[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Survivor Season 49 Episode 5, “I’m a Wolf, Baby.”]
The early tribe swap in Survivor 49 Episode 4 resulted in the season’s strongest majority alliance, the Uli group, targeting old Hina players. Savannah Louie, Rizo Veloic, Nate Moore, and Jawan Pitts from Uli, and Sophi Balderi from Kele, were on the new Hina tribe with Matt Williams and Jason Treul from the original Hina. The Uli alums quickly brought Sophi into their alliance and set their sights on getting the two from Hina voted out.
The first on their chopping block was Matt, because he tried to blindside Nate. And then, in Survivor 49 Episode 5 on October 22, they debated whether to send a clear message to the opposing tribe that Uli wielded all the power by voting out Jason, one of the season’s two alternates. Their other option was to vote out an Uli to signal their willingness to work with other camps. But they “declared war,” as Jason describes to TV Insider in his exit interview. (Read our Episode 5 recap here.)
Jason went from being an alternate who was put into the game less than 12 hours before filming began (a Survivor first) to being the sixth person voted out. Everyone in his tribe voted for Jason, while he voted for Rizo. He reveals that unseen strategy talks with Savannah and Sophi convinced him that they were planning to vote Rizo out with him. But really, Savannah did “a really good job” of convincing him of this story, resulting in his blindside elimination.
Here, Jason breaks down the moment he learned he was no longer an alternate, what he saw when MC Chukwujekwu learned she was going into the game, too, and more of what fans didn’t see from his time on Survivor.
I know it’s a disappointing ending for you, but like you said in Tribal Council, it’s 10 more days than you ever thought you’d get, so that’s still really fun.
Jason Treul: I know, and it is weird. It’s bittersweet, but it’s very, very bitter, very sweet, I guess. It’s very intense, right? It’s like to going from zero to 10 to not 26. You have so many hopes and dreams into Survivor, and yeah, that’s how it goes.
You found out you were going into the game less than 12 hours before filming started, right?
Oh, yeah. Once I heard, I could not sleep a wink. I was like, are they tricking me? Are they punking me? Was I on the show the whole time? Why would they wait until this late? I had to make that mental flip from somebody who’s going to go home into the loving arms of his fiancée, to being on an island with a bunch of people [who] are ready to backstab and cheat against you.
How did you react when you got the news?
Dude, OK. My reaction was just pure elation, dude. Let me set the stage. So at Ponderosa, before the game starts, everyone is together. I get pulled aside by one of the handlers into the field, basically, and I’m wondering, I don’t really understand why this is happening. The game is about to start. Why are we talking to me right now? And I get pulled into the field, and they say, “Jason, how does it feel to be on Survivor 49?” And I’m like, what? Because this is, like I said, hours before the game starts. I’m like, how does that even work? I don’t understand. I have a flight that I have to catch. I don’t have to be in the airport right now? I lose all motor function to my legs. I collapse on the ground, and I just start screaming.
It’s actually the craziest thing that has happened in my life. I can’t even enumerate 10 things that are crazier than that. And they’re like, yeah, and by the way, go back to your seat and don’t talk, and we’ll see you in the morning. I’m vibrating the entire time. Oh my God. My fiancée, my family, they’re all expecting me to come home. They don’t get the flight info, and instead, I’m gone. I’m out of there for over a week. I was there for 10 days, and oh my God, it’s insane. Fever dream.
MC and Jason from ‘Survivor’ 49 (Robert Voets / CBS)
They drop that news on you, and then they’re like, Now be quiet.
And now be quiet, and now go to sleep. I tried my best to be quiet, but I could not go to sleep.
I bet your mind was racing. And when did you find out that MC was also going into the game?
There is a point where the alternates realize that we’re the alternates, so I knew that MC was the alternate before that happened. It’s interesting, I was pulled out first and I was like, oh my God, it was happy, happy, happy. And I was like, oh, shoot. She doesn’t get to play. It’s just me. That’s so devastating for her. But then I see her get pulled out to the side same way that I did, and I’m like, there’s no way. That’s insane. Oh my God, two people?! That’s crazy. I see her come back, and she’s trying to hide a smile, and I’m like, yeah, she got told the exact same thing. It was crazy. And we also ended up on the same beach together, too. Incredible. Like a fairytale.
Did you two ever talk about being the alternates once you were at the camp?
Oh, yeah. And it’s one of those things that I think bonds 49 as a cast together. Everybody knew that we were the alternates. We have this shared experience, so of course, it’s so vivid, especially day one. It just happened. I think that me and MC made a really strong bond almost right off the bat. We were there for each other. We were going to ride or die with each other. I don’t think it comes out in the episode. There’s a little bit less that shows in the edit, but me and MC were so tight on Hina.
That doesn’t surprise me because you both had this unique experience, so without talking before the game started, you had a bond because of that.
Oh, yeah. And it’s like, I don’t know, just the circumstances of it being so soon. I can’t even imagine that any alternate in Survivor history was told that close [to the start of filming]. It’s like 11th hour, 59th minute, 30 seconds. That’s how close it was.
Yeah, it was the first time that alternates got put in so quickly before the game started.
Insane.
What kind of strategy talks did you have before Tribal Council in this episode that viewers may not have seen?
Well, it was hard for me to break in. I truly felt it was a five on one because Sophi was so easily enfolded into what old Uli was. I really felt like she was going to vote with them no matter what. And my only hope was to, I guess, encourage and facilitate a move that was internal fighting. I knocked and I tried to figure something out. I don’t have the social capital to spearhead something, but I’m going to sniff for stuff.
