'What the hell, guys?': An oral history of Survivor's best new-era episode

Elation. Confusion. And, finally, devastation.

Those were just a few of the stark emotions on vivid display when Survivor 45 aired its eighth episode (“Following a Dead Horse to Water”) on Nov. 15, 2023 on CBS. Little did viewers know when they settled onto their couches that Wednesday evening that they were about to bear witness to one of the rawest scenes in franchise history. And so much more.

The installment began with the much-anticipated return of the Survivor auction — a fan-favorite event that had not been staged in 15 seasons, since 2015’s Survivor: Worlds Apart. Only now, the auction had been completely rejiggered, with several twists to ratchet up both the tension and the fun. And that was just a precursor to the madness still to come — madness that included host Jeff Probst at one point stabbing a bag of rice with a giant knife. That stabbing led to an epic endurance duel between the season’s two oldest players that completely changed the trajectory of the game, which in turn led to a devious plot back at camp to upend everything.

When all was said and done, one player would be absolutely shell-shocked into devastated disbelief, shuffling out of Tribal Council in a half-zombified state while others wrestled with the emotional consequences of their actions. This is the story of the best episode of Survivor’s new era, as told by the people who lived through it. This is the story of “What the hell, guys?”

Section I: The mad scramble for cash

Tension had been building ever since the merge pitted five original Reba tribe members (Dee Valladares, Julie Alley, Austin Li Coon, Drew Basile, and Sifu Alsup) against five original Belo members (Kellie Nalbandian, Kendra McQuarrie, Katurah Topps, Bruce Perreault, and Jake O’Kane), with two Lulu players (Kaleb Gebrewold and Emily Flippen) in the middle.

The newly merged Dakuwaqa tribe was split into two groups on day 14 for a double Tribal Council. While Kellie and Kendra had tired of Bruce’s bossiness and were more than willing to vote out their ally (and Katurah’s nemesis), they worried about his hidden immunity idol with so few votes at play, so they joined Drew and Emily in taking out Sifu instead — hoping to eliminate Bruce with an idol in his pocket at the next vote when he was still comfortable. Meanwhile, at the second Tribal Council, Jake failed in his attempt to save Kaleb and take out Julie, angering her in the process.

With an unaware Bruce next on the hit list, and Julie still harboring a grudge, the players assembled on the beach early on the morning of day 15, and were confused when a boat approached the sandy shores. That confusion continued when people stepped off the boat and set up a table with bowls attached to it, including envelopes with each contestant’s name.

KATURAH TOPPS: When the table first came off the boat, I'm racking my brain going through all of my Survivor history and being like, “I've never seen a table with bowls stuck to it. This is sick.”

KENDRA McQUARRIE: They’re bringing out rattan furniture. We’re so nervous. I thought it was going to be a gross eating challenge.

AUSTIN LI COON: They came out with these trays, and the name tags looked like letters from home. We were like, “Already? There are so many of us left. But why are there plates and stuff? There's no food around!”

EMILY FLIPPEN: I had convinced my brain that we were going to be doing something horrible.

DREW BASILE: I remember being sure that this was a bad thing — like a Squid Game-type vibe. This very ominous table shows up, there's name tags — I was pretty sure that someone's getting eliminated somehow.

One of the women from the boat handed Kendra a parchment, which she then read to the tribe, containing those magic words: “The Survivor auction is back.”

KENDRA: They hand me the parchment and I'm a pretty quick reader, so I kind of read it over in my head before I read it out loud and I was like, “Oh my God, everyone's going to freak out.”

KATURAH: I was praying for the auction, and it just felt like 45 was the time to do it.

BRUCE PERREAULT: I absolutely loved watching the auction and I didn't care that people held out for the very last thing to try to get an advantage in the game. I was just excited that it was there, and now it was coming back, and it was on our season.

DEE VALLADARES: As soon as she read “Blast from the past,” it was such a surreal and exciting moment because we know that we just made history. Just hearing those words was indescribable.

EMILY: To hear that it was something positive for once, I was absolutely relieved.

KELLIE NALBANDIAN: Besides the “Get a Grip” pole challenge, if there was anything else I wanted to come back in a season of Survivor I was on, it was the auction.

JAKE O’KANE: I thought it was dead. I don't think Jeff or the show really wanted it anymore at that point for whatever reason. So when she said “The auction is back,” I was floored.

JULIE ALLEY: Jake had blindsided me with some votes at the previous Tribal, so I was still in a head space. I was excited about the distraction, but it was a lot to juggle, and my mind was not working at the best capacity. I knew this was a big moment, but I still had emotions going on at the same time going, “Boy, I hate Jake.”

Kendra read the instructions informing the players that their auction bidding money was stuffed into 40 bamboo tube containers hidden in the jungle, and the race was on to find and retrieve as many as they could, bringing back one at a time.

JEFF PROBST (host and showrunner): We all wanted the auction back, but we knew it needed a fresh take in order to work in the new era. So I sat down with a blank piece of paper and one simple question: How do we make the auction 2.0 dangerous and uncertain? It started with the money. Players would no longer just be given their auction money, they would have to earn it, just like everything else in the new era. So we hid various amounts of money in the jungle to ensure players would arrive at the auction with different amounts. This is a key and ultimately dangerous component to the way the auction ends.

MATT VAN WAGENEN (executive producer): The auction is a massive production that includes just about every department on the show from catering to marine to art to challenges… the list goes on. The hiding of the tubes is just one of the multitude of moving pieces that go into pulling it all off. What was really fun to see was not only how enthusiastic the contestants were, but also how excited the entire crew was. It felt like opening up a bottle of champagne that we’ve been sitting on for a decade!

JULIE: Kendra says, ‘GO!’ But some of the females were like, “I don't have a bra on. If CBS wants this to stay PG, they better give me some more time.”

KATURAH: I didn't have a bra on or my contacts in because it was early in the morning, so I'm like, “Wait, wait, wait! I can't have no bra and no contacts." I'm already at a disadvantage because I have to hold myself to run, so I made a little bit of a protest because I deserve to have the ability to see and be on an even playing field with this thing. So they paused it, let me put my contacts in, and then they were like, “Okay, ready? 3, 2, 1, GO!”

KENDRA: I didn't have shoes on. It was early in the morning. I was like, “Can we wait until everyone gets their shoes on?” Everyone's like, “No, Kendra, we can't wait until everyone gets their shoes on. We're all going to go.” And so I was like, “F---, I'm already behind!”

KELLIE: it was literally a mad dash out there. Everyone is crazy competitive on the show and we're all starving and want to win.

AUSTIN: We all started sprinting. We didn't know anything about it. We had no idea that the containers had different amounts of money, what they even looked like, where they'd be hidden. We just knew that there was some money around and we had to find it.

DREW: Honestly, the running for money was more fun than the auction.

EMILY: It was incredibly stressful. Everybody was so fast. I had no idea where this sudden speed came from, and I felt like I was barely keeping up. I didn't realize I was bad at finding these bamboo things in the woods until I realized how fast Dee was at it.

