The Hunger Games and Reality TV

Spoilers for the entire Hunger Games series and prequels. Spoilers for Episodes 1 of Survivor 50 including first boots. Spoilers for Survivor 48 & 49. Spoilers for Australian Survivor: AU vs. the World in references.

(Authors Note: I had originally intended to write up a quick comparison of the arc in the first four episodes to the Quarter Quells depicted in the series. However, in wanting to fully breakdown and compare the page references, strategic dynamics, and social problems, this got very long very quickly and will have to be released in parts. Apologies for the delay with syndicated programming.)

We are now four episodes into the 50^th season of Survivor, titled In the Hands of the Fans, and whether intentional or not, the references and parallels to Suzanne Collins series, the Hunger Games, are everywhere. Even more specifically, references to Catching Fire, the story of Panem’s 75^th Hunger Games and third Quarter Quell, have become evident in the overall game design and alliance splits.

Starting with Episode 1 “Epic Party,” some surface-level structural similarities have immediately begun to emerge. In Panem’s 75^th Annual Hunger Games, 24 returning victors were reaped to fight to the death. For this season of Survivor, 24 returning players were asked back, some winners, but most legendary for the impact they left on the game. As many avid fans of the Hunger Games franchise know, tributes from Districts 1,2 and 4, known as Careers, have been raised their entire lives to fight and win the games.¹ The Careers typically all team up in a Pack of six before the Games even begin, taking time in the training circuit to solidify their alliance.² For the most part, however, the Career pack does not solidify until the Games have truly begun.³ Survivor 50 features a group of six iconic “old era” players, each with multiple showings under their belt, that took the main stage immediately as our “Careers.”

Looking at the Cila tribe, Jenna Lewis-Dougherty, Cirie Fields, and Ozzy Lusth, all iconic for their showings within the first 20 seasons of the game, can be somewhat representative of a pre-game Career Pack. Over on Vatu, Colby Donaldson and Stephenie LaGrossa ring out as the most Career-like castaways on their tribe. And of course, everybody’s favorite Dragon Slayer, Benjamin “Coach” Wade, stands alone on the Kalo tribe. All “Careers” in their own right, these players have made a name for themselves bringing the best of gameplay and the performance arts to Survivor. Unlike the Hunger Games, however, these “career” style players, have only teamed up in niche groups based upon their tribe division rather than any solid pre-game alliances taking form based upon their legend status. Any pre-game alliance flourishes that have shone through so far do slightly mimic the dynamics in Catching Fire between the Careers, our primary protagonist Katniss Everdeen, and her district partner Peeta Mellark.

The ultimate showing of Career and legend dominance immediately kicked off with Survivor’s fight for supplies. At the 26:55 mark of the first episode our elder Gen Z star, Rizo Velovic, aptly announces to us “as a super fan, I know everyone here is very dangerous. So, Survivor 50, in the Hands of the Fans is going to be more like Survivor 50, Welcome to the Bloodbath.” The term “bloodbath” can be traced back to the Roman Gladiator games and those historic games were the actual blueprint Collins used for her fictional Hunger Games.⁴ In the Hunger Games, a bloodbath of its own is featured right at the start of the Games. When the 24 tributes in Collins’s fictional dystopia enter the arena on their platforms, they “have sixty seconds to take in the ring of tributes all equidistant from the Cornucopia” which is “spilling over with the things that will give [them] life [there] in the arena.”⁵ After the sound of a gong signals the start of the Games, tributes spread out to attack, the Careers typically getting ahold of the supplies first and then pressing their physical advantage to gain a numeric one.⁶ Rizo, the hero of his own tribe’s “fight for supplies” on Survivor 49 did utter the aforementioned line on 50 after all 24 castaways, split into three tribes, participated in the marooning challenge before the actual “fight for supplies” began. This initial marooning challenge, the symbolic start of Survivor 50, gave the winning tribe, Vatu, fire in the form of flint and a bonfire back at their camp. And of course, we all know “fire represents your life in the game of Survivor” as Jeff Probst himself reminded us of.

