Survivor is one of the best reality TV shows of all time, and is a groundbreaking series that has influenced countless competition series that followed. Survivor 50 will premiere in late February on CBS and streaming with a Paramount+ subscription, and will feature a group of returning players. Host Jeff Probst recently revealed one contestant who was "somebody one who got away", and I'm honestly so bummed they didn't get to play on the forthcoming season.
The cast of Survivor 50 is pretty stacked, including both legacy players and some standouts from the New Era. While fans wonder how much money Survivor contestants make, I'm more interested in the contestant who were asked to return. In a conversation with THR, Probst named one such fan-favorite, saying:
Somebody who got away who we really wanted was Amanda [Kimmel]. It was a scheduling thing. At first she was all in. Then when we told her the dates, she started not being as certain because she has a family now. Then a few people who I won’t name said, 'We don’t want to do it anymore.' So, we feel good. The only part of it that was unsettling for me is that we couldn’t say yes to everybody we wanted to and to everybody who wanted to do it. We just couldn’t.
Well, my FOMO is through the roof. Amanda Kimmel is in many of the best Survivor seasons, including Micronesia and Heroes vs. Villains. The latter was her third time playing, and she's been noticeably missing from the franchise since it aired back in 2010. Plenty of fans, including myself, were hoping that the 50th season would bring her back into the fold, and it turns out that it very nearly happened. Talk about a bummer.
Amanda Kimmel is one of the most successful non-winners in Survivor history. She made it to Final Tribal in both China and Micronesia, and also made it pretty deep into Heroes vs Villains. Overall she spent a whopping 108 days before getting her torch snuffed out for the first time on Day 30 of the show's beloved 20th Season.
Because she was on such iconic seasons, Kimmel remains a fan-favorite player for Survivor fans. She proved herself as a strong physical competitor with a keen strategic mind. Who can forget her manipulating the cast of Micronesia that she was going home, only to whip out an Immunity Idol that not even the audience knew she had?
It sounds like Amanda was originally down to play Survivor 50, but logistics about leaving her family held her back from her long-awaited return to the series. While this is a serious bummer, I'm hoping it's a sign that we could get her competing in Fiji for another returning player season. Fingers crossed.
Survivor 50 will premiere on February 25th on CBS as part of the 2026 TV schedule. Let's just hope that Amanda Kimmel returns to our TVs sometime in the future.
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