finale airs tonight on CBS. Survivor 48 will reach its conclusion during a special extended episode tonight, and it’ll be interesting to see what the reaction is. Fans have been far more negative about this season than any we’ve gotten in recent memory . In fact, you could probably argue that the castaways’ collective unwillingness to turn on Joe has been the most negatively received plot point since the infamous Hourglass Twist everyone hated .
Fortunately, regardless of what happens and whether or not these spoilers wind up being true, fans are still very fired up for Season 50. The show is bringing back all returning players , and fans (and former players themselves ) have been in overdrive speculating about which of their favorites are going to come back. We’ll get that reveal later this month, along with the first tease for Survivor 49.