Moving into the actual “fight for supplies,” one member from each of the tribes was sent to participate in a three-way face off. Coach went forward for the Kalo tribe and Ozzy went forward for the Cila tribe. From Vatu, the winners of the marooning challenge, Quintavius “Q” Burdette, was sent forward or volunteered as the representative from his tribe. While Q was not included in the Career casting assessment laid out above, his combination of game knowledge, social skills, and physique immediately made him a “big player” on his tribe and a “threat” in the game to anyone not aligned with him. These three men, two Careers and one a legend on the rise, then went on to battle it out to be the first to bring necessary camp supplies back to their tribe.

In this “fight,” the three men counted down a starting time, climbed to the top of a pole to knock off a bag of tools, dug up another bag, and then swam out into the ocean to collect their final bag. The tools in the bag were used to create a long pole with a hook at the end. The competitors would then use that pole to knock a key off a peg. They would do this all while behind or clinging to a bamboo wall designed to look like a cage. Once the key is knocked off the peg, this leaves the three tribe representatives a chance to battle it out and claim the key for themselves even if they weren’t the one to initially knock it off.

Quick side note for an interesting reference mostly unrelated to the Hunger Games that’s set up here. The bamboo wall, designed to look like a cage as well as the “escape” key being fought over is a niche reference to how Reality TV and Prisons are often the two most studied places to learn about social psychology and strategy. Chrissy Hofbeck, at the 47:09 mark, reminds us that “[she] knows, its a microcosm of society and relationships of people, but truthfully [she] love[s] the strategy.” Jenna Lewis herself, the first to ever do it, really brings the reference home though when Survivor 49 winner, Savannah Louie finally reveals her winning status to her tribe. At the 34:50 mark, chronologically before Chrissy’s line about the “microcosm of society,” Jenna reminds us that “Survivor 50 is not gen pop. This is death row… You’ve got blood on your hands.” This brings us back to the prison match style bloodbath that is commencing on the beach and sets us up perfectly for Chrissy to come in and contextualize the reference we are seeing. Alright, now back to the action.

The rest of the fight for supplies played out on 50 as described, except for one small hiccup. After what we are told is approximately a half hour, Ozzy, caught up in an “honor and integrity” battle with Coach, suggested that whoever successfully knocked the key off the peg would just keep it. This “deal” that Ozzy made, though, was directly verbalized to and only acknowledged by Q. So, as you might imagine, when Ozzy finally knocked the key off the peg, Coach promptly stole it from him, insisting that since he did not agree to Ozzy’s proposal, his own code of honor and integrity remained intact. This initial bloodbath culminated in Coach announcing that he had “slay[ed] the dragon that is Ozzy,” getting the first pick at supplies and symbolically taking back the biggest advantage for his tribe.

While we’ve seen how the bloodbath plays out in a “regular” Hunger Games during Katniss Everdeen’s time in the arena in the 74^th Games, we also have an eerily similar bloodbath depiction during the 75^th Hunger Games. In Catching Fire, the second book in Collins’ original trilogy, Katniss is raised up into the arena on a metal plate and immediately notices that she is surrounded by saltwater.⁷ As Katniss begins to assess the arena in the minute she is given before “the gong” sounds, she sees that the Cornucopia, the object of the bloodbath “appears to be sitting on a circular island” but has “thin strips of land radiating from the circle” corresponding to “twelve spokes, each with two tributes balanced on metal plates between them,” which will force her to swim out to reach the supplies.⁸ For this Quarter Quell, Katniss wasn’t “let[ting] the thought of adversaries slow [her] down” she was now playing and “thinking like a Career.”⁹ The supplies available at the Cornucopia for the 75^th Games were piled in a tall stack rather than being strewn around  like the 74^th Games.¹⁰ Within minutes, Katniss and her quickly forged ally, Finnick O’Dair from District 4 – a Career, took control of the initial fight at the Cornucopia.¹¹ After noting there was ‘nothing but weapons’¹² available amongst the supplies, Katniss and Finnick successfully fight off the “prior alliance” formed by the “four Classic Careers” from Districts 1 and 2, leaving the rest of the supplies to go assist their district partners from their isolated metal platforms.¹³

