So I'm back with my rankings of all 41 (as of current) Survivor seasons. This one is dedicated to the 40th season on my list, Survivor: Ghost Island.

Survivor S36: Ghost island

Barely escaping the last place spot is Survivor: Ghost Island. Especially among recent seasons it sticks out as a sore thumb. Which is quite a shame as I do think the season had potential to be great, or at least pretty good. While Ghost Island is an admittedly cheesy but kind of cool title for a season, it’s not an actual geographical location. The name will make sense when looking further into the twists and format of the season, much like Survivor: One World, which I previously covered as my #41 spot. So where did the season take place? Unsurprisingly, for those who are aware of the current state of Survivor, it takes place in Fiji. You’ll be seeing that place show up frequently throughout these rankings. While I admit Fiji is a pretty country and for a first time viewer would look very nice, that’s not the issue I have with it. My issue comes from the fact that they have reused the exact, and I mean exact, location of filming so many times prior to this season, and again afterwards. As in, tribes of previous seasons were living and playing the game at the exact same location, on the exact same beaches, as the cast this season. For those like myself who are a little more engaged with the show than your average viewer, you start to really notice this over time. You start to recognise trees, rock formations, the beaches, the overhead shots, etc. This is more behind the scenes as they would never show this, but there have even been instances of players finding items and relics belonging to a previous season. I understand they have some sort of contract in place with Fijian authorities to exclusively film there, but it seems so lazy and takes away so much of the adventure and survival side of things. But I digress, it’s not going to be changing anytime soon. I’ll also just refer to this post any time this topic gets brought up in the future as I see little point ranting about it several times. To any producers who might read this; please find a new location. It’s okay to go to Fiji every few seasons or cycles but having a change of scenery with a different culture every now and then would do so much to make the show stand out more.

Anyway, back to Survivor: Ghost Island. This season introduces 20 castaways split into two tribes of 10. There’s an orange Malolo tribe as well as a purple Naviti tribe. The split was seemingly random, which doesn’t sound special but at the time it was the first time that there was no clear distinction or theme behind the tribes since Survivor: Philippines, 11 seasons prior (excluding returnee seasons). I guess in an attempt to not make the show stale through repeated formatting, the producers have tried to find all sorts of weird ways to split people into tribes in recent years. Luckily that seems to have come to a halt in present Survivor, but it was very prevalent around the time of this season. Another way they tried to shake things up this season was the introduction of Ghost Island, a remote island that a player of the losing tribe would visit each episode. On Ghost Island they would find a billion classic Survivor relics, from immunity necklaces and idols, to torch snuffers, to a f***ing stick. With a face on it. The player on Ghost Island would then play some stupid carnival game and potentially win one of these relics, which had power in the game. I’m not going to touch on every single thing there but just know there were some funny ones. Occasionally a player would skip tribal council if they stayed there overnight but other than that the island had no further influence on the game.

The two tribe format continued into a tribe swap on day 7, where the remaining 18 contestants were switched around in two tribes of 9. As luck would have it, the dominant Naviti tribe (which now had a two person advantage over Malolo, at 10-8) found themselves in a 5-4 majority on both new tribes. I’m a mathematician and I love statistics but I’m too tired currently to calculate the odds of this, though I suspect they aren’t astronomically high. This tribe had a very good chance of entering the merge with all their members intact if they stuck together the whole time. Thank goodness it didn’t quite play out that way or this season might have ranked below One World. Then again, I don’t see myself ever putting anything below One World. Anyway, the two new tribes both end up going to tribal council at some point and it’s quite interesting to see how the different groups handle their majority or minority when it comes to their tribe. One ends up doing what I predicted and sticks together to vote off the minority (although it wasn’t quite as straightforward as that, more on that later). As for the other tribe; let’s just say things didn’t go according to plan. Ultimately when the counter hits 15 remaining players on day 15, there is another format change. But this time they opt to swap the players into three tribes of 5, creating a brand new green Yanuya tribe. They had started doing that a few seasons before with the first occurrence happening in Survivor: Cambodia. I guess they liked it because they brought it back for a fourth time here. Good, because I like it too. Smaller tribes means less people which means it’s easier to create storylines without leaving people out. Of course that’s on paper, the edit hasn’t always worked out that way.

Anyway, heading into this tribe swap the numbers were still in Naviti’s favor. They outnumbered the original Malolo by 9-6. Now if that earlier swap wasn’t bad enough for Malolo, they were about to get hit with a second storm. With three tribes you would think that they would maybe have a majority on one of them, with a minority on the others. In fact, there was only one scenario in which they wouldn’t find a majority somewhere. The doomsday scenario, if you will. Now I’m sure you can tell where I’m going with this, but yes. It happened. On all three tribes of 5, Naviti had a 3-2 majority over Malolo. Damn. You have to feel sorry for these people, you just have to. In fact, at no point in this entire season did they have numbers over Naviti. This isn’t super uncommon overall as there usually is a more dominant tribe, but it’s especially tragic when you take into account all the tribe swaps that happened this season. Anyway, they merge into one tribe with 13 people remaining, with Naviti holding a strong 8-5 majority. I should mention that at this point there were already some people secretly working across original tribal divisions, however a very vocal few were adamantly against the idea. The rest of the season follows a very predictable pattern. The whole season was very predictable, sadly (minus a few moments here and there). This was a big knock against Survivor: One World, the one season I have ranked below Ghost Island. And it kind of applies here too. The problem I have with this season, and why I actually rank it lower than One World on this particular issue, is that this season had players that were functional. One World had a bunch of dimwits and nobodies, so it’s natural for the season to take a predictable path. This season however, the other players were perfectly able to counterplay the dominating forces had they chosen to do so. And it’s not like they were blind either, they knew what was going on and decided not to do anything. Which makes it even worse than One World. On this one issue anyway.

