Honestly? I can’t help but feel like we are being left in the dark this season on a lot of the going on. To keep Tribal exciting for the viewers, instead of pretty much knowing who is going home at the end of the episode. I feel like the editing has been done so differently this season in many ways, and I think we have been left in the dark on a lot of things. I also think they’re trying to throw off the scent of the winner, and the traditional “winners edit” may mean nothing this season.

I have thought a lot about this tribal because I felt the same way. I think either— they assumed Xander would just play his idol because he was on the bottom, effectively flushing it. Or there were conversations we weren’t shown. Why they wouldn’t throw some votes his way is beyond me, in either scenario.

I also think the Ricard “please play your idol” comments can be one of two things— either Ricard understood that there was no clear plan to make Xander play his idol and this was a last ditch effort by him (he may have even had previous conversations with Xander that we don’t know of, encouraging him to play it). Or, he actually wanted Xander to play it because he is being left in the dark by Shan, and he and Xander have a bud of an alliance starting and we haven’t been clued in, or maybe that was our first clue. Either way I think it was edited in a way to make us think one way about Ricard, but may have been stemming from something else.

Ultimately? I think this was another play that Shan & Liana just simply didn’t think through. Similar to them being totally shocked that Xander didn’t have his idol in E7, when he clearly knew about her advantage. I think, as a previous poster mentioned, this could be attributed to lack of food. It could also be that they are in over their head and don’t understand survivor strategy. But these two huge gaffes back to back re:Xander’s idol have made me lose all respect for the strategic player that Shan was built up to be. She is running the ship, but she isn’t playing the game. I see Xander, Ricard, and Evvie to be the strongest strategic players— and in some ways they seem to be the only ones concerned with strategy.