While notably different from Survivor 50’s “fight for supplies,” the landscape and swimming requirement of the bloodbath in the 75^th Hunger Games bears an uncanny similarity to it. As soon as Katniss and her alliance of four, Finnick, Peeta, and Finnick’s elderly District partner, Mags, leave the “beach” where the bloodbath commenced, Katniss recognizes the climate as a Jungle, something she had only seen on television before.¹⁴ Notably, Survivor has been filmed in Fiji since at least the beginning of the “new era” which exists in a warm sub-tropical environment aka the jungle. Even more comparable is that even with Katniss and Finnick’s initial “advantage” over the supplies, the “classic Career” tributes were still able to use their numeric advantage to assert territorial control over the Cornucopia¹⁵. Similarly, in Survivor 50, once Coach won the initial “fight for supplies,” Q and Ozzy were sent to Exile Island and forced to sell one another their vote to take camp supplies back to their tribes. Ozzy, our “Career” castaway that most closely resembles Finnick O’Dair, chooses to sell Q the camp supplies in exchange for Q’s vote. This means Ozzy returns to camp empty handed but has an extra vote to play at a later tribal council while Q returns to his camp with supplies but loses his vote until after his first tribal council. Unlike Finnick, Ozzy did not have a close ally to assist him as well as Katniss did Finnick in their “fight for supplies,” although Q did do his best. As the Cila tribe dynamics played out upon Ozzy’s return, he was able to immediately gain himself workable allies and show the audience he has adapted to a more strategic style of gameplay. All before Survivor 50’s gong was symbolically rung at the first tribal, Ozzy had managed to bank an extra vote and immediately align himself with the strategic mastermind that is Cirie Fields, the other most prominent Career on his tribe.

Now to fully understand how this “fight for supplies” or bloodbath will continue to factor into the Quarter Quellian storytelling baked into Survivor 50’s first few episodes, we need to look at the “disaster tribe” critique that has become more prominent in recent years. As Survivor’s audience has increasingly noted since Survivor 41, the beginning of what is known as the “new era,” tribes that start out with fewer supplies tend to continue on a downward trajectory until a swap or merge portion of the game.¹⁶ Both Survivor 48 and 49, the immediate predecessors of Survivor 50, featured one of these “disaster tribes.”  Vula and Kele of 48 and 49 were practically decimated in the first few rounds of the game after repeatedly losing out in the immunity/reward challenges. In Survivor 48, the Vula tribe repeatedly lost challenges and voted out three members before the first swap. One of these vote outs, Justin Pioppi, became historic for being the result of multiple new era game mechanics converging at once to essentially “twist screw” Justin out of the game. Mary Zheng was the only castaway from the original Vula tribe to officially “make the merge” after fan favorite Saoiounia “Sai” Hughley and Cedrek McFadden were successive boots in the “earn the merge” twist. While Cedrek was a member of the jury that crowned the winner of Survivor 48, he still never officially “made the merge” like the rest of the castaways on the jury. Interestingly, Cedrek was also the only member of the jury to cast a vote for losing finalist and Survivor 50 castaway Joe Hunter. While Survivor 48 has been lauded by fans as “boring” in the merge portion of the game, I would argue that it’s a chronically under edited classic season made more controversial by the dramatic addition of twists.

