We’re going to get more Survivor seasons with returning players in the near future, but exactly what the themes will be are a matter of hot speculation. Some fans want to see Second Chances, where viewers can vote for their favorite players who have only appeared once. Some fans want to see another round of Blood vs Water, where legends compete with a family member, and some fans, including former winner Tina Wesson, want to see First Boots.
The basic idea is simple. It’s Winners At War, except the exact opposite. It would be a season featuring only players who were voted out first. It’s something Survivor fans (and Amazing Race fans) have wanted for awhile, and during an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Tina became maybe the most prominent member of the community to ask for it in an interview. Here’s a portion of her quote…
I feel like we all have this desire to play the game, right? And we go through all the hoops that we have to do to get on the show. And the people who are first off, my heart breaks for them, because it’s not fair. I’m still all about fair, and I just want to see a season where they all get a chance to come back and really play the game.
Tina, of course, knows the unique heartbreak of being voted off first. She famously won Survivor: Australian Outback, the most watched season in the show's history, but during her return appearance on All-Stars, she was voted off first, as all of the former winners were targeted early. She later returned a third time and made a really deep run on Blood vs Water, but clearly, the sting of that one early boot still lingers.
Now, as a Survivor superfan who consumes a lot of interviews with Jeff Probst, I need to pour some cold water on this but also offer a little hope. The longtime host has repeatedly said he only likes casting players who he thinks can actually win Survivor, and while some first boots got unlucky, a lot of them were voted off because they were not good Survivor players. I have a hard time believing Probst and the producers would want to bring back 20 or so of them. It’s too limited of a pool to choose from.
That being said, what I think Survivor might actually do is a season of players who were eliminated during the pre-merge phase of the game. Instead of having 49 former players to choose from (Francesca was voted out first on two seasons), that would give producers the option of picking a half dozen or so players from every season. That larger pool would include a ton of players who had high upside but didn’t make the merge for whatever reason.
We still don’t know exactly when the next Survivor all-returnee season is coming, but most hardcore fans are speculating that it’ll be 54. The ratings for 50, which featured an all-star cast, were the highest in years. 51 and 52 just finished shooting and reportedly include new players; so, the most likely scenario is the returnee season happens in that next 53 and 54 cycle. I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if Survivor actually works on casting two returnee seasons with different themes simultaneously; so, maybe we get Blood vs Water on 54 and my preferred choice Heroes vs Villains 2 on 56 or something.
I do think there’s a legitimate chance we could see a returnee season of all pre-merge players though; so, if you’re into that, keep your fingers crossed. It would be a great way to give us something that feels new, which is the apparently goal of the so-called Open Era, which launches with 51 this fall.
