During the Survivor 2017 premiere we saw a new twist to the game when Ryan Ulrich discovered the “Immunity Super Idol” but by the end of the night its chance for drama had fallen flat.
Ryan, a member of the Hustlers tribe, discovered the pouch laying around on the boat deck during the chaos of grab-and-swim. When he was settled in to camp he stepped away and read the instructions:
“You have found an Immunity Super Idol. The Idol can be played after the votes have been read and will save whoever you play it for. This gives you immense power to influence the game. It comes with a twist. This Idol is only good at the first Tribal Council. If your tribe wins immunity that means you will not go to the first Tribal Council. In this case, you must send it to somebody on the losing tribe so they can use it at Tribal Council. The recipient will not know who sent it.”
The Hustlers ended up coming in second at the Survivor Immunity Challenge so Ryan was forced to hand off the power. He sent it to Chrissy who discovered it in her bag just ahead of Tribal Council. Now we can’t tell from the edit, but it’s possible that she didn’t know anything about the Idol until it was too late to do some planning and apply a little strategy to work it to her advantage.
Chrissy was excited to realize she had a huge advantage over the Tribal Council votes, but when things were revealed as 5-1 against Katrina over Ashley the Idol slipped in to oblivion as Chrissy passed on her chance to put it in to play. That means the Super Idol has expired and will not be part of Survivor 2017 unless an additional instance is tossed in to the game later this season.
As for how the Idol would have worked, per Ryan’s reading, it was a regular Idol in how it canceled out votes, but it’s “Super” power allowed it to be used after the votes so it could be tailored to fit its need. Chrissy could have waited to see which castaway was being targeted and then saved that one knowing who would go home instead. Huge power.
In this particular situation, if Chrissy had used the Super Idol to save Katrina then Ashley would have been voted off Survivor. Only Katrina’s vote against Ashley would have counted with the other five being canceled out. It didn’t work out that way though.
Considering Chrissy voted against Katrina it wasn’t surprising to see her pass on then saving Katrina. But why didn’t Chrissy decide to go to Katrina, tell her to vote against one of the big guys, and then with their two votes combined cancel out the other Katrina votes and send the bigger threat out? Well who knows. Maybe Chrissy wants to make sure she’s next to go as the new, proud titleholder of “lowest on the totem pole.” Then again, getting out one of the big guys would have just weakened the overall tribe and could have made it more likely for the Heroes to be back in the losing spot again next week.
What do you think of the Survivor Immunity Super Idol? Should Chrissy have put the Idol in play? Should Ryan have sent it to another castaway instead? Share your thoughts below.