KELLIE: Dee was like a machine.

DEE: I didn't even have my shoes on, so I was actually barefoot. It didn't surprise me that I got the most money. One, because I love making money. And two, because I did not stop running. The only time I stopped running during the auction was to pull up my pants. We hadn't eaten and my pants were falling down.

PROBST: The scramble itself revealed more about the players, which is always a big intention with our ideas. Some players took it very seriously, others had fun with it. 

KELLIE: Of course, we’ve got Bruce sauntering around as I'm sprinting.

KATURAH: When I saw that Bruce was putting literally no effort into this, I couldn't help but be pleased. The game started, we were all running, and he was going very slow, sitting down on the ground looking for his shoes, then sitting down to put on his shoes. It took him 20 minutes to just put shoes on!

PROBST: Bruce made a grand gesture of not rushing as he laced up his shoes. I speculated that it was because he didn’t want to “lose” by not getting the most money, so instead he acted like he didn’t care either way.

KELLIE: Honestly, Bruce perplexes many of us at many moments, and this was one of them. I didn't understand. I was going back and forth and I'm like, “Bruce has no bamboo. What is he doing? I thought he would be into this!”

KATURAH: Even the worst of us have two, three of them, and Bruce has absolutely zero.

KENDRA: I remember seeing him at camp once, but I thought he was just taking a break or something.

DREW: I always felt like Bruce, for good or for bad, wanted to stand out. And so if everyone's young, he's older. If everyone's running, he's going to go slow. And if everyone's giving up in the challenges, he's going to muscle through. So everyone sprints off, and I felt like that was the mentality, where the contrarian there was like, “Oh, I'll take my time.” I think pretty quickly everyone was like, “This is a poor decision.”

JULIE: That guy is an enigma. but he also loves to go against the grain. So I feel like that was more what was going on.

AUSTIN: It kind of reminds me of this one time when I was four years old and I was taken to an Easter egg hunt with my parents. We were all lined up and there was a hundred kids and they count us down to go find the eggs. Within five seconds, I tripped and I fell. And then at that point, everyone was past me and I just started throwing a tantrum because I was like, “I'm not going to get the most eggs! I'm just going to not try. This is stupid. I don't want to do this.” So I ended up getting two eggs. Everyone else got eight. Bruce kind of reminded me of that.

DEE: Bruce was on the other side. Everyone was running to the left, so Bruce would run to the right, which may sound like a great tactic, but if you're seeing people grabbing a ton of bamboo to the left side of the jungle, maybe there's more bamboo in that side!

JAKE: I was just so perplexed. My honest thought was that he must have some kind of Beware Advantage where he has to take a dive on this and then he'll get some kind of an advantage. Because this was so out of character. I just didn't understand it at the time.

EMILY: I was just relieved that somebody was doing worse than I was.

BRUCE: When it comes to a reward challenge, that's when I broke my head open in season 44, so I had a little bit of a mental block of “I'm not burning extra calories, and I'm not going to potentially hurt myself when I have no idea what's going on.” In the back of my head, I'm like, “This is a reward challenge. I don't want to hurt myself on a reward challenge.” So I just looked at it like, “Okay, I'm not going to just go flying through the woods. I'm going to put my shoes on because I don't want to cut my foot open. Slow and steady wins the race.” I was playing the tortoise and the hare game, but I absolutely lost that, and I'm going to go down in Survivor history as a doofus. I was sitting there looking like Mister Rogers putting on his shoes.

KATURAH: I was like, “I don't know what consequence will come from this, but it's Survivor, and surely some consequence is going to come from you being really half-assed in your effort here.”

PROBST: He ultimately ended up with the least amount of money, and that single decision would play out later in a dramatic way and cost him his vote.

KELLIE: This is something that still haunts me, because Bruce not having his vote was one of the worst things to happen to me. I wish I knew I should have given him some of my bamboo.

Section II: Fish eyes, French fries, and lost votes — oh my!

Once everyone tallied their money up — Dee with the most at $900 and Bruce with the least at $80 (from just one tube) — they proceeded to the actual auction, where Probst explained the new rules. Not only would there be no advantages up for bid — meaning no need to save your money — but the host would pull a rock from a bag that told him — and only him — when the auction would end, somewhere between items six and 15. And the player with the most money left at the end of the auction would lose their vote at Tribal Council.

PROBST: The only reason we told the players there would not be an advantage in the auction was so that they could put all their focus on the new format of the auction. There were so many changes that we didn’t want to complicate things.

VAN WAGENEN: In previous auctions, some players saved everything to get a shot at an advantage. We didn’t want people missing out on the delicious —and sometimes disgusting — items waiting under Jeff’s table.

KELLIE: I'm happy about the no advantages, because otherwise everyone's just going to wait till the end and try to get the advantage. That’s not fun. Plus, I was so hungry and now I felt like I had unsolicited permission to just try to get food.

AUSTIN: When he says there are no advantages, as a player, that was music to all of our ears. It's like we can actually shut off our brains a bit and just try getting food and having fun and enjoying this auction. It was like, “I'm actually going to be able to eat without feeling super guilty.”

JAKE: The first thing going through your mind is, “Okay, no advantages. I can get food.” But then the other layer of it is losing your vote if you have the most money at the end. So the mentality is, “I got money here. I got to get rid of it.”

DEE: Right away, I'm like, “There's no way that I'm going to have any money left over. I am using up all of my money on anything. I don't even care if it's a disgusting item. The most important thing in the game right now is to have my vote.”

VAN WAGENEN: Part of the new era is asking the question, “Is it fun?” But it’s also asking, “Is it dangerous?" And the threat of losing your vote is extremely dangerous. Seemed like the perfect fit.

BRUCE: So we're facing Jeff, we're looking over his left shoulder where the board was with our money totals. And at first, I'm just like, “I am going to play the ultimate game of spectator sport right now due to my own fault.” I felt like I got a kick in the teeth. And then when he explained that the person with the most money at the end loses their vote, I'm like, “Well, that's not going to happen to me! At least I'm going to be able to leave here with my vote intact!"

PROBST: Bruce began the auction with the least amount of money, so he was pretty confident that at least he wouldn’t lose his vote. But with each item, the game shifts and someone else is the one in danger, so you are never safe for very long. 

The first item that was offered was a bowl of pretzels and a mug of beer.

DEE: Something that wasn't shown in the auction was that we had decided as a tribe, “Hey, let's let Emily and Kellie eat,” because they really hadn't gone on any rewards. They hadn't eaten and they were starving.

KELLIE: Everybody was like, “Kellie and Emily get first dibs. They need to eat.”

EMILY: We had this agreement from everybody going into the auction that they would not bid against Kellie nor I. But then when you added this element of nobody wanted money left over, it was like “Oh, crap. Are we going to be nice and let somebody eat like we all agreed to, or are we going to bid aggressively and give up our money?”

KENDRA: Taking the information and knowing that I'm in the middle-to-bottom tier, that I'm probably not going to be able to out-buy many more people, I knew that I had to spend my money. I was going to go all in on the first one. I didn't care what it was, I knew I just needed to spend my money to keep my vote.

