Not only does fleshing out the players like this make them more sympathetic to the audience (because it’s actually fun to watch likeable people play this game and win), but it also allows viewers to see how tight-knit the tribe itself is. It’s easy to forget that the people in this game often grow to care about each other - despite all of the scheming - because they’re spending a month in isolation together. With Season 41, it’s clear how these players have bonded and have relationships with each other, but it doesn’t take away from the drama because now the audience is much more drawn into these personal relationships that feel really real.
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The episode opens with a continuation of the discussions from last week’s episode about race and the way that racial and personal issues can bleed into the game. Deshawn has conversations with multiple other players about how he opened up about his struggle between wanting to represent his community and also play the game for what it is. As he says, “race comes up in every facet of life”, and it’s not just something that can be swept under the rug, even in Survivor. The show has really made a conscious effort this season to include a lot of these discussions because they’re important conversations to have, but also because they’re just as important to the game as Immunity Challenges or strategizing are. These moral dilemmas are affecting the players’ games just as much as anything else, and it’s important to showcase that.
One of the main conflicts in this episode is that Danny and Deshawn believe that the opposing alliance should have voted off Ricard instead of Liana, because Ricard is more of a threat to win. They spend a lot of this episode trying to convice the others of this, and while the other players agree that Ricard is a threat, Xander wants to keep Ricard around as a shield, and Erika votes with him because she has more trust with that alliance than with Danny or Deshawn. Deshawn has a chat with Erika where he intentionally tries to get her to say that she doesn’t want to go to the end with Heather because he wants to be able to use that against her at some point later (though whether or not his plan works out remains to be seen).
Unfortunately for everyone, Ricard wins Immunity once again and suddenly the plans have to change. Danny and Deshawn are aware that the vote tonight is going to come down to one of them, and they both try to plead their cases. Deshawn pitched a final three alliance with Xander and Erika earlier in the episode and is hoping that group will come through for him, while Danny hopes that the other players will assume he has an idol and that will protect him from the vote. Xander admits that not voting out Ricard may have been a mistake because he keeps winning immunity, but clearly Xander’s plan to keep him around as a shield is working because Xander’s name doesn’t get thrown out as a possible threat once this episode.
At Tribal Council, Danny and Deshawn both try to use this final moment (for one of them) as a chance to remind everyone that Ricard is someone to watch out for. Deshawn even tries to spread a little more chaos by dropping the “truth bomb” about what Erika said about Heather on the group, but it only seems to backfire and make him seem less trustworthy to everyone, especially Erika, who was truly considering taking him to the final three. After an initial split vote (which was likely just in case Danny did have an idol), Danny ends up being voted out to the slight surprise of both him and Deshawn, sending yet another member of that initial Merge all-Black alliance to the Jury.
Deshawn got a lot of screentime this episode and has gotten a lot of it over the whole season, which could be a possible clue to a winner’s edit. However, this episode also drove home how emotional his game is, which is something that Ricard has pointed out before. Deshawn tends to make very reactionary moves (such as the “truth bomb” that he dropped at this week’s tribal) without thinking of the repercussions that those moves will bring. It will be really interesting to see if he can turn his strategy around in any way and if his social game and sheer likeability will be able to take him to the end, or if it will end up being his downfall.
Truly any of these players could win at this point (with the exception of poor Heather, who until recently has been so absent from the edit that it was easy to forget that she was even on the island at all), and it would feel like they deserved it, which is something that’s rare for a Survivor season. Usually, there are only one or two players that the audience wants to see walk away with the prize, but this season has given viewers a whole host of interesting characters and very deserving players. Next week’s finale episode is bound to be epic, and no matter what, it’s almost guaranteed that a player who played a very hard game will be crowned the Sole Survivor of Season 41.
MORE: Survivor: Season 41 Episode 11 Review
