Survivor 50 Just Started Filming, And Fans Are Already Arguing About The First Boot

There’s always some light speculation and predictions based on promo materials from really hardcore fans before new seasons of Survivor, but for the most part, a majority of viewers don’t really start guessing how it might play out until a few episodes have aired. That’s not the case with returning seasons, and it’s especially not the case with milestone returning seasons.

Social media didn’t really work in the same way when Heroes Vs Villains came out, but there was plenty of speculation ahead of Winners at War. Not surprisingly, there is plenty of speculation about Survivor 50, and right now, it’s centered around who is most likely to get booted first.

Every player on the upcoming cast has at least made the merge before (provided there’s not any weirdness with Season 49); so, there’s not really any slam dunk obvious candidates to go first. If you read enough posts and listen to enough speculative podcasts, however, there are some choices that seem to be coming up a lot more often than others. For the most part, it’s less about the individual players themselves and more about certain groups of players that are likely to struggle.

The first of those groups is the former winners. For a long time, many fans assumed there wouldn’t be any former winners in the cast. Season 40 was entirely dedicated to winners, and since it seemed obvious Jeff Probst and company wanted to bring in a lot of non-winners for 50, most of us assumed they just wouldn’t do any winners at all. It turns out that’s not the case.

The show bizarrely decided to include two recent winners in Kyle and Dee but not any of the OG legends. I already complained about that in my response to the cast, mostly because it’s going to make them obvious targets. It the show wanted to bring in winners, they should have given us an entire tribe of winners or, at minimum, two winners on every tribe.

Not surprisingly, many people are picking Dee and Kyle as the most likely boots under this post on social asking fans for their first exit predictions. They’ve also been a recurring topic on a lot of the Season 50 preview podcasts. The Survivor Specialists talked extensively in their video analyzing each player’s winner chances about Kyle and Dee and put both in the longshots category.

The other most popular group speculated for the first boot has been the Season 49 players we don’t know yet. It’s not a surprise fans would be less invested in players they’ve never seen before, but there’s also a strong likelihood the same thing could be said for the other players. There are two very practical reasons for that.

First, Survivor is a small community where a lot of players on different seasons have met and attended events together. Many of them have gone on to become legit friends in real life. It’s not always the connections you’d expect either. For example, Charlie recently introduced his Season 50 co-star Coach at a music event because they’re both buddies with fellow Survivor player Ben Katzman. There are a ton of random connections like that in addition to the more obvious ones for players who have already been on the same seasons.

Second, Survivor players are always apprehensive about players they’ve never seen play before. Everyone on the beach knows Cirie and has a sense of how she plays the game, having watched her so many times, but no one knows anything about Rizz God. When Heroes vs Villains was filmed, as an example, no one had seen Russell Hantz play Survivor before, and they likely would have treated him differently if they had. I don’t think modern players will make that same mistake.

Who ends up going first is always the byproduct of a bunch of different factors, and this season that’s going to be especially true. Given the huge number of players and the likelihood that we’re going to get the modern number of days, we’re probably going to get only one tribe immune after each pre-merge immunity challenge. That means, unless there’s a change in format for Survivor 50, a ton of players are going to go home very quickly before the merge. Expect at least a few of the people in these categories to be among them, though I expect at least one will surprise us and make a deep run.