EMILY: I remember thinking, “I'm going to bid all my money on the first thing I see.” But to be completely honest, nobody wanted the pretzels and beer. We were so dehydrated out there, I hate beer, and nobody wanted the pretzels. And Kendra just jumped right on it. Kellie and I kind of looked at each other and we're both like, “I guess we're waiting.”

JULIE: Emily had not eaten, Kellie had not eaten. It felt like this unanimous consensus of, “These girls have to eat.” So the fact that Kendra went first, I was like, “What are you doing?” Kendra did it so fast. I was like, “Oh, the guts on her.” So she gets to sit there, blow her money, and drink beer and eat pretzels. Well done, Kendra.

DEE: I actually had put in some money for the beer and the pretzels, but Kendra looks back at me, pierces me with her eyes, and she tells me, “My dad and I love drinking beer and watching Survivor.” And I'm like, “Damn, I got to give this to her.”

After Kendra spent $360 on the beer and pretzels, next up was a plate of French fries and a soda, followed by a covered item that turned out to be a glass of wine and a charcuterie board.

KELLIE: There was an unaired thing that got cut. When the French fries came up, I started bidding money, and me and Emily are going back and forth. Emily was about to hit her cap and I felt bad. So Jeff was like, “Well, you could draw a rock for it.” And so me and Emily both put up $500. It was the second item, and I was not firing on my full cylinders and was like, “I have more money, I'll be fine.” We went up there and drew rocks and I picked the green rock, so I got to eat the French fries. Obviously, a bad decision on my part not to spend all my money, but this was the first time anyone had done this type of auction, and I was more focused on food at that point than I probably should have been.

EMILY: I was convinced the covered item that came after the French fries was going to be something bad, but I needed to eat something. I had a lot of guilt though because Katurah had more money than me and could have outbid me, so I turned to her and said, “I need to eat” in that raspy voice of mine. I really guilted her into not bidding against me.

KATURAH: Oh, I was pissed. I did not want to back out. I was bidding hard because I knew we were getting into the good items. It turned out to be that charcuterie board and the way into my heart is to bring me a charcuterie board with some cold, dry, white wine. It had Katurah written all over it, and I had more money than Emily and I knew I could have gotten it. But then she looked at me and was giving me those eyes and I was like… dammit.

EMILY: I don't know what came over me with the dancing, and I don't know why it was so shocking to Jeff. I'm very expressive in my everyday life, so when I saw the wine, I saw the cheese, I just couldn't help myself. It tasted delicious and was love at first bite. I guess Jeff had only seen the intense, aggressive Emily at Tribal Council sitting there all uptight with my hands in my lap yelling at people. He was shocked by the existence of the Emily that would dance for cheese.

After Dee paid $900 for a milkshake, Probst introduced another covered item that Katurah purchased for $480 — an item that was later revealed to be two massive fish eyes.

KATURAH: I knew damn well that we were due for a bad item, and something uncovered is right about that time where they sneak in something disgusting, but I was so gung-ho on spending everything before the auction would end abruptly that I was like. “Even if it's bad, at least I'm guaranteed that I've dropped all my money and I have my vote.” I had no idea what the fish eyes were at first because they were so big. They were the size of English muffins! I actually thought it was eggs Benedict. That was my first thought, and I was like “Okay, I'll take eggs Benedict. Random, but I'll take it.” And then I got closer, and when I touched them, it literally almost made me throw up in my mouth. It was just great gobs of mucus.

After Katurah passed on eating the eyeballs, Austin bid $100 to try them, but there was a strategy at play we did not see.

AUSTIN: The first person who actually bid it on the fish eyes was Bruce. He had $80, and he bid all of it, and I was like, “Well, if he goes down to zero, Emily has 60 bucks left and she might lose her vote. So in my head, I wanted to bid over Bruce to make sure he couldn't get it. So when I went up to the fish eyes, half of me was like, “I want to eat this,” but the other half was like, “I have to turn this into a show because I just did a strategic move to make sure Bruce didn't spend his money. I have to make it look like I bid on this eye because I wanted to eat it.” So I made this big old scene of biting into it and being like, “Oh, it's so good. I'm so happy I did this” kind of thing.

KATURAH: As soon as he took a bite, it was like thick mucus inside that was dripping out of his mouth. And I heard the crunch of that membrane-ish exterior, and I was immediately like, “Yep, I made a great choice.”

AUSTIN: I asked, “Can I share this with everybody?” And Jeff was like, “All right, just for this item you can share with people.” And then Drew was like, “I'll have a bite.”

DREW: I tried the fish eye as well. It was a bad combination with the candy. I ended up getting sick. It was the hottest day out there and the combination of that, the fish eye, and the candy, which was so sugary, made me get sick. If you go back and rewatch it, everyone's packing up at the end of the auction, and I'm not there because I just was like, “I'm leaving, I can't do it. I have to go.” So I just went my own way and left.

AUSTIN: He picks up my half-eaten, slimy, goopy one and just slurps a little bit, which I think was worse. He should have gone for the fresh eye. But I have mad respect for Drew because he was the last person on day one that I would guess to be eating this fish eyes.

As the auction continued into the danger zone of potentially ending at any moment, the players got nervous, and Probst could not resist messing with them by making them think the auction was over when it wasn’t through a series of dramatic pauses and nonsensical head nods.

DREW: He was really over the top with it. And I think that's a big reflection of why the auction came back, because production wanted to have fun with it, and the campiness of Jeff shaking his head no and then saying, “Yeah, you're safe” — it is just part of that fun of messing with us.

JAKE: You could just see him revel in it. I don't even think he knew which way his head was going to go. It was like he was drawing some kind of sign with his face.

KENDRA: I was half a beer in after not eating for 12 days, so I had the time of my life at that auction! I thought it was hilarious. And I could tell that Jeff was having so much fun with this and we were obviously having fun. It was like this really fun camaraderie. I almost feel like the host-contestant wall was broken a little bit. We were shooting the s--- a little bit more and were just all hanging out.

KELLIE: It's very Jeff, right? Jeff has a real flair for the dramatic, and so that's what he's playing up there. But it was not fun for me. I was panicked. I was so nervous. I was stressed. I would say 95 percent of my time out there I was stressed because I was so focused on trying to play hard and win, and I was dealing with all these crazy personalities in my alliance that didn't want to work together. So it’s all over my face exactly how I feel.

JULIE: The minute I was vulnerable and we didn't know how many were left, I was losing my mind. And that sun was right on us, and we're baking, and I'm stressed and I was just blindsided by Jake, so I've got all these emotions sitting there. Everybody else is having so much fun, and I'm fuming because it was my first real blindside for him to write me down. Honestly, I wish I could say I was having so much fun at the auction, but I was stressed. I was like, “I might lose my vote and I don't want to be lied to again.”

After Kellie used her remaining $200 to buy a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a margarita as the 10th item, the auction abruptly ended with the person who entered the auction with the least money leaving with the most, meaning Bruce lost his vote.

