Survivor: Edge of Extinction episode 9 review: It’s blindside time
What surprised us is that following this, it seemed like all of the targets were placed firmly on Aurora. She was in trouble. BIG trouble. Wardog was trying to forge a six-person alliance of himself, Kelley, Lauren, Julie, Ron, and Gavin, and she was the early and obvious target.
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When we got to the first immunity challenge tonight, it was one of those classic “how badly do you want it?” challenges where people don’t have to compete — they can eat instead. Lauren, Victoria, Kelley, and Ron decided to eat a mountain of pizza. Aurora actually won! This was her chance to move forward in the game and for David, he manages to almost win yet another immunity. He’s Mr. So Close and Yet So Far for this season.
After the immunity, David had to scramble: He realized that he was on the bottom, but the challenge was trying to figure out a way to actually climb back on top. He formed his own alliance with Victoria, Aurora, and Devens, but they needed two people. This is where Julie and Ron came into play. They were the two people completely in control. Also, it seemed fairly clear that Wardog was in danger in Tribal Council — would Lauren or Kelley use an immunity idol on him?
In the end, that didn’t happen and David was voted out. This was a bummer — we feel like he played a legitimately good game throughout and he just got on the wrong side of the numbers and couldn’t recover from it.
The second vote-out cycle
We begin here with David on the Edge of Extinction, where he wastes very little time finding his first advantage — a way to help someone get immunity. We think he made it out to be a tad more important than it really is, but what else can you do in his situation? You gotta be able to cling to something, even if it feels small and reasonably insignificant.
As it turns out, though, this advantage was valuable. Devens ended up winning thanks to that, and this caused Wardog to start to pivot in terms of his thinking. He wanted to target Kelley and felt was the time was right for it. The problem was that he also needed Ron, which is why he went to him with an argument. Then, we also saw Aurora give Ron an extra vote. Why do that when you can play it and try to tie the vote, even without Ron?
Because Aurora gave Ron the advantage, she was totally at his mercy … and he seemed to act at Tribal Council as though he was firmly in the six. If we were Ron, Wardog flipping is a good reason to actually stay with Kelley since you could use that against him later on in the game and get him out. But, he got rid of Kelley! The big move was made, and he really does deserve all of the credit for it.
CarterMatt Verdict
Let’s give a round of applause to this band of newbies, who are clearly all out to actually win this game! Getting rid of both of the returnees tonight was pretty spectacular, especially someone like Kelley who had an idol in her pocket. We don’t blame her for not playing it; she had no reason to suspect anything. This was just great gameplay on the part of Ron and also Wardog to make this happen.
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