— The following article contains spoilers for episode one of “Survivor” season 47

On Sept. 18, Brandeis graduate Andy Rueda GSAS MS’24 stepped into the limelight on one of television’s most grueling reality competition shows. Brandeis community members watched in support as the two-hour premiere of “Survivor’s” newest season — filmed on the Mamanuca Islands in Fiji — aired at 8 p.m. on Columbia Broadcasting System and Paramount+.

“Survivor,” now in its 47th season, poses challenges designed to test its players’ physical and mental capabilities as they compete for the one million dollar cash prize. Sorted into “tribes” at the outset of each season, contestants work to build alliances, outwit and outlast each other while dealing with the harsh realities of living in the wild. The show has a massive global fan base and each season brings a new set of twists and challenges designed to narrow the initial group of “castaways” down to the “Sole Survivor.”

Rueda joins a diverse cast this season, facing off against 18 competitors divided into three tribes: Lavo, wearing red; Tuku, wearing blue and Gata — Rueda’s tribe — wearing yellow. Following brief introductions, the castaways were quickly plunged into an intense physical challenge involving a convoluted set of hurdles and puzzles to win the first batch of survival materials. 

As a superfan of the show, Rueda said in an interview with Parade, “I tried to do everything under the sun,” in preparation for his appearance. He shared that he studied three dimensional prints of past puzzles, mastered making fire in the wilderness and watched fan analyses of “Survivor” challenge hacks. “I wrote them all in my notebook, and I have it here. And so I take the level of preparation really seriously,” he said. 

When news of Rueda’s participation on “Survivor” 47 surfaced, students were eager to see how one of their own would fare in the high-stakes competition. At a small watch party held in an apartment off-campus, students cheered as Rueda made his first appearance on screen. “He sounded like he would be a strong player,” Elaine Walker ’26 told The Justice on Sept. 22. She continued, “I mean, he was smart. He put that forward.”

When Walker saw on the @brandeisfacts Instagram page that an alumnus would be competing in the newest season, she corralled a small group of friends to partake in a weekly watch party as the episodes began to air every Wednesday.

During the pandemic, Walker started watching more reality TV like “Survivor” and “Big Brother.” She grew fascinated with the psychological questions the shows would raise. “You tend to see people push themselves in not just a physical manner, but in a social, emotional and mental manner,” Walker told The Justice.

While Walker’s friends had expressed some interest in watching the season to follow their fellow “Brandeisian,” they weren’t yet sold on the idea of committing to it. She resolved to have them watch an older season filmed in Cagayan, which was based on a division of tribes into “Brains vs. Brawn vs. Beauty.” “That really seemed to get everyone really interested and hooked almost immediately so I was like, okay, let’s make this like a serious watch party,” Walker said.

Walker and her housemates gathered around their coffee table, anxiously awaiting the season premiere that would feature one of their own — an unusual feeling, as it would be one of few mainstream forms of campus representation in the media. The friends already knew who they would be rooting for, as though it were their hometown team playing in the National Football League. 

Eden Ikonen ’25 was one of Walker’s friends who watched season 28 of “Survivor” in preparation. They told The Justice on Sept. 22 that with season 28, they had no particular investment in any one player and only formed connections with them over the course of their viewing. But “Survivor” 47 would be different in that respect: “I was interested to see how the experience would be different having a character who I was already interested in and rooting for from the get go.”

Rueda’s performance in the season premiere had Walker’s jaw “on the floor” the entire time. While under a whirlwind of stress and overthinking about his position on his team, Rueda spiraled into a “physical and emotional breakdown” in front of his teammates and host and executive producer Jeff Probst. “I kind of felt like the horse I had bet my life on was dying in this game,” Walker expresse. Based on how things were after the challenge, I was shocked,” Probst said in the newest episode of “On Fire: The Official Survivor Podcast.”

It’s safe to say that everyone thought Rueda was out. Even Rueda himself said that he knew he was “on the bottom” among his teammates — one of whom was to be voted out by the others by the end of the episode. But after conversations among the Gata contestants, some reasoning that Rueda would be needed in physical challenges and didn’t pose a threat in the long run, podcaster Jon Lovett ended up being the player to be voted out at the first “tribal council” — or elimination vote — of the season.

This wasn’t a total surprise to Walker. “If you pay attention to the edit of the episode, there are a lot of hints that Andy might go far,” she said. Over the years, “Survivor” superfans have crafted a way of calculating who would likely be the “Sole Survivor” based on the show’s editing. Walker explained that because of how much screen time Rueda had on the premiere, as well as the kinds of scenes he was featured in — such as talking head interviews and the “mat chat,” in which Probst first engages with the new group of castaways — she thinks that Rueda’s future on the show could be promising.

While Ikonen was, like everyone else, shocked by Rueda’s performance, they also shared that, “It made me think about how I would respond in that context because it’s someone whose experience I can relate to.” With Rueda’s unexpected last minute save, Ikonen shared, “I don‘t really know what to expect going forward.”

As the season progresses, it will be exciting to see how Rueda pushes through the game and what strategies he will employ. Will he make his way to the final tribal council? Or will the unpredictability of the game get the best of him? Only time will tell, but as the season runs its course, Brandeis will be behind him every step of the way.