S5 Israel

**S5 Israel** was the third season of Rarvivor. The season began on March 20th 2021 and ended on April 20th 2021. It was won by Cena in a 6-1-1 vote over Brandon and Aus10. Jericho was awarded Player of the Season.

## Structure/Twists

* **Starting Tribes:** This season started with 3 tribes of 6 people each.
* **Tribe Swap:** There was a tribe swap at the final 15, swapping into 3 tribes with equal number of players.
* **Merge:** The merged tribe consisted of 13 people.
* **De-Merge:** At final 12, the merged tribes split into two tribes of 6 players each. Both tribes went to tribal council, where the eliminated players competed in fire-making challenge to stay in the game and be given the choice to swap to the other tribe.
* **Re-Merge:** The two tribes merged again and the Re-Merged tribe consisted of 10 people.
* **Final Tribal Council:** A final three faced a jury of 8.
* **Idol Search:** Three idols were hidden in a shared system called the color scheme.
* **Pay For FTC:** At final 7, the players got the option to pool their fire tokens for a two or a three player final tribal council scenario.

## Fire Token Menu

* **Idol Clue (1 fire token):** The player can choose between 5 different clues and the idol the clue is associated with.
* **Pizza (1 fire token):** The player gets one extra guess that day.
* **Peanut Butter (1 fire token):** The player gets information about the contents in the idol searching system.
* **Sneak Peek (1 fire token):** The player can sneak on another player and find out about their advantages and amount of fire tokens. There was also a 50% chance the player who was sneaked upon found out.
* **Speadsheet Copy (1 fire token):** The player receives a screenshot of the voting chart. Voting charts were always updated right after a player got eliminated.
* **Literally Nothing (2 fire tokens):** Literally nothing.
* **Pull a Player (2 fire tokens):** The player can swap another player to their tribe. This can't be purchased during an active tribal council.
* **Mutiny (3 fire tokens):** The player can swap to another tribe. This can't be purchased during an active tribal council.
* **Cast a X Debt (X+1 fire tokens):** The player casts a debt on another player. This player is not allowed to vote at the next tribal council unless they pay off their debt. The debt is repaid to the hosting team.

## Reception

The best season in the first Rarvivor era (S1-S6). This season really had it all, a fun cast - even the premergers, fun votes, a lot of strategy and a spicy winner. This season has the distinction of actually having a fun premerge. This season had a twist of having a very early merge at f13, following a demerge and then merging again at f10. Despite being afraid of this twist flopping, it actually worked and brought up some fun gameplay. In one of the demerge tribals, we had a double tribal, where players voted out competed in firemaking - winner joins back, loser gets voted out. At one of the tribals, a player got idoled out, but no big deal, they had a big chance of winning back thanks to this twist. It took them too long during the timed firemaking challenge so they decided to “try it later”. Iconic. The merge portion of the game had been fun throughout. The final 7 onwards especially was amazing, first we have a player getting voted out with two idols in their pocket at f7, then we have a fancy successful idol play at f6 (4\*-2). What is interesting about the endgame is that it has a lot of similarities with the S3 endgame. The eventual winner, Cena, could be described as a lite version of Neil. He somehow convinced a player to keep him at f5, which resulted him barely surviving a 3-2 vote and then he managed to do a similar thing at f4, surviving a 3-1 vote and then winning it all. This season deserves to be #1 thanks to being consistently great!

## Trivia

* This is the only season with a de-merge.