Survivor 47 premiere: Jeff Probst on Jon Lovett elimination

We’ll be honest here in saying that going into Survivor 47, we never expected Jon Lovett to be the eventual winner. After all, typically people with built-in popularity on this show don’t make it to the end, with the biggest exception here being Mike White.

(For the record, Mike really should have won that season when you consider how much trouble he was in during the early stages.)

Now that we’ve said all of this, we certainly did not expect the former speechwriter turned podcast host to be out first! He also did not necessarily make too many mistakes; he was just deemed as a social threat by his tribe, who also decided that there was reason to keep Andy for his physical prowess alone (even if he was also highly combustible).

So what did host / executive producer Jeff Probst think about losing one of the best narrators and personalities so early? Speaking on his On Fire podcast (per Entertainment Weekly), he made it pretty clear what happened:

“In hindsight, Jon is obviously a very bright guy, and he’s a tremendous storyteller. And so it really should never be a surprise that people like Sam might pick up on this idea and decide, ‘You know what? Andy could actually be more valuable because of what happened, and Jon will be a massive threat because of who he is. So maybe the move right now in episode 1 is to take out somebody we all believe could win this game.’ And I think that’s what they did.”

Jon was a good sport about being voted out on the island, and we also do think that it’s pretty funny that a guy who absolutely didn’t need to do this show went through all of the casting hurdles only to be taken out within a dysfunctional tribe.

Related – Be sure to get more thoughts on the next Survivor 47 episode

Are you still shocked by Jon Lovett being eliminated on the Survivor 47 premiere?

Share right now in the attached comments! Once you do just that, remember to come back — there are more updates ahead.