BRUCE: I do this thing — and I actually just did it now thinking about it — where I open my mouth and I put my tongue on my teeth in the right side of my mouth, where I'm just like, “Oh s---.” I started feeling a little bit of a pinch. I have no vote. I can't even contribute to anything that's going on in this game. Only thing I got to do is I have to try to win immunity. That's it. And that ran through my mind before I even got my butt off of the bench sitting in the sun baking.

VAN WAGENEN: I don’t think I would have ever guessed the guy who had least amount of money, and therefore started the auction with the least risk, would end up being the player who loses his vote.

KELLIE: I had kept Bruce around and cultivated this relationship for the purpose of having him vote with me, and now on what ended up being the most important vote for my game, he is unable to vote. It was just so cruel and ironic.

BRUCE: If I don’t lose my vote, I think Kellie is still in the game. My vote would've meant something, because the numbers would've made sense for me to help out. With Kellie, Katurah, Jake, Kendra, and me — that’s five votes. We could have taken anybody out. The entire game could have shifted. And if I would've had it my way at that moment in time, I think it would've probably had been Dee.

Section III: A challenging situation

When the players arrived for the immunity challenge on day 16, they were informed by Probst that the contest involved holding onto a rope that was attached to a log holding a third of their pre-game weight. They would have to move one knot lower at various intervals, and when you dropped, you were out. But there was a twist: The host hung up a big bag of rice and told the tribe they could have the food if four people would agree to sit out of the challenge and give up their shot at immunity.

DEE: I felt comfortable, so I immediately volunteered to sit out. I knew I wasn't going home, and I also knew that I couldn't win that challenge. I don't have much good grip strength in my hands. Eating rice is just as important as winning challenges. Obviously, it's easy for me to say because I was well insulated in an alliance, but for me, it is going to make me think clearer and I'm going to be less cranky. I just knew I was going to sit out and I was going to eat.

EMILY: There was no convincing that was needed to be done for me to sit out. He could have offered nothing and just been like, “Hey, raise your hand if you want to set out this challenge,” and I probably would've raised my hand. I wouldn't have had a chance. So when I saw that I could sit out and get food, it was a really selfish choice on my part. I immediately raised my hand. It looks altruistic at the time, but it wasn't at all. It was very selfish.

KATURAH: My first thing was shock that Dee volunteered to sit out because, at that point, Dee was still a big threat. And so when she immediately said yes first, I was like, “Hmm, that makes me think about the power structure of Reba a little bit more.” And then Emily volunteered, which wasn't really shocking because Emily and I played the game in a similar floaty position where we were not going to be the number one target first.

As Katurah attempted to broker an agreement with the tribe that nobody would vote against players that sat out for food, Probst shockingly raised the stakes, taking out a large knife and stabbing the bag, causing rice to spill out into a bucket below. The longer the tribe took to decide, the more food they lost.

VAN WAGENEN: That credit for the knife stab goes to Team FLINT member Keoni Smith. Keoni started off as a member of the Dream Team during the David vs. Goliath season and is now an integral part of our creative process. The minute he pitched it, we knew we had gold.

PROBST: We spent an hour in the art department testing various sized knives until we landed on one that was impressive enough to cause panic and would create a hole big enough to do some real damage.

DEE: I'll be completely honest with you: I didn't even realize what was happening. I froze up. I was like, “Did Jeff Probst just do that?” I was still processing the fact that he took out a knife and stabbed the bag. It was so savage.

JULIE: In life, there is the fight or flight reaction. I happen to suffer from the third choice — the freeze reaction. He pulls out the knife and the rice starts flowing. I froze. Because if I could have made a choice, I would've sat out. I didn't think there was any chance I could win this challenge and I felt safe enough with my alliance. So my brain logically would've been like: This is perfect to sit out! But I could not form the words. I just sat there frozen, watching the rice pour.

KELLIE: Everyone sat there just completely shellshocked for at least 15 seconds. This had never been done before. We don't know the implications. It wasn't like he said, “You're going to lose all this rice I just stabbed.”

KATURAH: Jeff freakin’ stabbing the rice bag was trauma incident number 248. Literally, there were no rules told. He didn't say what the stabbing meant.

BRUCE: When he stabbed that, I'm just like, “That's just gangster.” He just stabbed that thing and it was a massive hole. [Laughs] What are we doing here?! I was laughing my ass off.

EMILY: I couldn't tell what was happening at first. The knife came out of nowhere and it was almost like this different person had taken over him. So we all took a moment as our starved brains were piecing together what's happening. I think Drew put it together first that our rice was slowly trickling away.

DEE: It wasn't until Drew stepped out that I realized what was happening.

AUSTIN: That shocked all of us. And I think my reaction was similar to Drew's but more internal. Whereas Drew was like, “Oh my God! Did you stab that? What the heck?” He's yelling, “God, we need people to step off right now!”

DREW: That's a disaster, because you need the rice. If you give up the rice, you are an idiot. And I'll direct that directly at season 46. You absolutely need that food. There's a reason they give it to you. So soon as he stabs the rice, it's like an OH MY GOD moment. Because now it's just about speed. So immediately, I jump out before I even really figured out what the rules are. He has not said anything about what the mechanics of this stab are! So I jump out and I'm like, “I hope that the rules haven't changed and I've screwed myself.” And I'm looking around and nobody else is getting out, and I start to get more and more frustrated.

KENDRA: I looked at Austin and I go, “We cannot step out.” I felt that Austin and I probably had a chance to make it pretty far to beat Bruce, and I was like, “Austin, you have to beat him.” I just wanted Bruce out. It was really hard to work with him. So I was hungry out there, but the rice could have went out even more. I wasn't really that concerned with it. I wasn't sitting out of any challenges. I made that super clear to everyone in the beginning.

JAKE: I didn’t feel comfortable sitting out. I was the only one who voted the wrong way, so it was never really a question. I was like, “If we get rice, great, but I'm not sitting for it.”

AUSTIN: I was like, “I'm not stepping off, but I need Drew to do the dirty work and yell at people to step off.”

DREW: I'm really hungry. I'm a tall, thin guy. Supposedly that's the toughest body type to have out there. So I started to yell at people, “Get out of the line! Come on! Oh my God!” And Katurah, thankfully, steps out and saves us.

KATURAH: There's this big, tall guy and he's like, “Come on! Somebody! Go! Go! Go!” And then the rice is falling, and Drew is screaming. And I'm like, “Oh, okay, fine.”

AUSTIN: And then I got annoyed because after we got our four people, Jeff very casually slowly covered it. He let it rain for another five, six seconds, which is like a whole meal that you're just casually waiting to cover up! So that pissed me off.

BRUCE: We had people step out, but he still kept going! I'm like, “Jeff, you owe us a cup of rice!”

PROBST: As for the return of my edge: Yes, it’s back! One of my favorite parts of hosting Survivor is the spicy banter and negotiating with the players. I love being a part of their game and I welcome any and all engagement.

