A Brief History of the Survivor Heist Vote
After Operation Italy, the strategy has officially reached god-tier status.
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As “New Era” seasons go, Survivor 47 has been one of the good ones. Jeff Probst’s post-pandemic makeover of the landmark reality show has its irksome tendencies: a too-formulaic structure (why are we locked into three tribes of six every season?), an overabundance of advantages, the decision to cast exclusively superfans whose life’s dream is to be on Survivor. But 47 has navigated those waters better than most, delivering some genuine interpersonal conflict and elevating a handful of satisfyingly devious characters including the initially hapless Andy Rueda and Keyser Söze-ian corporate lawyer Genevieve Mushaluk.
But easily the season’s best moment came in episode 12, “Operation Italy.” The title referred to the plan hatched by Andy, Genevieve, and sports podcaster Sam Phalan to turn the tables on the majority alliance, of which Andy was a part, and oust one of the game’s biggest threats, Caroline Vidmar. The plot — involving Genevieve creating a fake immunity idol and Andy convincing the “Underdog Alliance” of Caroline, Sue Smey, Rachel LaMont, and Teeny Chirichillo to split their votes among Genevieve and Sam — was presented to the TV audience like an Ocean’s Eleven–style caper, complete with split screens and a jazzy knockoff score.
It was incredible television and the most complete New Era realization of a strategy that has become somewhat legendary in Survivor fandom: The 3-2-1-style vote split, where you convince your opponents to split their own voting bloc so you can ride in with a plurality (that is, the most votes but not the majority of the votes) and pull off an elimination with fewer numbers. It doesn’t happen as often as a blindside vote, it’s not as flashy as busting out an immunity at tribal council (though sometimes an idol play is involved), and the stakes may not be quite as high as the ultrarare drawing of rocks to break a tie. But an engineered three-way vote is in many ways a more impressive strategic gambit. It involves complicated tribal math and the chutzpah of at least one player to try something risky, and it has been successful for Cirie Fields in the past. After Operation Italy executed this particular strategy with the panache of a sleek vault robbery, I’m proposing we call this type of play a Heist vote and place it among the god tier of Survivor maneuvers. Let’s break down its history and some of its most memorable iterations through the years.
Origins
The earliest example of anything approaching a Heist came in the very first season, Survivor: Borneo, at the very first merged tribe vote. With the concept of tribal alliances still exotic at this early stage of the show’s evolution, the Pagong tribe members were a mess of conflicting agendas and illusions about making voting decisions based on integrity and other such nonsense. As a result, the ten votes cast at tribal council went to seven different people, allowing the Tagi alliance to load their four votes onto Gretchen — beloved, capable Gretchen — and essentially change the game of Survivor forever.
But does this qualify as a proper Heist? To count, the strategy must adhere to a few criteria: It needs a mastermind; it needs to deflect the votes off of an agreed-upon intended target and instead eliminate someone from the majority alliance; it needs to do so via splitting the majority alliance’s votes; it may or may not involve the use of an advantage or immunity idol, but instances of the majority splitting their votes to flush an idol but still oust someone from the minority alliance should not count. The biggest argument for the Borneo merge vote not counting as a Heist is that there was no majority alliance to speak of, and thus no effort made to engineer a split vote. The Tagis just took advantage of the chaos.
In a few instances, the Heist is best defined by the early attempts that failed. A textbook near-Heist occurred in Survivor: Guatemala (season 11), when Brian Corridan tried to save himself in his tribe of six, which was evenly divided between three former Yaxha members (Brian, Gary Hogeboom, and Amy O’Hara) and three former Nakum (Danni Boatwright, Bobby Jon Drinkard, and Brandon Hellinger). Brian had already performed a bit of robbery the week before in baiting the fratty Blake Towsley to brag about himself to the point of irritating his allies, Danni and Bobby Jon, into voting him out. This time, the idea was to convince those same two to put their votes on Amy, who had injured her ankle in that week’s immunity challenge. As a sympathy vote for the hardworking Amy, they’d “let” Brandon vote for Brian (who Brandon wanted to vote out anyway), leaving the door open for Brian, Gary, and Amy to vote out Bobby Jon. It was an ambitious idea, and Gary and Amy ultimately didn’t have the stomach to risk a tie vote if Brandon changed his mind, so Brian went home one move short of Survivor legend status.
