What To Know
- Survivor host Jeff Probst might consider eliminating rice from the game entirely after Survivor 50, as recent players are increasingly uninterested in trading immunity for food.
- Since Season 41, rice is no longer guaranteed and must be earned. Fans voted on whether rice would be provided in Survivor 50, but those results haven’t been revealed.
- On the On Fire podcast, former winner Jeremy Collins advises against giving up immunity for rice, noting that old-era players may struggle with the harsher conditions now common on Survivor.
[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Survivor 49 Episode 10, “Huge Dose of Bamboozle.”]
Survivor players are increasingly disinterested in rice negotiations. Rejecting rice offers from Jeff Probst has been happening more often throughout the new era, so much so that Probst is considering reevaluating rice altogether. He revealed his thoughts on this in the November 26 episode of On Fire, which covers Season 49 Episode 10. (Read our recap here.)
Probst offered Survivor 49‘s remaining players enough rice to last the rest of the game in exchange for three players sitting out of the immunity challenge in Episode 10. Jawan offered some counters that Probst rejected, and then the players rejected the rice altogether. They weren’t all that interested in the first place.
Rice is no longer guaranteed in the new era of the game; it has to be earned. That was introduced in Season 41, to the players’ shock. Fans got to vote on whether rice would be provided or not in Survivor 50, premiering on February 25, but those results have not been revealed. On Fire co-host Jay Wolff asked Probst if they might take food scarcity even further in future seasons.
“Do you feel like you’re approaching a point where, on Survivor, rice is not even worth offering?” Wolff asked.
“Yeah, maybe,” Probst replied. “I mean, it’s an evolving situation, and it makes me very happy because I love it when the players evolve the game. To your point, if you go back to Survivor 41, they were shocked that there was no food. And when it gave them an opportunity for rice, they all negotiated with each other about who should sit out. And then, as you said, Shot in the Darks got used one time in the negotiation, and now it’s like, I think we’re good. So who knows? For Survivor 50, because the fans voted on that, they had the opportunity to give the players food or give the players supplies. But with Survivor 51 and beyond, maybe we revisit this. It’s undecided.”
Jeremy Collins, winner of Survivor Cambodia and one of only five players to win Survivor in a unanimous vote, is the third On Fire co-host this season. He explained why rice negotiations should always be rejected.
“It’s never good to give up your shot at immunity,” Collins said. “You don’t want to give up your shot, and then you eat, and then you get voted out that night. That’s the worst thing to ever do is be eating the next day as much rice as you want because you gave up your shot. There’s nothing worse than that.”
He admitted that the old-era players competing on Survivor 50 — and any potential returning old-era folks in future seasons — may struggle with no guarantees of food.
“When I played, I never wanted to give up,” Collins said. “I played on a season where we would give up all our comforts. Oh, Jeff is here; he’s going to take everything from us, all our tarps, our pillows, our chairs. He’s taking everything for a bag of rice, and I’m like, ‘We can eat tomorrow. The merge is coming.’ So I’m never comfortable with that. But this is the new era. The new era is, there is no food. So I don’t know how everybody else is feeling out there, and when they don’t eat at all, I don’t know how they feel. And old Survivors, they need to get ready for that because we’re not used to not having anything.”
Survivor, Wednesdays, 8/7c, CBS