VAN WAGENEN: It’s always interesting to see how players react to stress and pressure. Drew was one of the more calm, calculated players throughout the season, so it was interesting to see that he, without hesitation, jumped forward and volunteered to sit out. There was also a big part of me that was happy for Keoni, seeing how perfectly his pitch played out.

DREW: The entire incident kind of spoiled me, because then I would eat way more than my fair share of rice after that. I had been the hero to get the rice faster and conserve more, so I definitely triple-dipped for a while after that because I felt so entitled.

With four players sitting out and immunity on the line, the challenge commenced with five contestants — Kellie, Kendra, Austin, Jake, and Julie — trying to defeat Bruce, whom everyone outside of Jake wanted to vote out at that night’s Tribal Council.

JOHN KIRHOFFER (challenge producer): I dig this challenge so much because, as Jeff would say, “It’s easy in concept, and very difficult in execution.” I also like that it is proportional to body weight and is therefore fair for everyone. And it has an explosive exclamation mark when you drop out… smashing the statue!

PROBST: It’s extremely important to us that on any given day, any player can win any challenge. At first glance, you see an endurance challenge like this and think, “Well, the strongest person is obviously going to win this.” But it’s not that simple. 

KELLIE: That challenge was rough. You have to hold up one-third of your body weight, and I actually had a little bit of an elbow injury pre-Survivor, so this was probably the worst challenge I could have done. But for some reason, I had blind faith that I could do it.

KENDRA: I was sitting there just trying to meditate, and then Jake wouldn't stop talking. Jake was running his mouth the entire challenge, and I was like, “Can you just stop, Jake?” I'm just trying to focus on the clouds. I'm trying to be in my meditative state. And then Jeff starts in, and Jake starts in. I was really distracted by all the talking and I was getting pissed off. I was like, “Jake, can you just shut up?” He was right next to me just chatting the whole time.

BRUCE: Jake was talking so much s--- to Jeff. It was funny, but I knew he was taking his focus away. He had a good time doing it, but that's on him. And that just got him to expel energy even though he didn't know it.

KELLIE: I had to switch my feet back at one point because there's a bar, and I put my foot a little too over the bar. Jeff was like, “You have to scooch it back.” And in that process is when I lost my balance and fell. I felt kind of guilty afterwards for not sitting out because I dropped pretty early in the challenge. I thought I would do a lot better in the challenge than I ended up doing.

KENDRA: It had gone a little bit, and then Jeff said I was doing it wrong because I bent my elbow, and that threw me off and then that's when I dropped. But I feel like if I hadn't gotten mentally distracted, I could have gone on further.

KATURAH: I'm watching and I’m like, “Damn, none of these people are fighting as hard to have Bruce win as I would've.” And that was the only moment that I regretted stepping out for the rice because no one on the entire tribe had as much to gain from Bruce leaving as I did.

Even though Kellie and Kendra dropped early, the four other players made it all the way to the final stage of holding the rope below the final knot, and it finally came down to a battle between the season’s two oldest players — 49-year-old Julie and 47-year-old Bruce.

KIRHOFFER: For some context, this challenge was so difficult that during testing, even our Dream Team fell out just before the final stage. That’s a testament to how these four were really digging in to win immunity.

AUSTIN: Bruce and Julie are bad asses. They are incredible competitors. I love that they were the ones that were showing down at the end. Bruce has got the thickest forearms I've ever seen, so I'm not too surprised, but Mama J pound for pound is one of the strongest people in the entire cast. She was consistently near the end of almost every single challenge.

VAN WAGENEN: As an old-timer myself, I don’t think I could have lasted nearly as long as Bruce and Julie.

PROBST: It didn’t surprise me at all that the final showdown was between the two oldest players, but it was definitely inspiring!

BRUCE: My mother had passed away on March 8, a week after the premiere for Survivor 44, and then a month later, which is April 8, is when we flew out to Fiji for Survivor 45. And then here we are playing the game. And before any challenge, I would look up to the sky and I would say, “Love you, mom,” and do a kiss. So mom was with me, and I had the yellow rope, which is my daughter Sydnee’s favorite color, for my Syd strength. So I was thinking about my family, and maybe being older, that is our additional motivation to be able to focus on that aside from what pain that we're potentially going through.

JULIE: While you're in it, you're not thinking, “Oh, look at me, old person beating these young people.” You're just thinking, “I need to hold on and I want to win.”

JAKE: Julie is super, super impressive, and I think she's highly underrated in terms of being such a challenge beast.

KENDRA: We are all cheering Julie on. It was time for Bruce to go and he didn't have a vote, so I was like, “Oh, this is a perfect time to get him out.

DEE: Obviously, I was praying for Julie to win. I was thinking in my head, “My goodness, this guy's such a challenge beast. He needs to go. He needs to go right away.”

DREW: I was definitely hoping Julie would win it, especially because the challenge meant a lot to Julie. Julie was out there to prove it to herself, to represent herself to her family, to make her family proud. And she was a real fighter, and so we wanted her to win.

EMILY: I'm rooting for Julie hard at that point. Hindsight being 20/20, I don't know why we all piled onto Bruce the way we did, but I remember thinking that it could have been an easy vote. It seemed like everybody wanted Bruce out.

KATURAH: Well, of course I want Bruce to lose, right?

JAKE: It was so obvious that other people didn't want him to win. So I was like, “You know what? I kind of want him to win. Just to piss people off.” I felt like there was a possibility Bruce might give me the idol at the time. Obviously, that didn't happen and he wouldn't do that, but I thought there was the possibility at that point.

KELLIE: I really thought Julie was going to win. She looked rock solid up there. She grew up near a lake and she's done a lot of water skiing in her life. This is her bread and butter.

BRUCE: Before the challenge started, I thought about “How am I going to do this so that I end up on the final run on my right hand?” — which is my strong dominant hand. So I started off the right way.

JULIE: I started with the wrong hand. I started with a hand that I thought, “Okay, this will get me pretty far in.” And if I had known that I was a contender, I would've started with the other hand so that my right hand would've been last. Instead, it was the left hand that was last.

BRUCE: You see me grimacing, and I was at a point now where I couldn't grab on anymore. The rope was slippery, and it just kept going and going and going and going. I'm holding and squeezing and cocking my wrist as much as I can so I can hold that thing. And then Julie dropped.

JULIE: That one hurts me the most. I keep trying to replay it in my head and I'm like, “Why did it come out?” I felt like I was fine, and then it was just not there. And I looked over at Bruce and he tells me, “I slipped right after you one second later.” So it was devastating.

BRUCE: I just threw the thing down and I ripped my buff off my head. I've watched this game for years and I love this game, and to be able to do that…. How many people have really had the ability to play the game they love and do something that they've never ever been able to do? If she had stayed for a few more seconds, she would've won. I would've lost.

PROBST: There is another important layer to every immunity challenge, and that is security at Tribal Council. As we saw in this episode, Bruce had absolutely no idea he was in real trouble, but the ever-looming uncertainty that hangs like a cloud above every player always triggers that extra gear of effort. So even if you don’t think you need the necklace, you still desperately want it. In this case, it saved Bruce, and led to one of the most dramatic Tribal Councils of the season.

Section IV: The scheming before the storm

With Bruce now doubly safe with immunity and an immunity idol in his pocket, the backup plan of Jake came into focus, so much so that even Jake himself considered himself a goner. But in the shadows, the game was afoot.

DREW: After the auction the previous day, when we all came back to camp, everyone came into the shelter and Kellie was holding court. She had all the girls there, they were all laughing and talking about their zodiacs. I was on the side with Jake, who at this point knew he had screwed the pooch. And I thought to myself, “This is a guy who I could probably work with. And he just thinks he has no hope. He just thinks it's over. He has no prayer.” And that was when I decided, “All right, I really have to change gears and save Jake. It would be so beneficial for my game. I see so much potential in this relationship.”

AUSTIN: The Kellie vote was something that Drew and I had been working on for days. Pretty much as soon as I came back from the journey with the amulet, we were like, “Okay, we have to figure out how to get rid of J Maya and we have to figure out how to get rid of Kellie.”

DREW: Kellie had this amazing sphere of invincibility around her. The thing about Survivor is that fame is an aura. When somebody plays an idol successfully, when somebody plays an advantage successfully, when somebody wins a really tough challenge, they kind of walk on water and people are really attracted to that charisma. I wasn't, personally. I kind of resented the charisma in a way because I wanted that, and I didn't have it. But that was definitely something I noticed around Kellie, and so I really wanted her to go. But again, because of that cachet, that untouchability, everyone would be like, “Oh, it's not the time.”

AUSTIN: Pretty much as soon as Bruce lost his vote, we were just like, “This is the time we strike. This is the time where we can attack Kellie. There's this girl's alliance going on right now and they're convinced we're going to go for Jake. No one's going to expect us going for Kellie, and this is the perfect time.” So at that moment, it was like: How can we convince people to vote for Kellie instead of Jake?  

DREW: After the challenge, I felt like things were starting to change, so I went to Emily and was like, “This is the move. We have to do this.” She was on board. I went to Jake and I kind of floated it just in case I would need his vote, but I didn't tell him about it. Then I went to Julie and Dee, because I figured if this move is going to happen, it would be ideal if Julie and Dee could be on board so the Reba four can remain a unit, but Dee really didn't want to do it at all.

AUSTIN: We're able to bring in Emily pretty quickly and easily, but it took a while to convince Dee and Julie.

JULIE: When Drew comes and says, “Let's do Kellie.” I'm like, “No, let's do Jake!” because I've been thinking about it all day. But then I was like, if we go for Jake, that's because my feelings are hurt. That's not how you play Survivor. So I was an easier sell, and I was like, “You're right. Jake will always be there. We can go for Jake later.”

AUSTIN: Dee specifically was really hard because she and Kellie were getting really, really close at this point, and we were like, “We have to separate this and we have to knock out Kellie.”

DREW: Dee’s one concern was that she didn't want to be the biggest female threat in camp. And Kellie was a shield for that. But from my perspective, there comes a point where if your allies are saying they got you and you don't have them, well, the bus is going to leave without you.

AUSTIN: I went up to Dee and I was like, “Hey, listen, last vote, I took one for the team and I let us vote off Kaleb. Kaleb was my shield. He was something protecting me. Kellie, to you, is a similar shield as Kaleb was to me, but I was willing to give up Kaleb. Would you please be willing to sacrifice Kellie for this? She has this amulet, she's going to be gunning for me at some point. We have to knock her out now.”

JULIE: Dee was like, “No, no, no. I like Kellie. She's the other girl that's strong. She is my shield.” And I wish they showed this moment more than anything: The four of us are standing there and I said, “Dee, we are your shield.” And she went, “Oh damn, you're right.”

DEE: Drew tells us, “Hey, let's take out Kellie.” I remember saying, “I don't want to take out Kellie, she's my shield.” And Julie practically breaks her neck looking at me and goes, “Dee, we are your shield.” And I didn't even respond right away. I just thought to myself, “Damn, that's kind of true. They are my shield. And if I truly believe that they're my shield, I’ve got to trust in them.”

KATURAH: Once Bruce was off the table, we knew that Jake would be the backup, but there was a fear that Bruce might play his idol for Jake because of how close they were. And so it really didn't make logical sense to put votes on Jake either because it'd be so obvious that it would be Jake. And then, on top of all of that, I'm starting to work with Reba, but I’m seeing Kellie develop a really close relationship with Dee. They're like best friends. So if she connects with Dee and takes that Reba spot, that’s not going to Katurah. So Julie and Dee came to me and they were like, “I know we all agreed on Bruce, but obviously he's not available. Jake doesn't make sense. Is Kellie okay with you?” I was like, “Absolutely!” And then Dee wanted me to vote for Kellie, but I was like, “It doesn't make sense for me to write Kellie’s name down because the goal is for me to have the appearance of still working with Belo.” So they were like, “Okay, you write down Jake, and this way you won't have any issues.”

KELLIE: My biggest thing before Tribal was trying to get Jake to not play his Shot in the Dark in order for us to have the votes to target somebody else, but he was really in this head space, and I don't blame him considering how everybody was treating him and how Dee and Julie were reacting towards him that he decided to play his Shot in the Dark.

KATURAH: Kellie came to me and Kendra right before the vote and was very nervous and was like, “I think it's going to be me,” and Kendra's like, “Absolutely not, I'll never write your name down.” And I'm like, “I can tell you a hundred percent, I'm not writing your name down." Because I wasn't.

Section V: The snuffer drops

The Tribal Council that followed was something of a performance, at least from the people doing the blindsiding, and at least until the votes were read.

AUSTIN: Before the vote, I just remember my whole body was kind of shaking and pulsating. It was like, “Is this going to happen? Can we actually pull this off?”

JULIE: We had this inside intel that we were going to make a humongous blindside. We felt it, and we felt like we were the kings and queens of the game. But we had to sit there and pretend that Jake was going home.

AUSTIN: We were all putting in such a performance during Tribal Council. Jake was calling out people left and right, yelling, trying to cause chaos. We're trying to be like, “I'm sorry, Jake. We can't do anything. It's you.”

JAKE: I was like, “I want to be such an a--hole walking out of here.” I was ready. I thought I was gone. I felt like such a dead man.

EMILY: I was so unsure about the vote going towards Kellie that I wrote Kellie’s name down with my right hand because I wanted it to be in a slightly different handwriting just in case the votes went to Jake. I was that uncertain that the votes were actually going to go my way.

So sure that the numbers were unanimously on him, Jake sacrificed his vote to play his Shot on the Dark, giving him a one-in-six shot at safety, and when it came up as “Not Safe,” he — along with Kellie, Kendra, and Bruce — all assumed he was gone. But after Kellie, Kendra, and Katurah’s votes for Jake were read, Probst then read another name from the parchment.

JAKE: I mean, the first vote for Kellie, I was like, “Okay, that was smart of a person to throw one out there just in case.” But then you see another one… and another one.