Cirie found herself the victim of a legendary Heist vote in season 20, Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains, when Tom Westman and Colby Donaldson, residing at the bottom of the Heroes’ pecking order, pulled J.T. Thomas to their side and used Cirie’s own plan to split the majority alliance’s votes between Tom and Colby (to flush out Tom’s idol) against her. Tom played his idol to cancel the three votes cast against him, leading to a 3-2-0 vote to oust Cirie. That Heroes vs. Villains vote carried with it extra irony considering Cirie was the person who, four seasons earlier on Survivor: Panama, pulled off the very first 3-2-1 vote split. This remains the gold standard for a Heist vote. With tribe target Terry Deitz immune, the tide began turning against Cirie’s top ally, Aras Baskauskas. While other players might have been content, at final six, to let well enough alone and slide into the final five, Cirie saw an endgame shaping up where both Terry and Shane Powers were fixing to drag hippie malcontent Courtney Marit to the final two as an easy goat. Those plans left Cirie out in the cold, so she leveraged Shane’s stubborn desire to vote out Danielle against Terry and Courtney’s plan to vote out Aras, allowing her, Aras, and Danielle DiLorenzo to take out Courtney and severely weaken both Terry and Shane. It was the culmination of one of the best arcs in Survivor history, as Cirie started the season afraid to pick up a pile of leaves and ended it making one of the most actively baller moves in show history.
➼ It should be noted that a 3-2-1 vote split is neither strictly necessary nor strictly sufficient to count as a Heist. Survivor: Caramoan’s split vote — when John Cochran turned the tables on ally Brenda Lowe at final six — falls a bit short of Heist status. In this case, the vote was indeed split 3-2-1, but it was more a case of Cochran convincing two other members (Dawn Meehan and Sherri Biethman) of the five-person majority alliance to cannibalize one of their own an episode early, pulling them to his side to create a new final-three alliance after Lowe was eliminated.
And while there have been multiple votes through the years that qualify for Heist status, a handful have risen to the top and deserve a proper accounting.
Survivor: Kaôh Rōng: Aubry takes out Scot 4-2-2
Original Target: Aubry Bracco
Mastermind: Aubry Bracco
Voted Out: Scot Pollard
How It Went Down: The middle stretch of Survivor: Kaôh Rōng had turned into a kind of dystopian jock-ocracy, where two of the show-designated “Brawn” tribe members — Kyle Jason and Scot Pollard — declared themselves invincible and proceeded to bully the rest of the (mostly female) contestants around camp: Aubry Bracco, Michele Fitzgerald, Cydney Gillon, and Julia Sokolowski. Kyle and Scot’s invincibility came because of their alliance with soft-spoken, gay, friend-to-chickens Tai Trang, whose hidden immunity idol could be combined with Jason’s to form a “super idol,” which could be played after the votes were read. As long as they stuck together and agreed to combine the idols, the alliance rendered the three of them effectively invincible, since no one would dare make a move against them and risk the bounce-back vote. Cydney had turned on them a few episodes earlier, and so Kyle and Scot wanted to strong-arm Aubry into voting out Cydney, a move that would be all upside for the boys and all downside for Aubry, who would lose her physically strongest ally.