Looking at Survivor 49, the disaster tribe dynamics that took over Kele were a bit more complicated than 48. Similarly to Vula, the Kele tribe was immediately run down by poor challenge performance and a lack of camp supplies. After their first two vote outs, the most insulated player on the tribe, Jake Latimer, was bitten by a sea krait and medevaced from the game. The Kele tribe lost the next immunity challenge after Jake’s sea krait encounter and voted off a fourth member, leaving only Sophi “Soph” Balerdi and Alex Moore. While both Sophi¹⁷ and Alex did end up making the merge, Alex sat on the jury while Sophi sat in the final three chairs on finale night. While most fans suspected Savannah Louie or Rizo Velovic to win 49 due to their casting slots on 50 leaking early in the season, some were shocked to see how Alex voted in the end. After Rizo lost to Savannah in the final four fire making challenge, decided by Sophi, Alex one of Sophi’s “day ones” cast his jury vote for Savannah to win the season. While Savannah’s competition prowess and massive comeback throughout the season were likely the biggest factors in Alex’s choice to vote for her some have wondered if there is more to the story. It has been confirmed that there was in fact pre-gaming that occurred on Survivor 49 that led to two contestants being removed before the game began.¹⁸ Alleged statements made after the finale speak to a potentially larger pregaming scandal that could have impacted the Kele tribe’s overall morale and therefore performance.¹⁹ Regardless of interpersonal dynamics, alleged pre-gaming, or even new game mechanics it’s clear that the lack of supplies and demoralization castaways experience on a “disaster tribe” cause a pretty massive setback. Even if a “disaster tribe” castaway manages to continuously survive a tribal vote, the lack of food or human necessity contributes to a “disaster tribe” castaway’s ability to perform well physically once swapped or merged. Similarly, tributes in the Hunger Games that are unable to succeed or gain an advantage in the initial bloodbath or fight for supplies at the Cornucopia continue to face a much more difficult path to victory.

Survivor 50’s Cila tribe, the one Ozzy showed up to empty handed after his role in the bloodbath, quickly began to display the “disaster tribe” markers laid out above. While Cila was able to make fire thanks to Dr. Christian Hubicki’s quick wit and usefulness with eyeglasses, they still lacked other necessary resources to establish tribe moral. During the first immunity/reward challenge, Cila took a pretty staggering loss forcing them to tribal council. In the time before Cila officially makes it to tribal, we see Jenna Lewis-Dougherty, the only representative from Survivor’s first season, immediately get to work, attempting to form a majority to vote out her fellow Career style castaway Cirie Fields. Because Cirie is Cirie, she immediately caught wind of Jenna’s plans and got to work on her own plan. Locking in fellow Career castaway Ozzy as her number one and then forming a four-person alliance with Christian, Rick Devens, and Emily Flippen, Cirie was able to strategically place herself in the majority and turn the tides on the move Jenna was planning. While Cila and its tribe members will come to reflect the complicated alliance dynamics Katniss deals with during the 75^th Games in Catching Fire, the first vote out from their tribe is far more comparable to how the bloodbath starts and ends in a typical Hunger Games.

Heading into the first tribal council of Survivor 50, at the 01:29:44 mark, newscaster Rick Devens levels with the audience and lets us know that “they’re getting rid of someone huge” and then presents us with the options: Jenna, “the season one representative,” Ozzy “a challenge beast,” and then Cirie the “fifth time player.”²⁰ Where Jenna, Cirie, and Ozzy should be natural allies due to their “old-timer” or Career status, we see that, for whatever reason, Jenna was unable to trust her fellow “Pack.” Once all of the Cila tribe was assembled at tribal council our host, Jeff Probst, hit them with his usual questioning. However, when he got to Jenna Lewis, he asked her to take him back to her very first tribal council from Survivor’s first season.