KELLIE: I remember being shocked the first time when I saw my name, and I knew immediately that I was cooked. It doesn't go Jake, Jake, Jake, then Kellie, and then Jake goes home. Obviously, I was toast.

PROBST: From my vantage point, when it comes to reading the votes, I am only focused on my job. Nothing else. I don’t see any player reactions, I’m too busy doing math!

KENDRA: I remember feeling horrible that I did not trust Kellie when she was saying how nervous and paranoid she was. As soon as I saw the second vote, my stomach dropped and I was like, “It's over. She's going home. This sucks.”

KATURAH: Kendra was the most devastated. Kendra just looked completely shocked.

BRUCE: I'm like, “What the hell is going on right now?” I have to keep a stone face, but I was getting to a point of being upset because this is now in my mind my number one ally getting blindsided. So I was dumbfounded and pissed and scrambling mentally. Meanwhile, I hear Kendra doing her thing behind me: “Kendra, yes, you're crying. Stop. You're literally signing your own death warrant.”

KENDRA: I am a very empathetic person and very, very sensitive to other people's feelings and energies, and the look she gave me when she turned around and looked at me broke my heart. I told her two days before, “Girl, you're my winner pick. You're playing so well.” So for her to turn around, and to see these dreams crash in front of her like that, it still makes me tear up now and it gives me the chills. It was so heartbreaking and visceral for me. It really, really hurt.

AUSTIN: At the moment her name started being read, you could just see the raw reaction on Kellie’s face. It broke my heart. It was hard to see. She looks at me and says, “Did you do this?” And I nod yes, but I couldn't even hold a gaze with her for more than a couple of seconds. I looked straight down. I'm just like, “She is going through the worst moment of her life right at this second at my hands.”

JULIE: When she turned around, I was devastated. To lie to someone like that was a gut check. It hurt. I didn't want to look her in the eye. It was a really weird, terrible feeling. And then Jake was in such shock, it just added to it.

KELLIE: Kendra’s in tears behind me, Jake is so shocked. He's like, “WHOA! Oh my God, I shouldn't have said that.”

JAKE: I called Kellie later and was like, “Hey, I'm sorry.” I did not mean to be disrespectful with that. I was just so floored. It wasn't supposed to be an FU or anything like that. I was shocked. Watching it back at home, my mom goes to my dad, “You would do some s--- like that.”

BRUCE: I'm looking at Kellie, and then she looks at me, and I’m like a dad looking at his kid, but I can't do anything. So I just sat there and I'm just like… man.

AUSTIN: And then the whole fiasco happened where once she got booted, she stands up and goes, “What the hell, guys?” She forgets her torch, she forgets her shoes, she stumbles around, and we're just like, “Holy cow, we actually murdered someone today.”

KELLIE: The “What the hell, guys?” and asking Austin and Emily, “You did this?” — that is me being just genuinely upset that it was happening. And I tried to be like, “You know what? I respect it. I'm sorry for having this reaction,” but I was just not fully prepared for that moment. I blacked out.

BRUCE: Her stumbling back and forth, forgetting things and dropping her shoes — there's no bigger “Holy s---, what is happening to me?” moment on Survivor than that I don't think.

KELLIE: Now I look back and I'm like, “Oh my God, it's so cringey.” It's hard to watch. I don't love watching my Tribal.

KATURAH: We’d planned this blindside without thinking about the emotional effect of it, and it felt like something shattered. The goal of Survivor is to eliminate people who are really a big threat to you, but not to crush people or make them feel bad. And you could feel it. You could feel her absolute shock.

DREW: If somebody gets voted out and is like, “Okay, good job,” then you get the pleasure of a win. But if somebody goes out in a car crash, then you have to put on your black for the funeral. And so the mood was very, very somber. I mean, Emily felt so guilty she looked like she had seen a ghost.

EMILY: Every vote — and I'd been to so many Tribal Councils — every single person had gone out on such a positive note. They had been like, “I understand, it's a game” with hugs and kisses on the way out. That was the first one where it was like a mic drop moment where the pain was really palpable. The shock was palpable. Everybody was quiet. That's when reality hit and there was just a lot of, “Wow, that was actually really awful that we really hurt somebody like that.”

DREW: There's almost a Survivor guilt for having punished somebody like that.

PROBST: The reaction you see at Tribal is full of nuance — confusion, hurt, frustration, and ultimately, profound sadness. 

AUSTIN: People were standing up to give her a hug. But in my mind, it's like if I get voted out, I don't want to hug the people who did it. So I didn't give her a hug. But I was like, “Should I have given her a hug?” It was just so awkward.

DEE: Something that wasn't shown is that I was the one who asked Kellie for a hug. I was one of the last hugs because I was further away from her. You could feel the sadness. Kendra is crying, and everyone is sad. None of that was an act. Even Emily when Kellie was like, “You did this?’ — she just couldn't even respond.

EMILY: I don't know what I was thinking telling her “You played a great game.” I shouldn't have said anything. I just remember being like, “I need to try to make her feel better.” The pain was so bad, I felt so uncomfortable, and when you see someone in pain, you want to try to make them feel better. But that does not make somebody feel better being like, “You played a great game.” Nobody wants to hear that in that moment. You just voted them out! And she was still piecing it together and I don't think she realized at that point that I was one of the people who had voted for her. So I really wish I'd kept my mouth shut, just out of respect for Kellie.

KELLIE: I don't have any shame in saying that I really wanted to win or that I really wanted to go farther. I was the alternate for season 43, I had spent a very long time thinking about coming to play, and I felt like I was capable and maybe I could do it. So it sucks. I feel like I had a lot going for me and I had a lot more game that I wanted to play. And so a part of my reaction is shock from what was happening, but also a huge part of it was just I was genuinely devastated to lose and I wanted to still play.

JAKE: As fortunate as it was that I stayed, it sucked to see Kellie go. I did feel bad for her. If you gave Jake a magic wand and could send all the votes on one person, it wouldn't have been Kellie that night.

VAN WAGENEN: I felt like I was watching the intersection of two games going in opposite directions. Kellie had played such a masterful game and watched it crumble in an instant. Jake had been fighting from the bottom for so long and got a miraculous reprieve. It’s those intersections that make Survivor so fun.

JULIE: We did this thing, but we feel bad. Yet we also feel good that we did this thing. The amount of emotions — it was very awkward and devastating and exhilarating. It was all the things.  

DEE: I wanted to cry, but, at the same time, this move needed to be made. This was the perfect moment in the game to take Kellie out. She was so well insulated and she could potentially win the game or be the person to fracture our alliance.

JAKE: I was so floored that I still got to be there and I didn't get my torch snuffed that night. I blacked out a lot of it just due to shock, and you can literally see it as the credits are rolling when I am walking away from Tribal Council. Even hours after I got back to the beach, I was just so unbelievably shocked and exhilarated to still be in the game.

