Stephen Thompson

And I know we were joking about how in the hands of the fans is always a bad idea.

But they had a fan poll where they whittled 32 people down to 20.

And what that largely did was weed out people Jeff Probst, the host of Survivor and executive producer of Survivor, thought were interesting that nobody actually wanted to see.

And so, no, we're not going to get Troy Zahn.

No, we're not going to get Brad Culpepper.

We're going to get actual fan favorites and people the audience was most excited to see back on the show.

There were a couple of kind of early players I would have liked to have seen in this cast, but largely had very few complaints about it.

And then you get a bunch of really hungry, aggressive, thoughtful players, a mix of people I really love and a couple of people I really don't love.

And just the way the game plays out,

winds up being enormously beneficial.

There is an episode of this show where one of my favorite players absolutely pantses one of my least favorite players in kind of spectacular fashion.

And unlike a lot of seasons of this era, you don't necessarily get as much of the problem where all the threats get taken out between the merge and the final three.

Which is a really frustrating issue with New Era Survivor for me.

I have more of a problem with that.

I don't think there's an easy solution to it.

But I have kind of more of a problem with that aspect of New Era Survivor than I do with 8 million twists.

Are there seasons with way, way, way, way, way too many twists?

Absolutely.

The biggest problem is when you get down to the end and all of a sudden...

You're looking at a final three and you're like, I don't care about any of these three.