Jenna starts out by telling us she remembers “banging a gong” to enter her very first tribal council. At first they “took it kind of lightly” but it became “serious” to Jenna and her season one tribe after they had to return to camp with one fewer person. Like the fictional Hunger Games, the game only truly begins once the sound of the gong rings out and the bloodbath commences. While we already watched Survivor’s “fight for supplies” portion of the bloodbath, we can see Jenna’s reference to banging a gong as the start of the part of the bloodbath where tributes are literally killed and their bodies removed from the Games. Obviously, in Survivor nobody actually dies, they are just voted off and sent home. As the Cila tribe went to vote, we see Cirie write Jenna’s name down and tell us “you decided to come for me when I had zero intentions of sending for you, and I respectfully hope it comes back to bite you.” And come back to bite Jenna it did. In a 7-1 vote, Jenna Lewis, one of our “Careers” and season one representative was the very first voted off the island in Survivor 50. As mentioned earlier Cirie, Jenna, and Ozzy should have worked together, but just like the 74th and 75th Hunger Games, we see that not all Careers get along.

While the first round of the game ends here, the first episode continues, extending the “casualties” of the initial bloodbath that the first exit has come to represent. Kyle Fraser, the winner of Survivor 48, had to be medevaced after snapping his achilles tendon during the first immunity challenge. Clearly the “top dog” or “heart” of his Vatu tribe, Kyle’s loss rocked the tribe’s dynamic. On his way out, Kyle tells his tribe that he “hopes one of you guys [Vatu] takes this freakin’ thing” and asks “please one of y’all win” while boarding the boat that would take him off the island. Slight shades of a Capitol hovercraft removing a bloodbath body after the initial round of fighting, just to bring us back to the Hunger Games. Q, who had been their tribe’s representative in the “fight for supplies” and a quick ally to Kyle upon his return from Exile, seemed the most shaken up by his exit.

We end this episode with Q telling us he wants to honor Kyle’s request for one of their tribe to win the game. While Kyle’s medevac, aside from being the result of “the initial bloodbath” doesn’t have any direct comparison to any of the Hunger Games or Quarter Quell’s we have seen, aside from his boat exit, it can be most likened to the death of a tribute in the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the story Panem’s 10th Hunger Games. In Ballad one of the tributes meets their fate before even entering the arena. The Capitol Zoo, where tributes for the 10^th Games were forced to live prior to the start of the Games,²¹ became a place where mentors could meet up with their tributes to discuss strategy.²² The girl tribute from District 10 was killed by Peacekeepers after lashing out and killing her Capitol mentor, Aarachne Crane, who had been taunting her with food.²³ While Kyle cannot be held responsible for his injury, his medevac before his tribe really got to play, can be most closely representative of this interaction. It is worth noting that throughout Ballad, we see multiple tributes succumb to illness or injury limiting their participation in the Games. This happens again in Sunrise, however that incidence is more comparable to being a cast alternate. That being said, what both the death of District 10’s tribute and Kyle’s medevac shows us though, is that personal injury escalates the highly controversial entertainment factor used to bring in viewers.

This brings us to the end of the first episode of Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fans. Between the “fight for supplies” becoming the bloodbath, Jenna, a Career, being the first voted out, and Kyle’s devastating medevac, I think we can officially say the Hunger Games and Quarter Quell comparisons are on the nose. While I have no idea if any of these references are intentional or accidental, I do believe a cross promotional marketing framework has been applied by Survivor’s team. It would only make sense that in gearing up for the November release of the movie adaptation of Sunrise on the Reaping, the story of Panem’s 50th Quarter Quell, they would attempt to lean in and capture a younger audience. As we head into episode 2, titled “Therapy Carousel” more of the Quarter Quellian storytelling and alliance dynamics begin to take hold on the Cila tribe and Dr. Christian Hubicki begins to emerge as our Peeta Mellark.

