We're set: new Vula tribe Edgic analysis for s48e5

This was a big episode for the new Vula tribe

Last week’s coverage:
new Vula tribe analysis episode 4
Winner rankings for episode 4

What an episode for new Vula! After going to Tribal Council last week, the two pairs of players remaining had some great development: they bonded over the tough times their parents experienced, forged an alliance together, and received challenge focus following their victory in the immunity challenge:

The edit really emphasized this win, giving it heroic music, subtitled quotes, and an extended shot of them embracing. The winner may or may not be among this group (I give the four of them collectively about a 50% chance to win the game) but the edit certainly wants us to like and care about them. I do think this group will at least play an important role in the merge.

Kamilla

We get a confessional from Kamilla in the first scene of this episode. She tells us she’s “going to keep playing this game hard”, once again hitting the Attack the game theme that I noted in my themes analysis of the premiere, then under the name of Taking Action. Jeff told us in the premiere that “just because you attack the game doesn’t mean you’ll be successful”. It’s certainly a big plus though.

Among the edgic community, the biggest criticism of Kamilla’s edit has been a lack of personal content. That was certainly answered this week:

As I mentioned in the second episode of the season, it seemed interesting that we have two in-game duos with father/daughter relationships: Joe and Eva as well as Cedrek and Sai. All three of Joe, Kamilla, and Shauhin’s stories concentrated more so on their Dad than their Mom, and Kamilla is notably the only daughter among those three. Maybe it’s nothing, but something to keep in mind going forward.

She also gets a little more prominence in the formation of the New Vula alliance:

Note as well the dramatic music in this scene: they really want us to believe this alliance will be a big deal.

This is more personal content for Kamilla: the possibility of voting out any of the other three out brings her to tears. And there’s also more strategic content, with her outlining how the four of them can be a force in the game.

As I said last week, Kamilla very well may be the “dragon”, aka a big threat to win that makes it far but the winner defeats on their way to winning. But dragons are not often as fleshed out as she has been so far. At the least this is a very good and entertaining edit for a dragon if that’s what she turns out to be.

As is, I have her tied with Eva for the most likely winner of Survivor 48.

Joe

Joe didn’t get a confessional this week. That is usually a bad sign as every winner after Erika in season 41 has had at least one confessional in every episode. However, here evaluating the context dampens the blow. Going by confessionals is a good general rule because they’re a proxy for getting the player’s perspective, but we heard plenty from Joe without seeing any confessionals from him. Him telling his story about his parents at camp didn’t count as a confessional, nor his explanation for why he helped Eva after the challenge.

So I don’t see this zero confessional episode as a red flag in a vacuum for Joe. That said, there are two things it would have been nice to see him talk about in confessional:

1. Being on the wrong side of the vote in the previous episode. He was the only person we didn’t get a confessional from in the Post-Tribal Council scene.

2. What he thinks about the new Vula alliance

For point (1), Rachel for instance was on the wrong side of the vote in Anika’s boot of last season. Like Joe, she was shielded by the edit, getting only one confessional in the episode. In the following episode however, she told us about how she wasn’t going to get fooled again and how she couldn’t wait for the merge to restart her game.

For both points, Joe continues to not get any strategic content, even when the situation arises for it. Now that I think about it, I don’t think Joe even commented on the California Girls alliance in confessional. Exceptions exist, such as Yam Yam in 44, but for the most part the winner does get a decent amount of strategic content. Not usually the most but at least some.

Lastly, Joe told us in the premiere that he would sacrifice his game for Eva:

He followed through on that in this episode. When Joe helped Eva it showed everyone how close the two of them are. Will there be negative consequences to Joe’s action? This episode gave us no foreboding tone that there would be, but can you blame them for not wanting to ruin the moment? It’ll be interesting to see if any of the players comment on them as a duo in the next episode.

Shauhin

I mentioned this last week about Shauhin:

A lot of that upside hinges on that first post-Tribal Council scene in the next episode. If he has a “Come to Jesus” moment or a “wake up call” and tells us in confessional that he’s going to play the game better going forward, then he’s right back in the mix. On the other hand, if he doesn’t get a confessional at all in that first scene back, or otherwise doesn’t sufficiently address how wrong he was here, then he’ll drop further.

Here’s what we got:

It would have been terrible for him if he didn’t get one, and the one he got was…fine. I was hoping for more, but it wasn’t awful.

Like Kamilla, a common criticism of Shauhin’s edit has been a lack of personal content and tone, but he got that as well this week:

However, one thing that continues to hold Shauhin back is his lack of a partnership. We’re now to the end of the pre-merge game and he still doesn’t have one. Maybe he finds one in the early merge, but the longer the season goes without it, the more I have to discount his chances of winning.

Kyle

Kyle had the least focus among new Vula this week. He got a couple of confessionals leading off the episode talking about his idol play. He also had a confessional narrating the food they won in the Reward Challenge and recapping the situation at camp. He was the only new Vula member to not have a segment talking about his parents, which would be more of an issue if he wasn’t a big part of the “Humble traits” scene back in the second episode.

Wrapping things up

The winner very well could be from this tribe, especially Kamilla or Joe. Either way though, I see this newfound alliance as very likely to be very important in some way in the merge.