AUSTIN: After Tribal Council, we went back to the beach, and that was such a harrowing feeling. Kendra's sobbing on the island for hours. Jake is sitting staring at the sky for literally two hours just being like, “I can't believe I'm still here playing Survivor.” Dee's upset, everyone's sad. And I remember at one point it was just Drew and I at the camp. I looked at him and said, “Are you sad right now?” And he's like, “No, bro.” I was like, “Dude, we did it!” And then we celebrated. We fist bumped, we hugged each other and were like, “Yo, that was sick!”

KELLIE: After you get voted out at Tribal, they put you into a little holding area before you do your final words. And I ripped my buff off and threw it at the wall. I was super mad and angry, and honestly, I was just sad. And I was just like, “How am I going to get through these next 10 minutes and not be too insane on these final words?” So I was just sitting in there mad, and then someone came up to me and they're like, “You have to put that back on,” and I was like, “I don't want to.” But I begrudgingly put it on and did my final words. I kept it pretty short and they were like, “You want to say anything else?” I was like, “Nope.” Then we got on the boat and I went to go to the Ponderosa bar with Kaleb till 4 a.m.

Section VI: The legacy

Blindsides on Survivor happen all the time. Four people in a row on the most recent season, Survivor 46, got voted out with an immunity idol in their pocket. So what is it about the Kellie blindside on Survivor 45 that made such a massive impact on viewers?

PROBST: There were a couple of reasons I think Kellie’s blindside was so impactful. To start with, she’s an extremely likable person who many thought could win the game. And the other reason is that the audience was fully aware that she was having reservations about her alliance with Bruce, and it was ultimately her association with Bruce that led to her being voted out.  

BRUCE: Kellie’s everybody. Kellie is the aunt that is a nurse. Kellie is the mom that's a nurse. Kellie the cousin that's a nurse. She’s a little sister. She could be my daughter. She's someone that everybody can relate to, somehow, some way. But she was lied to, and it was just a complete kick in the face. She trusted people more than they deserved to be trusted. I still get uncomfortable watching it.

VAN WAGENEN: Players these days are such massive fans that every vote is a gut punch. I think it’s common knowledge that Kellie was an alternate the year before. She had been in the mix for so long and had invested so much time and energy just to get on the island. Her passion for Survivor was what drove her, but it’s also what made it so devastating.

KELLIE: I first watched the episode at a Survivor fan event the day before it aired. Listening to an audience of 150 or so fans react to what was happening was another almost out-of-body experience. It was so crazy to hear the gasps and the people were like, “NOOOOO!” On one hand, really nice. But also, it's so sad to watch yourself get bamboozled. Who wants to watch that?

JULIE: I get that blindsides happen all the time, but this one did not feel like it was supposed to come because Kellie was such a contender. Everyone loved Kellie. It felt mind-blowing at the time.

JAKE: Why the blindside has the impact on fans that it does is because Kellie was so well positioned. Kellie is such a good social, strategic, physical player and she does do a good job at managing her threat level.

AUSTIN: Kellie is such an incredible player, and I think it was very apparent not just to us on the island, but to the audience. She was the main cog in the wheel for the Belo side. And by taking her out, it sent Belo into a huge spiral and panic. Not only do we knock out their centerpiece holding them together, but everyone else on Belo voted for Jake, someone else who was supposedly in their alliance. So that one move just kind of destroyed all of their abilities to work together. Katurah hates Bruce, Bruce hates Katurah, Jake was already on the outs with the Kaleb vote, now everyone voted on him, Kendra got blindsided. It was such a crazy moment, and I think it was very apparent to both the players out there and the audience that the game changed after that move.

KELLIE: It was like an earthquake. And I'm not the only one being blindsided. All of the people with me were blindsided too. The audience was somewhat blindsided. It's a good combo of the spectacle of that Tribal Council, my reaction, Jake's reaction, everybody else's reaction, the fallout it led to for Bruce reexamining how he's playing the game. And I really think the game shifted strongly in Reba's favor after I left.

KENDRA: The Kellie blindside is so impactful because it really is one where the power dynamic shifts in the game. She was playing such a great game and has such a magnetizing energy. So to see somebody who was playing the game so well strategically, socially, physically go out in such a crazy blindside was shocking.

DEE: Sometimes a big player like Ozzy gets blindsided and people remember it because it's Ozzy. And then sometimes the big alliance makes a good move and takes out someone that can potentially win the game. And this episode was memorable because it was a mix of those two things.

EMILY: It's impactful because Jake was 100 percent convinced that he was going home, and Kellie was 100 percent convinced that she was staying. It was that certainty on both of their parts, and their reactions to both of their blindsides that really sold the episode and made it such a compelling one to watch.

KATURAH: Kellie was such a powerful player that it was kind of like taking down a giant, like, “Okay, we took out somebody who really did have a shot to win this game because she's got the physical, she's got the social, she's got the strategic, she's got everything!” And that's kind of another reason why I think it hit so hard too: Kellie knows that Kellie has everything. She was used to being able to go into different spaces and connect with people. When the Reba people that she thought she connected with were like, “No, we're going to orchestrate this blindside,” I think that was a shock to her.

KELLIE: I have only seen it a few times, but unfortunately people like to share the clip of me saying, “What the hell, guys?” a lot. So I am forced to relive it many, many times.

DREW: This was the biggest blindside of the new era for three reasons. Number one, Kellie was kind of golden. She could do no wrong. Number two is that Survivor experimented with their editing and didn't really give you the clues that would indicate it was going to go that way. It was truly shocking for the viewers, certainly, and even for us watching the episode. I was really surprised the way they played it like a murder mystery. And then the third reason is Kellie’s reaction was very real and personal and authentic.

DEE: The Kellie blindside was a blindside to the audience also. I mean, even myself as I was watching the episode, I was in shock at how well it was edited. I felt like I was blindsided myself, and I was there! I played the game!

DREW: The new era has all been about good vibes, and “It's just a game.” And Jeff thinks it's a game too. But let me tell you: It's not a game. You put your body, your health, your mental health on the line for a life-changing amount of money to do the hardest thing you've ever done. If that's a game for you, then you don't take your life very seriously. It is one of the hardest and most earnest and real things I've ever had to do. So Kellie’s vote-out is a real shift away from this “Kumbaya, it's like we're playing Monopoly” of the new era. No, it's real. It has consequences. And I think that's something that really differentiated that vote. It's a reminder to the viewers that these are real punches. There are no blanks in the chamber.

PROBST: I do think this Tribal Council illustrates something really important for future players: You have to play your game on your terms. Kellie could backseat drive her decision to stay with Bruce and all the ways the game might have gone differently if she had cut ties with him. But that’s not helpful. You have to have an overall philosophical approach to how you are going to play the game. Sometimes it will work, most times it won’t. Kellie is a very good Survivor player who got voted out. In that sense, she’s not special. She joins a long list of other great players who didn’t win. Not winning has no bearing on how well you played the game. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but it’s true. Most players get blindsided, so the smart player accepts that as a likely outcome and that frees them up to really play the game.

KELLIE: It was this almost Shakespearean moment, which is the pinnacle of Survivor. I always thought I would be the one doing the blindsiding, not getting blindsided. Seriously… what the hell, guys?