Now as for the players themselves, this is why I rank this season higher. Or, well, not last. The cast actually had some fun players! On the tragic Malolo tribe you had a bunch of likeable people like Donathan, a charming southern guy, Brendan the PE teacher, and Stephanie, a yoga mom. Some firecrackers like Stephanie, basically just the other Stephanie (spoilers: she didn’t go very far, but she could’ve been fun!), and Jacob, the awkward Survivor superfan. There was also Michael, at the time the youngest ever contestant at 18, who was very intelligent and had a lot of game sense but came with the personality of my kitchen rug. Over at Naviti there existed a dynamic duo of Wendell and Dominick, and an absolute lunatic in Chris (who made for S-tier TV). Sebastian, who is probably the closest thing to a surfer bro I’ve ever seen, both in looks and intelligence, had some funny moments here and there. Bradley was kind of douchey but in a way that I found genuinely funny as he was clearly just taking the piss with everything. Oh and Kellyn was a sweetheart but she just got on my nerves the entire season. The rest were forgettable really.

As I mentioned before Naviti pretty much steamrolls the game. Losing some of the best Malolos early on didn’t help with that as Jacob the fan, Brendan the PE teacher and Stephanie the yoga mom all leave before they merge. In fact there was only one tribal council in which Malolo really outplayed Naviti. During the first swap there was a tribe of 5 Navitis (Chris, Morgan, Dominick, Angela, and Wendell) and 4 Malolos (Libby, Donathan, Laurel, and James). To set the scene, after losing the challenge, rap legend Chris gets sent to Ghost Island by the other tribe. They then learn that he will not be attending tribal council so the vote will contain 4 Navitis and 4 Malolos. For reasons I still don’t understand, dynamic duo Wendell and Dominick are convinced that their tribemate Angela, an army mom, needs to go home. They bring Morgan in on this plan and then go tell the 4 Malolos that they should vote for Angela. Angela has no clue any of this is happening, which will be a common occurrence for her throughout this season. Now here the brains behind the Malolos, James, a young graduate from Harvard or something, decides on a better plan. They put all the Malolo votes on Morgan so she will go home, since the Navitis are divided. This works perfectly and Morgan goes home, the first (and last) major upset in this season. Probably because James gets voted out not long after so the Malolos lost like 80 percent of their brain power. While this move was great, it’s just super frustrating knowing that the outcome of the season could have been wildly different and a lot more interesting had the Malolos put their votes on either Dominick or Wendell. Spoiler alert: they dominate the season after this vote.

Dominick and Wendell decide to secretly team up with Laurel and Donathan from Malolo. All good and well, but those two aren’t necessarily the most entertaining TV characters. In fact all the fun characters go out one by one. Jacob, Brendan, Stephanie, Bradley, and last and certainly not least, Chris Noble. The Noble One. At least we got to hear his new song ‘Ponderosa’. So you’re left with this strong but kind of boring alliance of 4, Kellyn who nags the whole time, Michael the kitchen rug (although he did have some cool strategic plays this season), and some others. Wait, there was a Chelsea on this season? The worst part is that all these people are pretty smart. Laurel mentions the entire season that Dominick and Wendell are huge threats and she can’t beat them in the end. Okay, that’s true. So what does Laurel do about it? Nothing, absolutely nothing. She sits there and complains how big of a threat they are, only to just do nothing. Probably the single most useless contestant I’ve ever seen. I mean she’s nice and all but come on. She then gets this delusional idea that she can beat both of them at the end so she is content with not doing anything. To Donathan’s credit, he at least tries to do something near the end of the game. Only, Laurel is too stupid to join him and Angela is still unaware that she’s on the show. Or she’s thinking about that sea cucumber she deepthroated. I’m not even joking, that was her Survivor highlight. Anyway, Donathan gets eliminated by Dominick and Wendell and they go to the end with Laurel. Where probably the only other exciting thing this season happens. Jeff just randomly starts reading the votes. Right there, on the island. Not in a studio. The last time this happened was on Survivor: Borneo, the first season. We soon find out why though; they’re such a dynamic duo that the jury can’t tell them apart! The votes come back in a 5-5 tie between Dominick and Wendell. Laurel, shockingly, gets nothing. Which she does not look happy about. Jeff then further torments her by making her decide which of her opponents she gives a million dollars to. She ultimately gives it to Wendell and he wins 6-5. A deserved win, but a predictable win.

So that’s Ghost Island. It had its moments and characters but throughout the season I was left frustrated at the lack of any semblance of counterplay to the dominant alliance. If you’re going to dominate, at least be entertaining while doing so. That’s why I have this season ranked so low. I’d say the only thing keeping it above One World is Angela’s lack of a gag reflex. So congrats to Angela, the true unspoken hero of Ghost Island.

Next up is the season with probably the second least likeable cast ever. Is anyone else feeling cold?