James Mathison, King George Mladenov, Queen Hayley Leake and Survivor stats expert Shannon Guess took a deep dive into all the blindsides, blunders and family dramas from the last week of Australian Survivor, but one trend stuck out to the gang: women are being voted out of both tribes.
While Jordie plotted the major blindside of Queen Sandra he noted that he was happy to keep the tribe ‘blue strong, male strong’, referring to his original Blue alliance having reunited on the Red tribe after the swap.
But the Australian Survivor: Talking Tribal team were divided as to this idea that the tribe could be voting women out to keep stronger men in the game until merge.
Reflecting on the decision for the tribe to side with cousins Jordan and Josh rather than Amy’s plan to blindside Jordan, Hayley said, “I don’t think it was a bad decision. I know that they’re two strong guys, but I would expect that there are some other strong people there that are looking at keeping a bunch of shields around.”
Agreeing, Shannon pointed out that perhaps, following the Tribe Swap, the biggest threats to the game just happened to be women, and once some of the men noticed the trend they got on board as a means to protect their own game.
“Sometimes you’d only have to create the trend to see this trend starting without you, and then jumping onto it,” Shannon added. “So, if you are a guy and see all the girls going and you think alright, well then if that’s the trend I’m going to be safe. You might just jump onto it without it being your intention.”
Hayley also wondered if, after last season which saw King George as the last man standing, perhaps the men of this season wanted to make sure that, post-merge, the game was stacked with strong men.
“If I’m a strong guy and I’m entering this game I’m trying to think, when am I going to be a target,” Hayley added. “And the answer is; once you get to merge, individual challenges, you’re a target. So how do I mitigate that? I make sure there’s heaps of other strong men around so they can’t just pick me off.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if that is a bit of the mentality happening out there, to keep the strength around, not so that you win challenges, but so that you’re not the main, obvious targets come merge.”
George also added, “This is where you needed a King George to make the weak dominate from the outset.”
Will the boys turn on each other, or will merge become a boys’ club? We can’t wait to see how this turns out.
Check out the full episode of Australian Survivor: Talking Tribal above which covers the whole week, plus King George catches up with fellow royal Queen Sandra to talk about her iconic return to the game.
