Secret War

**SurviVARs: Secret War** is the fifth season of *SurviVARs*. It had 20 All Star castaways marooned for 43 days. It premiered May 13th 2022 and the winner was crowned June 25th 2022.

## Production

This season of *SurviVARs* had 20 castaways divided into two tribes of ten. The game lasted 43 days but if someone had to quit or be ejected tribal council would be cancelled.

## Twists/Changes

* **Shot in the Dark -** Each player had a dice that they could sacrifice their vote to play, which would give them a 1/6 shot at immunity.
* **Secret Identities -** Each player was given a secret identity. When an Infinity Stone was found, the secret identity that found it would be announced.
* **Infinity Stones -** Six Infinity Stones were hidden throughout the game, each with its own power. If all six were not found by the time 8 players remained, Thanos would have completed the Infinity Gauntlet and half of them would have lost their vote that round.
* **Joint Tribals -** During the second swap, only one tribe could win immunity while the two losing tribes would attend Tribal Council together.
* **Multiverse Safari -** The Reality Stone was hidden in a miniature Safari server, where players could explore and interact with the Marvel multiverse using commands.

## Season Ranking (3rd)

**Cast - 1/6**

All-Stars HAD to be the best cast, no question. We brought back twenty of our best SurviVARS players, and so it’s inevitable that it would end up as our strongest cast. Sure, not everyone performed as well as they did the first time, and there were some really sad pre-merge boots. I think that’s to be expected in a cast like this, though, and doesn’t speak to the quality of these players. What makes up for some of the weaker points is looking at the players who did even better the second time around. Players like Merlin and Derrick stole the show and proved themselves more than they had in their first games, and this led to so many interesting and incredible moments. Every single character in this season had a narrative about their return, and they all played a role in the overall story. Even the earliest boots were interesting in their own way. We brought back 20 great characters, and got a great season because of it.

**Pre-Merge - 3/6**

Secret War’s premerge was a mix of really high highs and then lower lows. We had two successful Shot in the Dark plays, which is statistically insane but also absolutely bonkers in terms of how it affected the gameplay. These two plays really do help bump it up the pre-merge, because it set up the storylines of Merlin and Alice in such a dynamic way that had huge payoffs in the postmerge. Like, everything that happened in this season had the stage set by the way the premerge went down. Unfortunately for this ranking, sometimes these set ups weren’t exciting. Biggy, Vic, and Izzy were running the show pretty much immediately, but this also led to quite a few predictable votes. This was contrasted by wild moments like the Lex/Biggy tie, and the aforementioned SITD dice plays. So it didn’t break top two, but I still think it’s still a pretty top tier premerge.

**Post-Merge - 4/6**

Secret War’s post-merge is kind of hard to rank. There was a lot of really great stuff, like Izzy’s sheer dominance, Red’s underdog arc, and Merlin’s UTR manipulations. There were no unanimous votes until the very end either, but this usually followed the narrative of “Group A votes for Red while Izzy flips and votes with Group B to send someone else home.” This shows how much control Izzy had, but also wasn’t the most exciting thing to watch from a spectator perspective. Her story was great, but it got frustrating watching the rest of the cast let her pull all of the strings. I think this part of the game was off to a rough start with the Quint vote, because it was really unpredictable but was also decided by Winston’s relative inactivity, so who knows how much crazier the game may have been if that hadn’t have happened. The post-merge was a weird combination of storytelling too, because while some early arcs came to a great conclusion, it also saw some huge characters drop off like Winston and BK. It wasn’t a bad post-merge, it was just pretty predictable at the end, which probably hurts it a bit more since it’s an All-Star season.

**Gameplay - 2/6**

The strategy of this game was on another level, and I think that’s pretty obvious. Like I’ve said, Izzy alone makes the gameplay of this season top-tier. She ran circles around a cast of all-stars just like Tony Vlachos in Winners at War, and they were all more than content to let it happen. It wasn’t just the Izzy show though, because other players were trying their best to stop her, even if they were unsuccessful. Red had a real shot to win, and Merlin was only a few moves away from taking the crown too. Victoria played like a madwoman, basically becoming Thanos and holding nearly every advantage in the game. This was a season where players with good reads were able to make big things happen, and it lead to some big blindsides in the merge. The pre-merge gameplay was also really great, even if it was more subtle. Small things like Merlin throwing a vote onto Aria had huge ramifications on the game, and there were big plays like the Lex/Biggy tie (with one of the wildest live tribal councils as a result). There’s still one season that tops the gameplay of Secret War, but it’s pretty damn close. These All-Stars came to prove themselves, and played really hard because of it.

**Story - 2/6**

As a returnee season, a lot of people came in wanting to prove themselves, and they certainly did. I think this season has all of the best SurviVARS arcs in one: Victoria came in as a self-professed “mediocre winner,” then earned her place in the SurviVARS Mt. Rushmore by earning almost every advantage and dominating the game with Izzy at her side. Merlin wasn’t even originally cast (he was an alternate), and also viewed himself as a mediocre finalist, but then came in swinging and controlled a big part of the game from behind the scenes and walking away with POTG as a result. Derrick was a lowkey funny boy and an early boot in his first game, but then proved himself as a strategic threat with his second game. Alice was a scrappy underdog in Gotham and then was an even scrappier underdog in Secret War. JRay and Biggy reignited their duo from before and made it all the way to the end together, sharing 2nd place in a super poetic ending. Red and Izzy’s rivalry took a new shape when the two saves themselves by working together, almost guaranteeing that one of them would win in the end. Then, of course, we had Izzy. She came in as our most dominant winner, and everyone knew it, yet she seemed to do it again with ease. Trust me, we know it wasn’t actually easy, and Izzy had to do some really hard things in order to win, but a spectator wouldn’t be blamed for not believing it because of how smoothly she played. She played even better the second time around than she did the first time, and that’s no small accomplishment. We got everything we could’ve wanted from an All-Star season in terms of story, except for some heartbreaking early eliminations like Mason, Aria, and Quint.

**Hosting Experience - 4/6**

Secret War was a great season, but it was also a very stressful season, for the hosts and players alike. We had like twelve different idol hunts, a mini Safari, and so many twists to manage that it just felt overwhelming at times. The players were all contending with the weight of All-Star expectations, and everyone wanted to prove themselves, which meant there was more tension than a typical season. There was also a decent amount negativity in spec chat, which inevitably hurts the season’s tone overall. I love this season because of how fun it was to bring back so many great players, but the stress also knocks it down a few pegs.

**Overall Thoughts**

Secret War is a really great season, but a bit of mixed bag in a couple of categories, where we saw incredible gameplay and the best cast we’ve ever assembled, but also felt a lot of stress thrown in with a fairly predictable endgame. Overall, this is a stellar season, but it has a few more low points than the top two. I think Secret War is the highest high we’ve had in terms of gameplay and cast. This cast was cracked, and I’ll say it again for the people in the back. It felt like a great conclusion to the first era of SurviVARS, and set the stage for everything that we’re working on now.

## Trivia

* Will was originally on the season but had to drop out. They were replaced by Merlin.