By John Powell – GlobalTV.com

It is one thing to be voted out with a real immunity idol in your back pocket. It is quite another to head off to Ponderosa with a phony idol. Survivor’s Sarah Wade had one heck of a close call in not exacerbating her situation by playing that fake idol.

“I obviously had no idea in the moment but while I’m sitting at Ponderosa, after the game, I was hoping it was fake so I can like sleep at night because I was not sleeping. I think in finding out that it was fake 99 per cent of what I felt was relief. I didn’t have this immense regret,” she said.

The fake immunity idol wasn’t the only twist that impacted Sarah’s game on the island. There was the odd tribal switcheroo. Instead of having everyone draw new buffs as the producers usually do, the tribe who won the reward challenge last night got to send one person from each tribe out on a journey. What the Soka tribe didn’t know is that their picks would be swapping tribes and receiving a freebie immunity idol to protect themselves with. Josh went to Tika. Jaime went to Soka. Carson went to Ratu. When he arrived, Josh teamed with ‘Chaotic’ Carolyn at Ratu to pave the way for Sarah exit. While Sarah does blame the twists for part of her downfall she also takes some responsibility for how things played out.

“I do think the twists were components of my downfall but twists are part of the game. It was also up to me to react to them and to do better with them. None of those twists guaranteed that I was going home. Those twists put obstacles in my way, in everyone’s way and everyone had to deal with them. I clearly didn’t properly deal with them. What twists do is they add complexity. They make the world of Survivor more opaque. You don’t know how many votes there’s going to be at any tribal. You don’t know if an idol is real anymore…I think that in all of that it just reduces your ability to plan,” she said.

With the producers introducing their own fake idols and previous players creating their own Sarah wonders what affect they will have on the game and the players going forward.

“I’m so excited to see what future players do! We didn’t know that there would be production-made fake idols. You can sometimes look at an idol and figure out if it was made on the island but now that production is creating their own fake idols that introduces a giant question mark for all idols. How are players going to view an idol now or evaluate if they’re real idols or not? Will they play with less confidence when they have an idol because there could be a chance that the idol is fake?” wondered the management consultant from Chicago.

Sarah admits that Josh joining and Carson exiting Tika really sent her game into a tail-spin and also hurt the tribe too.

“Carson and I had talked about another journey coming soon. He knew the full dynamics of what my journey was earlier in the game….When we were talking neither of us wanted to go because it just a higher risk. Maybe Carson was lying to me but it felt like we were aligned on that and that we wanted Carolyn to go instead. Carolyn was also so gung-ho about going on journeys but then the winning tribe got to choose and they selected Carson. My heart sunk. He had screwed me over but I do think we had really recovered. Our relationship died and he was by far our strongest at challenges. He’s a little puzzle master. Our boy genius,” she laughed.

What was most disappointing to Sarah is that she really felt her game was taking a turn for the better. She felt close to both Carson and Yam Yam. She could never could bond with Carolyn though. Being pitched as the decoy by her and Yam Yam hurt Sarah’s already rocky relationship with Carolyn. Josh whispering in Carolyn’s ear didn’t help matters either.

“I have so much respect for Carolyn. I think what you see is how we live our lives so differently. There’s a secret scene that came out where Carolyn is talking about how expressive she is and how important that’s been in her recovery journey. I think that’s so brave and so admirable but so different from me. I think that like in just our differences we’ve never been able to fully connect. It seems like she just doesn’t like me. We weren’t buddies. Of course, I could have tried to do more. I’m just me and she’s just her and we are extremely different,” she said.

Despite how her Survivor journey ended Sarah takes with her some very fond memories of her time on the island and her time with the Tika tribe.

“There are so many fun memories of our quirky little family. We had so many fun times, laughs and ups and downs. Those fun little tribe moments are so central to my Survivor experience,” she said.

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