What happened was Savannah, pretty early in the day, me, Savannah, and Sophi have a conversation on the beach about, OK, if we wanted to keep everybody from different tribes to figure out how to navigate the post-merge, bringing in as many other people into the fold as possible, we need to vote out some Uli tonight. Music to my ears, obviously engineered to be music to my ears.
They pitched the idea of, oh, what do you think, Jason? Who should it be? And I’m like, well, I want to do whatever you guys want to do, but the three of us are here. Let’s just start talking about people. I think I floated Rizo. They immediately latched onto it because they don’t care. They’re like, whatever. As long as Jason’s happy and pacified. I think that a lot of what you didn’t see for the strategy was me circling back with Savannah, like, Hey, is this something that you want to do? I don’t want this to be my move because I want to do whatever you’re comfortable with, because I want to build these relationships moving forward. And it’s basically just this huge wild goose chase that she throws on me and keeps circling back.
Savannah does a really good job. Obviously, she turns somebody that was willing to tell everyone, I’m playing my Shot in the Dark into somebody who just straight up, I just don’t do it. I was so convinced by hr. Obviously, in hindsight, there were a lot of signals, but when you have nothing to go off of and someone gives you that hand, I was so grateful for it. I didn’t realize that she was ready to just throw me off the cliff.
Robert Voets / CBS
So it was Savannah who convinced you not to play your Shot in the Dark? Because in the episode, it kind of seems like Jawan comforted you.
Me and Jawan had a really strong personal connection. I didn’t see Jawan as being very strategic in wanting to play as hard as Savannah. I really liked the relationship I built with Jawan. I think that, as much as personal relationships are cool, Savannah gave me a plan that said, Hey, I’m sticking my neck out for you. And in my head, I’m like, if I don’t reciprocate that, then this is going to ensure that I am going to be voted out next. So I took a chance because she was very convincing to me and it got me got.
Did you expect anyone else to vote for Rizo? In Tribal Council, you said it’s naive to trust anything that you hear in Survivor, which is correct. So I wonder how much doubt you had that other people were going to write Rizo’s name down.
Everyone independently had gone up to me. I’m all like, “So have you talked to Savannah?” And they’re like, “Yes.” So we’re writing Rizo’s name down. Nate came up to me, Sophi came up to me, and Jawan came up to me, and I was all like, “OK, I’m making sure that it’s like, who did you hear this from?” Everybody worked me as a team. I was a very strong bonding experience for them to work as a strategic unit [laughs]. It’s like I’m this little caged animal, and everyone is practicing how to deceive him. But yeah, I mean, I think that when I was saying, “It’s naive for you to trust someone,” I believed that. But I also felt like so many different people had talked to me that they all had to have been working in a unit for this to have not worked. It’s tough when a plan requires you to drink a little bit of Kool-Aid in order for it to work. I think I just drank too much that I was completely divorced from reality at a certain point. It’s like, bro, just play your shot.
So you were blindsided?
I think so. I think that I was blindsided because I was worked up to being blindsided. People were giving me a lot of false information for the purpose of me to not play my shot.
Do you think the Uli alliance made a mistake in “declaring war” against the old Hina tribe?
I don’t know. It’s hard to say because it’s not that they made a mistake, it’s that they picked a path. I don’t think that you can walk into the challenge next episode and say like, Oh no, we’re all good. They’d made a decision. I think that if they had come back and had voted out another Uli, and I think that Savannah in confessional really does lay it out. It’s all we have a choice to make. Would you rather have something that is more fluid? Or would you rather be the winners of the war? We declared war, and we won. Uli, Uli, Uli. It’ll be interesting to see how things shake out from here, but I wouldn’t say that anything is necessarily a mistake. It’s just a choice.
Were you really as Hina-strong as they made you out to be?
I thought that I was willing [to work with Uli]. I think that the problem is when you’re in that hot seat, anything you say is super scrutinized, right? When I’m being pumped for information, like, “Jason, who has the idol?” “Jason, what are the dynamics on Hina? Who’s close with who?” I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m trying to be friendly, but I don’t want to burn every single bridge, and then they huck me overboard anyways. It’s tough. I think that if I was playing hard, I would’ve also been sussed out. If I had done what Matt did and tried to go behind people, I would’ve been sussed out. It’s just sort of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t kind of situation.
Robert Voets / CBS
Especially that first vote, I just wanted to make myself feel more agreeable than Matt, because that’s truly who the vote was the first time. Is me having played with a tribe of people for seven days coming to new people saying like, Hey, I want to get to know you all, but all I have is information about the old tribe. If you want to ask me about it, I’ll tell you some. And that can, I guess, get interpreted as I’m in love with the old Hina tribe. So I don’t know. People will find ways to market against you, and I think that was just the one that they picked.
Everything is subjective. So you could be saying, yeah, I have information. Do you want me to share it? But some people might take it as — and I guess how Savannah took it was — if you’re not going hard and giving this information without me asking, you’re not trustworthy.
And if there’s someone to hate you or at least be suss of you, it’s like, I think Savannah’s fine. I think that she’s been suspicious of a lot of people, so I am just joining a club. She didn’t single me out. It was just my turn to be in the hot seat.
And that’s the game. What else do you wish fans could have seen?
The relationship that I had with MC, and a little bit, also the relationship that I had with Jawan, for the little bit of time that we had together. My strategy going into the game was to make strong social bonds with different people. And I think that I did make those. Unfortunately, they weren’t there to help me in my time of need, but I had a really great time out there.
I wish that they spent a little more time on the alternate stuff, just because, at least from my point of view, that’s where it begins and that’s where it ends. That’s my whole experience is this is a once in a gillion lifetimes kind of thing, and MC lived through the exact same thing. I wish that they dove into her experiences more, too, because we felt very similarly, and it bonded us.
Survivor, Wednesdays, 8/7c, CBS