Survivor 41 is the forty-first season of the American competition television series Survivor. The season was first broadcast on September 22, 2021, on CBS in the United States and Global in Canada.
The finale aired on December 15, 2021, when Erika Casupanan was voted the Sole Survivor, defeating Deshawn Radden and Xander Hastings in a 7–1–0 vote. Casupanan also became the first Canadian castaway to win the title, the third Asian castaway to win (following Yul Kwon in season 13, Survivor: Cook Islands and Natalie Anderson in season 29, Survivor: San Juan del Sur), the first of Filipino descent to win, and the first woman to win in seven seasons, the last one being Sarah Lacina in season 34, Survivor: Game Changers.
Format
Survivor is a reality television show based on the Swedish show Expedition Robinson, created by Mark Burnett and Charlie Parsons. The series follows a number of participants isolated in a remote location, where they must provide food, fire, and shelter. One by one, a participant is removed from the series by majority vote, with challenges held to give a reward (ranging from living- and food-related prizes to a car) and immunity from being voted out of the series. The last remaining player receives a prize of $1,000,000.
Contestants
The cast was composed of 18 new players divided into three tribes: Luvu, Ua, and Yase. The tribe names come from the Fijian words for "flood", "wave", and "lightning" respectively. The merged tribe was named Viakana, which comes from the Fijian phrase for "hungry", which was suggested by Erika Casupanan.
The cast included retired National Football League player Danny McCray. Erika Casupanan became the second Canadian resident to compete on the show since the casting process was opened to Canadian residents in 2018.
Contestant Evvie Jagoda would come out as non-binary following the season, making them the first non-binary person to play Survivor, although they competed as a female.
+List of Survivor 41 contestantsContestantAgeFrom Tribe Finish Original None Merged Placement Day 51San Antonio,Texas 1st voted outDay 3 24Boston,Massachusetts 2nd voted out 35Chicago,Illinois3rd voted outDay 5 50Shawnee,Wyoming rowspan="3" 4th voted outDay 7 20Oklahoma City,Oklahoma5th voted outDay 9 46Portland,Oregon6th voted outDay 11 26Brooklyn,New Yorkrowspan="12" 7th voted outDay 14 47Plainview,New Yorkrowspan="11" 8th voted out1st jury memberDay 16 37Morgan Hill,California9th voted outDay 17 28Arlington,Massachusetts10th voted out3rd jury member 34Washington,D.C.11th voted out4th jury memberDay 19 20Washington,D.C.12th voted out5th jury memberDay 21 33Frisco,Texas13th voted out6th jury memberDay 23 31Washington14th voted out7th jury member Day 24 52Charleston,South CarolinaEliminated8th jury memberDay 25 21Chicago,Illinois2nd runner-up 26Miami,Florida rowspan="2" Runner-up 31Toronto, OntarioSole Survivor
Future appearances Player Ricard Foyé co-hosted the Drop Your Buffs, a companion program of Australian Survivor for its Australia vs. The World season.
Outside of Survivor, Danny McCray and Shan Smith competed on the first season of The Challenge: USA. In 2023, McCray competed on The Challenge: World Championship. Erika Casupanan competed on the first season of The Traitors Canada. Sydney Segal competed on The Challenge: Vets & New Threats in 2025.
Season summary
Eighteen new castaways were divided into three tribes of six: Luvu, Ua, and Yase. Luvu went undefeated in immunity challenges, while Yase got off to a rough start, losing the first two. Dominated by a women's alliance, they made up for the numbers deficit while Ua dwindled down to just Shan and Ricard. Their strong partnership enabled them to reach the merge, where they initially aligned with Luvu against the surviving Yase members. Liana turned against her old tribe to align with Danny, Deshawn, and Shan in a final four deal. However, Danny and Deshawn aligned with the others under Ricard and Erika's lead to take out a power player in Shan, busting the game open.
When there were six players left, Deshawn tried to pit longtime allies Erika and Heather against each other, to no avail. Despite being targeted for this, he and the others voted out a big threat in Ricard when he was not immune. Xander won the final challenge and brought Erika to the end in hopes that she wouldn't get to add beating someone at fire to her resume. Deshawn narrowly beat Heather to join them in the final three. In the end, Erika's subtly strong strategic and social game earned her the victory in a 7–1–0 vote over Deshawn and Xander.
