Jeff Probst Pulls Plug Midway Through Deadly ‘Survivor’ 42 Challenge, Saving Contestant Lives

You think you’ve seen everything in 42 seasons of Survivor, but not until Wednesday’s episode of Season 42 (via Primetimer) did you see host Jeff Probst interrupt and stop an immunity challenge before it finished. We bring you to Day 7 (Episode 3) of this season, set amid the Mamanuca Islands of Fiji, where our tribes are competing in the “Spiral Architect” challenge. The castaways were tasked with dragging a ladder from the ocean floor, then climbing the ladder to grab a key, which then unlocked a secondary game with sandbags.

One tribe finished, but the other two tribes struggled, and Probst feared one or more of them might drown.

“All right, both tribes, drag your ladders in. Come in!” Probst called from the beach. “Due to no lack of effort on your part, this is not getting any easier. We’re gonna retrieve your keys and give them to you, and we’ll continue the challenge from here. Sound fair? Never done this in the history of Survivor.”

Members of the TV show’s production crew got the keys for the two tribes, and then they played the sandbag game without further worry.

But it’s not the first time Probst intervened during a challenge.

In the 2014 edition of ‘Survivor: San Juan del Sur — Blood vs. Water,’ Probst called out the castaways for rigging a reward challenge.

As he told Entertainment Weekly back then, “I am always thinking like the audience and within about ten seconds I was completely bored watching them ‘talk it out.’ My brain did a fast-forward and I realized we are going to sit here for 15 minutes and smash skulls that have absolutely no bearing on the outcome because they are deciding it right now. So I honestly didn’t even think twice, I just listened to my screaming gut and called it off. I knew it was risky but I checked in with them and they were very open that it was going to be Missy who was going to win so there was no reason to continue. I figured at the very least we’d save five minutes of show time that we could use for Tribal or somewhere else where there was a more interesting story.”

This time was different, though. This time, Probst wanted to make sure the castaways actually survived Survivor. Good news: they did, and will live to survive(or) another day.