“Survivor 50″ may be saving its biggest surprises for tonight’s finale, the first time the show will be doing a live finale in Los Angeles in 10 seasons, but it will be pretty hard to top the twist that was literally historic for the show. In Episode 10 of the 50th season of CBS’ hit reality show “Survivor,” YouTuber Mr. Beast made a cameo and offered the chance at doubling the prize pot to $2 million, all on the outcome of a single coin flip.
Speaking at a “Survivor” FYC event on the Paramount lot in Hollywood, specifically from the exact stage where host Jeff Probst will announce the winner of “Survivor 50” later this evening, Probst called the coin flip moment the finest and most memorable of the season. But he explained there was a whole lot that went into making that moment a reality, including watching a lawyer scramble off set to adjust the contract.
As was explained on the episode, an extra $1 million in prize winnings would be added to the final prize pot if someone flipped the coin and it landed on Heads. That contestant who flipped would also be safe from elimination during that night’s Tribal Council. If it landed on Tails, the prize pot would remain at $1 million, and the person who flipped the coin would be eliminated from the game immediately without a vote.
Probst, who is also the longtime showrunner for “Survivor,” explained that they knew they wanted celebrities on this season, but were tinkering with means to work them in. Country star Zach Brown hosted a surprise private concert as a reward, Billie Eilish lent her name to a unique idol, and Jimmy Fallon hatched what ended up being a devastating advantage that later turned into a death sentence.
For Mr. Beast, the show needed a big twist, but was torn, trying to hatch how to make it work.
“As we developed it, we realized the only way it works is if it’s a true Do or Die, and the only time we’ve done Do or Die was in the early seasons of the New Era,” Probst said at the event. “That was another idea that was mine that I hated the minute I was standing there, somebody with a Do or Die for Tribal Council, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is a carnival game for their life in the game. Is this a good idea? I don’t think it is.’ Thank God they got it right, twice! We dodged it. So I never wanted to go back to a do or die. Then I was like, this is ‘Survivor 50.’”
That’s when the lawyers came in. Should the coin flip have been successful, Mr. Beast himself had agreed to fund the additional $1 million in prize money. Probst explained all the ways they practiced the moment to make sure it was fair and all scenarios were accounted for. That included examining the coin made by the show’s art department to ensure it was evenly weighted and discussing what happens if it interfered with any part of the set at Tribal Council. The stone floors at Tribal are uneven and have a lot of cracks, so there’s room for error.
“So we start flipping it, and at one point, it lands in a crack on its edge. I went, ‘Oh, well, OK, so we should all agree, right, that if it lands on its edge, it’s not a legal flip. And the lawyer says, ‘Oh, no, there’s no contingency for it. She literally runs off the stage, says, I gotta get back to work,” Probst said. “She had to change the contract to say, if it were to land on its edge, it’s a re-flip.”
The flip itself could not have been better, with contestant Rick Devens more than willing to put his life on the line for a 50-50 shot, especially if it meant being etched into “Survivor” history by doubling the prize pot.
“It did everything you want,” Probst said of the moment. “It flips, and then it hits, and then it rolls, and we’re all just looking, and the players are standing up cause they can’t really see because it’s dark. …I don’t remember any of it. I just remember all of them screaming and going crazy … and then we had a vote.”
Fortunately, “Survivor 50” had a very willing participant for the coin flip in Devens. Devens in his initial season was seen as an aggressive, sometimes annoying player to the other contestants. He became an expert at finding hidden Immunity Idols, and prior to the coin flip this season, he hid a fake Immunity Idol at Tribal in the hopes that someone would find it and think it was real, only to “find it” himself and brandish his perceived safety to buy himself another day on the island.
Probst said Devens, more than anyone in the cast, made that coin flip moment his own, and he said he got a 10-minute voicemail from a famous (unnamed) fan who couldn’t believe what he had seen.
“He did 10 minutes on that moment, and he said, it was such a test of the human will,” Probst said. “He said, ‘That guy willed that coin to be the right way. And it was! Devens did it with carefree nature of, yeah, I might go home. I’ll probably go home tomorrow. But I might not. And if I get this, I’m definitely not.”
“Survivor” has already wrapped Season 51, and they’re imminently about to start Season 52, and Probst said they’re going into this season and future seasons, even as far as a potential Season 60, open to any ideas. For one, he confirmed they hope to bring back Loved Ones Visits, which became a logistical problem in the post-COVID era of the show. More celebrity cameos are a possibility, and they’re always hatching new ideas.
“I’m not saying they’re good ideas, I’m just saying, if you were in my head, every conversation I have, there’s a different part of my brain going, how can I get this into the game,” Probst said. “It could just be two people ordering something at a coffee shop and you just watch their banter and think that is interesting, how do we get that flavor in the game? Sometimes they’re just noodles for the future.”
One of the wackier ideas Probst said was bandied about came from the show’s editing team: airing an episode back to front, in which the episode begins with the reveal of which player goes home that week, and the rest of the episode backtracks to show us how we got there. Probst believes that confidence and craziness to experiment is what has made the show endure after 26 years and 50 seasons.
“We see ‘Survivor’ as a canvas that you can do anything with. And I’ll say it again, Change History,” Probst said of one of the show’s more notorious and controversial ideas. “Nobody loved it. We didn’t do it anymore. But we did it. We’re going to try things, and that’s always going to be what pushes us.”