But after Kyle won the immunity challenge narrowly over Aubry, he and Scot decided that Aubry was emerging as more of a social and strategic threat, and they informed Tai that she would be their new target. Aubry, meanwhile, knew that floaters Michele and Julia were planning to put their votes on Tai in the hopes of flushing out his immunity idol. Without Michele and Julia, Jason and Scot would lose their majority numbers if Aubry could only get Tai to flip to her side. Aubrey smartly played on Tai’s obvious temperamental discomfort with being adjacent to bullies Kyle and Scot and offered him an opportunity to join up with her, Cydney, and Aubry’s silent partner, Joe Del Campo. Before tribal council, Jason gave his hidden idol to Scot, with the plan to combine it with Tai’s after the votes and super-idol Aubry out of the game, but Tai ultimately refused, having aligned with Aubry for the 4-2-2 blindside and taking Scot out of the game.
Why It Ruled: In Survivor lore, this moment is best known for Tai taking a stand against Scot the hulking bully, and certainly the moment of Tai tightly shaking his head “no” and sealing Scot’s face is TV gold. But strategically speaking, Tai was merely the inside man in Aubry’s well-executed Heist. With her own neck on the line, Aubry reshaped the vote to her own specifications. She knew Julia and Michele were too committed to playing both sides to risk a vote against Scot, but since Aubry knew they were putting their votes on Tai, she never even bothered to include them in her plan, because they were already doing their part by not voting with the boys. She knew exactly which buttons to push to get Tai to flip and convinced him he’d have her alliance to protect him if he did. This is the move that should have won Aubry the season, and would have if Scot and Jason weren’t giant babies about it on the jury, allowing Michele to take home the win.
Survivor: Winners at War: Tony blindsides Sophie 4-3-2
Original Target: Jeremy Collins
Mastermind: Tony Vlachos
Voted Out: Sophie Clarke
How It Went Down: Tony Vlachos had spent the first half of Survivor’s epic “Winners at War” season keeping his inner freak at bay, knowing that it wouldn’t take much to make himself a target even among a group of 20 Survivor champions. But once the merge hit, Tony let himself out of his cage, and despite the fact that he found himself ensconced in a majority alliance at final nine, he needed to do something big and flashy.
The plan was for the majority alliance (Sarah Lacina, Sophie Clarke, Ben Driebergen, Nick Wilson, and Tony) to pull Kim Spradlin and Denise Stapley over to their side and do a split vote between Jeremy Collins and Michele Fitzgerald in order to guard against a possible idol play and, ideally, vote Jeremy out. Seeing an opportunity to sow chaos, Tony pitched Nick on a plan to blindside Sophie (who Tony saw as a rival for Sarah’s loyalty), and with Nick onboard, he set about convincing Jeremy and Michele to change their votes from Ben to Sophie. It took a while to convince Jeremy that Tony wasn’t full of shit (understandable) about Kim and Denise flipping on him, but when the votes were read, Jeremy and Michele had joined Tony and Nick to vote out Sophie with an idol in her pocket.
Why It Ruled: For as nutty and self-consciously wacky as Tony was, his read on the game at this moment was on point: Sophie was getting awfully close to Sarah, and in flipping on Sophie several votes before it was necessary, she never thought about playing her immunity idol. Meanwhile, Tony was basically in the position of pleading with Jeremy to allow Tony to save him from elimination.
Survivor 42: Maryanne blindsides Omar 3-2-2
Original Target: Jonathan Young
Mastermind: Maryanne Oketch
Voted Out: Omar Zaheer
How It Went Down: Immediately prior to this episode, Omar had masterminded Drea Wheeler’s elimination by tipping off Mike Turner that Drea would be using her Knowledge Is Power advantage against him to acquire his immunity idol. Mike gave the idol to Omar for safekeeping, and Drea was voted out. But no sooner had the tribe returned to camp than both Mike (who Omar had just saved) and Maryanne (Omar’s ally since Day 1) decided Omar had to go next — at final six. As was typical for New Era Survivor, the state of alliances was in flux, but the general alignment at this point was a loose alliance of original Taku members (Maryanne, Omar, and Lindsay Dolashewich) with Mike, who also had an alliance with Jonathan Young, who had been aligned with his fellow Takus but was now a target for being too much of a competition beast. (Romeo Escobar was also there as the player everybody wanted to drag to the final jury with them because he’d be easily defeated.) When Jonathan finally lost the immunity challenge later in the episode, the time seemed ripe to finally get rid of him — but no, that would be too easy.