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1. Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. (Scholastic, Inc., 2008), 94. Full quote: “The exceptions are the kids from the wealthier districts, the volunteers, the ones who have been fed and trained throughout their lives for this moment. The tributes from 1,2, and 4 traditionally have this look about them. It’s technically against the rules to train tributes before they reach the Capitol but it happens every year. In District 12, we call them Career Tributes, or just the Careers. And like as not, the winner will be one of them.” ↩︎
2. Ibid., 157. Katniss tells us, “Usually all of the Careers make it through the first day” and that “Five Career Tributes” are left when the Capitol shows the death toll at night. ↩︎
3. Ibid., 159. “they’re fighting in a pack… Often alliances are formed in the early stages of the Games. The strong band together to hunt down the weak then, when the tension becomes too great, begin to turn on one another. I don’t have to wonder too hard who has made this alliance. It’ll be the remaining Career Tributes from Districts 1,2, and 4.” ↩︎
4. Collins, Suzanne. “Q&A with Suzanne, Collins” Interview by Scholastic Inc. Scholastic, Inc., 2010. Accessed Jan 18, 2025. ↩︎
5. Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. (Scholastic, Inc., 2008), 148. ↩︎
6. Ibid., 150-152. Generalized summary of what Katniss sees during her first bloodbath in the arena during the 74^th Annual Hunger Games. ↩︎
7. Collins, Suzanne. Catching Fire. (Scholastic, Inc., 2009). 296. ↩︎
8. Ibid., 300. ↩︎
9. Ibid., 301. ↩︎
10. Ibid. ↩︎
11. Ibid., 303-304. ↩︎
12. Ibid., 304. ↩︎
13. Ibid., 305. In referring to Brutus, Enobaria, Cashmere, and Gloss, Katniss tells us, “These four classic Careers will no doubt have a prior alliance.” She then says she’d “be willing to take them on with Finnick” if it weren’t for Peeta “still stranded on his metal plate.” ↩︎
14. Ibid., 308. “Jungle. The foreign almost obsolete word comes to mind. Something I heard from another Hunger Games or learned from my father.” ↩︎
15. Ibid., 305-306. “…no one seems interested in pursuing us. Sure enough, Gloss, Cashmere, Enobaria, and Brutus have gathered, their pack formed already, picking over weapons… most of the tributes are still trapped on their plates.” ↩︎
16. For those unaware of the general “flow” of a Survivor season in the “new-era,” three tribes of six start the game and eventually merge into one tribe when there are around 11 players left. At least once before the merge occurs, a tribe swap happens, switching around the makeup of each tribe. ↩︎
17. During Survivor 49, there were two women with the name Sophie/Sophi. At one point in the game, Sophi Balerdi started to go by “Soph,” but I have decided to refer to her here by her given/chosen name. ↩︎
18. Ross, Dalton. “Jeff Probst says players cut from Survivor 49 were disrespecting the rules: ‘An even more blatant level.’” Entertainment Weekly. Updated September 25, 2025. https://ew.com/jeff-probst-players-cut-survivor-49-disrespecting-rules-11816250 ↩︎
19. Cheema, Elizabeth. “Survivor 49 Pregaming Controversy Explained.” Reality Tea. January 9, 2026. https://www.realitytea.com/2026/01/09/survivor-49-pregaming-controversy-explained/ ↩︎
20. Cirie has actually played Survivor six times. Spoiler: this includes her fourth place finish in Australian Survivor: AU vs the World. ↩︎
21.  Collins, Suzanne. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. (Scholastic, Inc., 2020), 46-47. Coriolanus Snow, the mentor for the District Twelve female tribute travels with all the tributes from their train to the zoo. When they are dumped Coriolanus notes that “he was in the monkey house at the zoo.” ↩︎
22. Ibid., 48-124. After Coriolanus’s first “trip” to the zoo, he continues going back. Additional Capitol students/mentors also join in up until Chapter 9. After a series of unfortunate events culminates in the rebels bombing the arena, mentors, tributes, and even Capitol citizens were essentially put on lockdown until the actual start of the games. ↩︎
23. Ibid., 98-100. ↩︎