EpisodeChallenge winner(s)JourneyEliminatedNo.TitleAir dateRewardImmunityTribePlayer 1 "A New Era" September 22, 2021 rowspan="3" rowspan="3" Abraham rowspan="2" Sara 2 "Juggling Chainsaws" September 29, 2021 colspan="2" rowspan="2" Voce colspan="2" 3 "My Million Dollar Mistake" October 6, 2021 colspan="2" rowspan="3" Brad rowspan="2" colspan="2" 4 "They Hate Me Because They Ain't Me" October 13, 2021 rowspan="2" rowspan="2" JD 5 "The Strategist or The Loyalist" October 20, 2021 colspan="2" rowspan="2" Genie colspan="2" 6 "Ready to Play Like a Lion" October 27, 2021 Danny, Deshawn, Evvie,Ricard, Sydney, [Naseer](Erika, Heather, Liana,Shan, Tiffany, Xander) Erika colspan="2" 7 "There's Gonna Be Blood" November 3, 2021 rowspan="2" Sydney Ricard 8 "Betraydar" November 10, 2021 Danny,Deshawn, Erika,Evvie, Ricard Evvie rowspan="8" rowspan="8" Tiffany 9 "Who's Who in the Zoo" November 17, 2021 Xander[Danny, Deshawn,Evvie, Liana] Erika Naseer Xander Evvie 10 "Baby with a Machine Gun" November 24, 2021 Ricard[Heather,Shan, Xander] Ricard Shan 11 "Do or Die" December 1, 2021 Danny[Deshawn] Liana 12 "Truth Kamikaze" December 8, 2021 Deshawn,Erika, Xander Ricard Danny 13 "One Thing Left to Do... Win" December 15, 2021 Erika[Heather] Erika Ricard Xander[Erika] Heather
Episodes
Voting history +Survivor 41 voting history Original tribes No tribes Merged tribe Episode 1 2 3 4 5 6/7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Day 3 5 7 9 11 14 16 17 19 21 23 24 25 Tribe colspan="2" colspan="4" colspan="2" colspan="2" colspan="2" Eliminated Abraham Sara Voce Brad JD Genie Sydney Tiffany colspan="2" Naseer Evvie Shan Liana Danny Ricard Heather Votes 5–1 4–1–1 3–1 3–1 3–1 2–1 5–4–3 6–2–2–1 3–3 4–0 3–2 3–3–2 6–0 5–3 3–3 4–0 4–1 Voter Vote Challenge Erika Sydney Tiffany Naseer Naseer Liana Shan Liana Danny Danny Ricard Deshawn Evvie Evvie Tiffany Evvie Shan Shan Ricard Danny Ricard Xander Abraham Deshawn Naseer Liana Liana Shan Liana Liana Deshawn Danny Ricard Heather Sydney Tiffany Naseer colspan="2" Liana Shan Liana Danny Danny Ricard Ricard Sara Brad JD Genie Evvie Tiffany Heather Naseer Shan Shan Liana Deshawn Danny Deshawn Danny Evvie Xander Evvie Shan Shan Ricard Deshawn Liana Abraham Voce Sydney Tiffany Evvie Erika Ricard Shan Sara Brad JD Genie Sydney Tiffany Heather Naseer Naseer Naseer Erika Evvie Abraham Voce Deshawn Heather Liana Naseer Sydney Xander Heather colspan="2" Tiffany Abraham Voce Deshawn Heather Sydney colspan="2" Genie Ricard JD JD Ricard JD Sara Brad Genie Brad Sara Voce Abraham Tiffany Sara Brad Abraham Tiffany Jury vote Episode13 Day26 Finalist Erika Deshawn Xander Votes7–1–0 JurorVote Heather Ricard Danny Liana Shan Evvie Naseer Tiffany Notes
Production Development
Production and broadcast of season 41 was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The season was filmed in Fiji, the ninth consecutive season at that location. It was planned for filming to take place from March to May 2020, with the season scheduled to air on CBS starting in September 2020 as a part of the 2020–21 television season. Worldwide travel restrictions and Fiji's border closures forced production to postpone to a year later, starting filming in March 2021. The broadcast was pushed into the 2021–22 television season.
This season was originally to be entitled Survivor: Dawn of a New Era according to Jeff Probst. Although production and filming were initially scheduled for March 24, 2020 to May 1, 2020 with a standard 39 days of gameplay, they were pushed back until 2021 due to international travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Usually the show releases two seasons per television season year—one debuting around the fall (September) and the other debuting around late winter/early spring (February or March). However, due to the pandemic, the Survivor crew was not able to produce both season 41 and the subsequent 42nd season in 2020. Production had considered filming domestically in Georgia or Hawaii, but the unpredictability of the pandemic pushed filming back to 2021. On February 11, 2021, Faiyaz Koya, the Fijian Minister of Commerce, Trade, Tourism and Transport, approved filming for this season with the crew required to arrive in groups and quarantine before filming. On March 22, 2021, Jeff Probst announced on-location that production of this season was set to start and filming finally began on April 15. The forty-first season debuted in September 2021.
Unlike most Survivor seasons, it is a shortened season spanning only 26 of the usual 39 days due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which required all cast and production members to quarantine for 14 days, taking up some of the short production time. For the first time since Survivor: Borneo, the season's winner was revealed during the final Tribal Council, as production was unsure of its ability to have a live finale due to concerns of a potential COVID-19 resurgence. The vote reveal was then followed by a Survivor After Show special with the final players and the jury instead of a live reunion.
This was the first Survivor season to impose a significant change in the personal safety protocols following allegations of "inappropriate touching" against a contestant during the filming of Island of the Idols in 2019.
Gameplay This season introduced many new twists, including the "Shot in the Dark" which offered players at Tribal Council a chance for immunity in exchange for giving up one's vote, the "Beware Advantage" which restricted players' ability to vote until their immunity idols became active, and decision games which forced players to make game-altering choices. One such decision game featured players making opposing—but not necessarily different—choices to either risk or protect their votes in a manner similar to a game of Chicken. Other games of decision included the "Hourglass" twist which gave one player the opportunity to reverse the outcome of a group immunity challenge at the risk of earning tribemates' ire, and the "Do or Die" twist which, in one instance, made the first player to lose an Immunity Challenge perform a risky game of chance similar to the Monty Hall problem just to be able to stay in the game.
According to Jeff Probst, a planned expansion of the Fire Tokens element featured in Winners at War was scrapped after David vs. Goliath runner-up Mike White expressed disapproval of the idea.
In addition, Probst announced a new interactive element called The Game Within the Game, in which children watching at home were invited to play along with the show, solving a rebus puzzle hidden somewhere within the episode. Also, at-home viewers could solve a word-scramble puzzle online and be given a strategy discussion test in which the viewers could discuss the strategy and later compare it with what really happened during the next episode's airing.
Reception