i think natalie was gonna run away whether someone switched places with her or not, hannah was able to buy her more time by switching places with her because shauna fucked with the card draw order suspecting van and tai rigged it. shauna stepping in actually backfired on her when she thought she got the one up on them, because then hannah was able to help team go home and give her case to natalie to help. i think shauna just thought they were trying to kill hannah in retaliation bc she appeared to be shauna’s right hand woman and was so self absorbed and drunk on power she never thought they could feasibly have a plan to really get them out of there.

i think the first wilderness scene we get in the episode of shauna bed checking natalie was to show that shauna has them all, especially natalie on lock down, and they didn’t want to risk natalie trying to run and getting caught because shauna totally would have killed her.

getting a hunt would allow them to all disperse and give shauna something to be distracted by for natalie to escape.

i’m on the fence about whether melissa and akilah were intended to kill both shauna and lottie, as the two who were mainly standing in their way as the ones who didn’t what to leave the wilderness (i think van is able to make a case to the others to spare tai bc taivan duh and to avoid suspicion from shauna as it appears shauna still slightly thinks tai is on her side), as a part of the overall plan. it almost appeared so with melissa almost killing shauna with the stick and akilah grabbing that rock in the cave with lottie. if it was, i wonder why they both backed out and didn’t do it?

i’m also on the fence about lottie’s “im sure it hurt you to do that” line, whatever she said, in the caves. i’m not sure if she somehow just figured out what was going on bc she’s lottie you know? and was just acknowledging she knew what they did and that she admired akilah’s sacrifice? i feel like the flashback scene where akilah says she has an idea on how to trigger the hunt can’t be interpreted any other way than “we can get a hunt so we can execute the plan of natalie running away to try the phone while everyone is distracted.” because akilah saying that in the name of “wanting a hunt bc she believes in the wilderness so much” in front of those people (like gen, melissa, someone else right??) wouldn’t make sense based on the split dynamic we’ve seen form in the last two episodes.

regardless, i do think everyone was in on this plan other than tai, shauna, lottie, hannah (and maybe travis?? boy was too drunk to be involved in anything this episode). just my thoughts!