* “Survivor 51” spoilers ahead! *
After Jeff Probst opened up about four women in a row being voted off of “Survivor 51” — and how that might impact what we can expect from the competition in the future — he’s also addressed the recent (and totally game-changing) tribe swap and why it’s important to know that one specific move wasn’t “manipulated.”
The Tribe Swap Left a Particular Player ‘Immediately Vulnerable’
We may only be four episodes into this season of “Survivor,” but there’s already been quite a bit of unanticipated action and surprising shakeups made by both the players and those pulling certain strings behind the scenes. That includes the fact that a tribe swap seriously shook things up.
“Two tribes was nice while it lasted,” TV Insider noted before explaining that “[a]fter starting the season in old-school style with two big tribes, making for tribal councils that were much harder to dominate, Survivor 51 Episode 4 featured a tribe swab that split the players into three teams.”
This resulted in two groups having six players in their tribe while the third only had five due to the fact that Rob Antonson had left on his own accord during Episode 3. In the end, it was the smaller tribe that found themselves at tribal council, and Jenna Doore was ultimately voted out.
“We’ve seen people get totally ‘swap-screwed’ on Survivor before, where they were sitting pretty in a tribe only to be swapped into a new tribe that left them immediately vulnerable,” Entertainment Weekly mentioned. However, when it comes to Jenna’s particular situation, EW adds that she “may be the most swap-screwed Survivor player of all time outside of Aaron on ‘Survivor: China.'”
‘Nothing Is Being Manipulated’
Following Episode 4, Probst took to Instagram to share his “Field Notes” about what viewers had seen and what went on behind the scenes when it came to the tribe swap that left the wedding photographer on the chopping block.
“EVERYBODY DROP YOUR BUFFS! The decision to switch from two tribes to three has to be made months in advance of actually shooting because our challenge builds take several weeks of construction and the construction teams need to know if they’re building two lanes or three,” the host explained.
He also touched on the fact that it’s not just the players who are affected by the swap, telling fans, “Tribe switches provoke their own measure of anxiety within the producer ranks because we have no idea where the game will be when a switch is scheduled nor how the game will turn as a result. It’s our own exhilarating state of ‘uncertainty’ and we live for it!”
Probst then offered the perfect example of the unpredictable nature of the game, admitting, “Rob’s quit from last week also impacted the switch. When we put this switch on the schedule, we anticipated even numbers on all tribes. But when Rob left, he reduced the numbers by one.”
“The reason it was important to show that last purple buff still in the bag was to show the players it was a completely random draw,” he wrote. “It may seem like a tiny moment but it reminds players nothing is being manipulated.”
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Jeff Probst Reveals the Truth Behind the Tribe Swap and Why One Key Move Wasn’t ‘Manipulated’