“Survivor”: Season 44, Episode 4 Recap and Review

Vaughn Armour ’25 Columnist

On March 22, “Survivor” released episode four of season 44. It was a fun romp, and this season is quickly becoming must-watch television.

At the beginning of the episode, we learned that Josh is on the outs of the Soka tribe. He thinks he’s in the middle — aligned with Danny and Heidi as well as Frannie and Matt. In reality, both pairs are aligned against him.

At Tika, Carolyn continued to be hilarious. She concocted a wacky plan to trick someone into finding the fake idol she uncovered last episode, and it worked! She made an X out of sticks, and put it on the birdcage. She then hid the fake idol with her previously found note under a branch, which she marked with another X. Sarah ended up finding the fake idol, completely believing that it was real. It’s hard to watch players celebrate after finding fake idols. No matter how smart a player is, of course they’re going to fall for the fake, just like Sarah. It’s easy to laugh at the mistake, but there’s no way that Sarah could have avoided that scenario.

For the reward challenge, “Survivor” brought back the slingshot from “Survivor: Cambodia.” Soka won a large tarp, but the real prize was the ability to pick which player on each tribe would go on a mysterious solo journey. They chose Josh from their own tribe, Carson from Tika, and Jamie from Ratu.

This journey ended up having massive strategic ramifications. Each player was given an idol that will expire when the tribes merge, but they are now forced to swap into one of the other tribes. Being the only new member of a tribe is a horrible spot to be in, so it makes sense why they were given idols. I found this mechanism fascinating — it emphasized that Survivor is fundamentally a social experiment, which is why I grew to love it in the first place.

Josh went to Tika, Carson went to Ratu, and Jamie went to Soka. They all had idols (Jamie thought that she had a second one because she found Matthew’s fake).

At Tika beach, Josh lied about being a surgeon. The rest of the tribe saw through this, as he had previously mentioned having steady hands, and the timeline he gave for becoming an athletic trainer didn’t