The forty-sixth season of the CBS reality series Survivor aired with a two-hour premiere on Wednesday, February 28, 2024. For the first time, excerpts from contestants’ audition videos were used in the promotion videos. These clips were intriguing as, in the words of Entertainment Weekly, they added “killer guitar solos, brutal workout routines, [and] random Survivor slot machines” to the traditional survival-based clips taken from episodes of the show. This set the precedent for the continuation of the theme of focusing on the players’ growth as human beings in addition to their strategy and survival in the game that the new ninety-minute episodes allow for. “The cast of season 46 is a really unusual collection of smart, funny, eclectic humans,” explained Jeff Probst, the host of Survivor, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.
This season’s eighteen castaways arrived on the shores of Fiji in downcast weather. The foreboding nature of the sky was the perfect backdrop for a threatening speech from host Jeff Probst. Rather than giving out platitudes, Jeff stated the bitter truth: although all of the castaways believed at this moment that they had the potential to win, there would be at least one among them who, no matter what they did, would not emerge victorious because their fellow tribe members simply wouldn’t like them enough. This idea refers to the format in which a winner of the season will be selected: once three players remain, the jury, made up of castaways voted out after the Merge, will vote on who they think best deserves the $1,000,000 prize and the title of Sole Survivor.
Keeping in tradition with recent seasons, the castaways were divided into three tribes of six members each. The tribe that emerged victorious from the Marooning Challenge – which, uniquely, took place on land rather than in water this season – were given their flint and machete, while the other two tribes were left empty-handed. Like all of the seasons in the “new era” – which follows and includes Survivor 41 – they had to complete the “Sweat or Savvy” challenge to obtain these basic supplies. This season, however, saw yet another variation of the twist: the losing tribes had no choice in which theme they would compete in as it would be delegated to them by the winning tribe.
The premiere also included the first Journey of the season, where one castaway from each tribe had to complete an unknown task at a distant location in order to either receive an advantage or lose their vote at the next Tribal Council. The first Journey of Survivor 46, however, was a bit different from those of prior seasons in that it was much less secretive. Rather than separating to different parts of the island to complete the challenge, the three castaways were forced to participate together. Each castaway was required to select one card from a deck of three. The card could either have an illustration of a torch, skull, or vote. Whoever selected the torch card had to guess which castaway had the illustration of the vote. What seemed to be a relatively simple game soon turned into a complex battle of intimidation and ability to lie that required castaways to consider both their short- and long-term games: if the castaway holding the skull card lied successfully, they would obtain an extra vote, but the other castaways might convey their dangerous skill to the rest of their tribes, setting up an easy target on their back for a first post-Merge boot.
More twists will undoubtedly occur in the episodes to come and force the castaways to adapt to new challenges in order to make sure they don’t become the unfortunate castaway Probst described at the beginning of the premiere. To follow the drama, tune in to CBS each Wednesday for a new ninety-minute episode.