Instead, Maryanne aggressively pitched Mike, Romeo, and eventually Jonathan on blindsiding Omar. But Lindsay — who’d won the immunity challenge — had an idol that needed to be used at the next tribal council, and Mike and Jonathan were afraid she’d play it on Omar and one of them would catch the ricochet vote. Ultimately, Mike and Jonathan did vote for Romeo, while Lindsay and Omar stuck with the plan to vote out Jonathan. Maryanne, however, had an extra-vote advantage from earlier in the season, and she combined that with Romeo’s vote to get a blindsided (but oddly impressed) Omar out of the game.
Why It Ruled: In the New Era of Survivor, each season has brought a new crop of superfans falling all over one another to make some kind of Big Move to pad out their résumé. It’s been the era of players voting out their closest allies just so they can claim to have masterminded a blindside to the jury. But it’s also been the era of players immediately voting out anybody who makes a big move because they’re suddenly too big of a jury threat. (It sounds exhausting because it is.) Maryanne was aware of the threat that a challenge beast like Jonathan posed, but she was far more afraid of making it to the final jury without having made a signature move, so she leaned hard on Mike and Jonathan to vote her way (Romeo was an easier sell). Maryanne ultimately failed to persuade Mike and Jonathan to change their minds — which makes this less impressive of a Heist, if I’m being honest — but it ends up looking cool because Maryanne basically pulled off this Heist all by herself. However, most true Heists have a certain “getting the band together” aspect to it, and Maryanne and Romeo alone didn’t make for much of a band.
Survivor 47: Operation Italy takes out Caroline 3-2-2
Original Target: Genevieve Mushaluk
Mastermind: Andy Rueda
Voted Out: Caroline Vidmar
How It Went Down: Sam made the first move when he brought Andy along with him and Genevieve to the reward feast, where the three of them hatched the plot to oust Rachel, the player everyone agreed was the biggest threat to win the game. Genevieve and Sam created a fake idol, which easily fooled the easily fool-able Teeny. Andy, meanwhile, was able to sway allies Caroline, Rachel, and Sue to fear a Genevieve idol play enough to split the votes between Genevieve and Sam. The only snag was when Rachel won the immunity challenge, requiring Andy, Genevieve, and Sam to pivot to Caroline as the next-best target. After some masterfully subtle manipulation by Andy — airing out his fears of a worst-case Genevieve idol play without ever strong-arming his plan to guard against her idol by splitting votes — Rachel, Teeny, Caroline, and Sue did indeed split their votes between Genevieve and Sam, allowing Andy to join the two targets to eliminate Caroline.
Why It Ruled: This one has all the elements. From a production perspective, Andy made for a perfect mastermind, as he’d been giving confessionals since at least the merge talking up his Machiavellian gameplay, even if it mostly seemed like a lot of puffery from someone who’d been playing from the bottom of the heap all game. It was hard to tell whether the show was setting up a successful Heist or a story of Andy’s hubris going too far. As Genevieve laid out in a confessional, there were so many ways this plan could have gone wrong, everything from the Underdog Alliance changing their mind about splitting votes to someone playing an advantage on Caroline (as Sue was indeed contemplating) to Andy being less gung-ho about voting out Caroline as he was about Rachel and just bailing on the plan entirely. And yet, just like in Ocean’s Eleven, it was executed to perfection, and a serious threat to win the game was ousted in Caroline.
Yes, the next two votes saw Andy and Genevieve eliminated in quick succession, taking a bit of the shine off of Operation Italy’s gleaming stature. That’s just the way it goes in the New Era. Rachel won the season after escaping Operation Italy’s clutches by the skin of her teeth, and in doing so, her victory looks all the more impressive.
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