Survivor: Apex – Week Three in Review

Survivor Fanatics, revel and rejoice! The third and penultimate installation of Survivor: Apex is here to grace your mind, eye, mind’s eye, etc.

I strive to resist hyperbole, but these Players and their deceptive wiles make it impossible not to resort to a thesaurus to find sufficiently dramatic adjectives to characterize their wicked gameplay. This week featured blindside after blindside, twist after twist, and betrayal after betrayal in the post-Merge Fera Tribe.

But as always, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning.

Hot off the heels of the elimination of Juror #1 Noa Jett ’25, the Fera Tribe seemed poised to be split into a Majority Alliance of seven (Shevani Mehta ’25, Micki Drucker ’25, Elle Ondeck ’25, Chris Huh ’25, Greg Mekenian ’25, Wes Jung ’25, and Shayon Malek ’25), a Minority Alliance of four (Ugomma Uche ’25, Raquel Szomstein ’25, Danielle Ramsay ’25, and CJ Wittman ’25), and a lone wolf hell-bent on getting himself voted out (Cam DiGiovanni ’25).

With that backdrop, the Fera Tribe marched towards Tribal Council. Unbeknownst to the Majority Alliance, they had Benedict Arnolds in their midst. Shayon and Wes, sensing they were at the bottom of their alliance’s pecking order, defected to the Minority Alliance to form a New Power Six.

That new alliance, armed with the element of surprise as well as the knowledge that Greg had a Hidden Immunity Idol, voted six-strong against Greg. Because Lover Boy Chris was mired in the throes of a date, the Majority voting bloc fell one short, and newly-minted Juror #2 Greg was voted out in a blistering 6–5 blindside with an Idol in his pocket.

The next Challenge faced Players with a Hoang Survivor classic, “Survivor’s Got Talent.” In this legendary Challenge, Players had thirty minutes to prepare, record, and produce a two-minute video showcasing a talent of their choosing.

The submissions were truly delectable. Players put it all out there, with some highlights immortalized here:

In the end, though, it was Shayon Malek’s ’25 lip-sync to “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” that earned the Golden Buzzer in the form of Individual Immunity.

With Shayon immune, the Fera Tribe once again devolved into scheming and plotting. The Power Six targeted Chris, who they knew to have another Idol. But Shayon and Wes, former allies and poker buddies of Chris, implemented a smokescreen where the two of them would vote instead for Elle to lure Chris into a sense of security to not play his Idol.

Unbeknownst to the boys, however, the former Majority Alliance had designs of their own. Micki Drucker ’25 used a Steal-a-Vote advantage to rob Ugomma Uche ’25 of her vote. With Micki’s robbery, and the boys’ votes diverted to Elle, not even Raquel Szomstein’s Extra Vote advantage could save her from being voted out in a shocking 5–4–2–1 vote (5 for Raquel, 4 for Chris, 2 for Elle, and 1 for Cam—his own vote, of course). Raquel became Juror #3, proclaiming “at least we lost because we can’t count.”

The Fera Tribe was already in disarray, but did the Jeffs let them regroup? Find nirvana? Seek peace? Of course not! First, the Players were faced with a grueling Survivor classic for their Top Ten Challenge, “Ballers,” which required Players to balance a ping pong ball on a cardboard slab. 

But the Challenge was just the beginning: The Jeffs imposed the infamous “Temporary Tribes Twist,” in which the remaining ten Players were randomly divided into two tribes for one vote only. The Player to balance their ball(s) the longest in each Tribe would be immune, before both Tribes would go to Tribal Council and vote out one of their own.

The two Tribes were: the Monarch Butterfly Tribe (Chris, Shevani, Wes, Shayon, and CJ) and the Queen Bee Tribe (Cam, Ugomma, Micki, Elle, and Danielle). Of the Monarch Butterfly Tribe, Steady Shevani emerged victorious, while it was Pilates Instructor Danielle that dominated the Queen Bee Tribe.

At the Monarch Butterfly Tribal Council, CJ, Shayon, and Wes put the final nail in Casino King Chris’s coffin, voting him out 3–2. Over at the Queen Bee Tribe, the girls finally fulfilled Cam’s wishes to be voted out 4–1 (with one rogue vote for Micki, insert side eye emoji). Chris and Cam thus became Jurors #4 and #5.

The game once again seemed like it had settled, with the Power Five Alliance (CJ, Shayon, Ugomma, Wes, and Danielle) domineering over the Three Stooges (Shevani, Micki, and Elle). At the next Challenge, “Organizing the Genus,” Logic Games Whiz Wes only bolstered their standings by taking home immunity in the grueling cardio-meets-logic-games-in-the-bitter-cold Challenge.

But one thing about Survivor: Apex—nothing is ever settled. In a shocking betrayal, CJ not only turned on the Power Five to work with the Three Stooges, but weaponized his Amulet Advantage from the pre-Merge Journey as an Extra Vote. The new Coalition of Four (CJ, Shevani, Elle, and Micki) targeted Heartthrob and Challenge Threat Shayon, smashing the frontrunner’s Survivor dreams and sending him to the Jury as Juror #6 in a gut-wrenching 5–4 vote.

That takes us to today, where the Final Seven (Elle, Danielle, CJ, Wes, Micki, Ugomma, and Shevani) are mere hours away from voting yet another Player to the Jury. Which faction will reign supreme in this new turf war? Which Players will survive the final gauntlet of votes and earn their place at Final Tribal Council? And which Player will ultimately take Apex’s crown and the whopping $630 prize?

Tune in next week and find out.

Lovingly but mysteriously,

The Jeffs

A Tribute to the Week Three Fallen: