Survivor Firsts

At the beginning of Survivor Palau Jeff Probst (right) said in an interview that this edition of the series had a lot of firsts. Now that Palau is fast approaching its conclusion, I'd like to compile a list of these firsts.

To start us off:

No Merge
Stephenie as the last member of Ulong was "captured" into Koror (keeping with the war theme of this season). I read this was planned to happen only if a tribe got down to one member. Also I believe this is the first Survivor with just two tribe names, usually the merged tribe gets its own name.

Lone Survivor
Related to No Merge, Stephenie was the first Survivor to live by herself during the game after the rest of her tribe had been removed from competition.

Exile
First time a Survivor (Janu) was exiled. The producers wanted to give the players a reason to give their all in the competitions. Often when someone knows they're safe and don't really need Immunity they won't try their hardest. It's not so much living on your own for a night that's the punishment, it's being separated from the others so now they can plot against you. A nice twist even if it's not used every edition. It will be in the back of the minds of future contestants.

Quitting at Tribal Council
This was the first Survivor where someone quit at Tribal Council, Janu again. Players have quit before but never at Tribal Council. Also Ashlee and Jeff essentially just gave up.

Twenty Survivors
This was the first season to start with twenty Survivors, the most ever. More significantly two competitors were eliminated when they did the school yard pick'em to select the tribes.

Every Tribal Council
Stephenie is the first player to be part of every Tribal Council. Ulong lost every group Immunity challenge and Stephenie made it to the Jury so she will be at every Tribal Council on Survivor Palau.


This is what I've come up with off the top of my head. If you know of any other firsts please leave them in the Comments below and I'll compile an updated list.

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