Boston Rob is fielding Survivor 50 alliance requests

Everyone knows the game of Survivor does not begin when players hit the beach — especially when those players are returning contestants who have met and mingled off the island. Pre-game alliances are often the norm. That’s why the phones and social media accounts of previous Survivor players have been blowing up ever since Jeff Probst announced that season 50 of Survivor would feature blasts from the past, and even a franchise legend has gotten into the act.

“I'm stirring it up on social media like I like to do,” Boston Rob Mariano tells Entertainment Weekly. “So slide into the DMs, all you former players, and we'll let you know whether or not you can get in the alliance or not.” The five-time player, and winner of Redemption Island, then reconsiders. “Actually, talk to my secretary, Sandra. She's fielding all the requests.”

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That would be Rob’s fellow Island of the Idols mentor (and two-time Survivor champion) Sandra Diaz-Twine. Whether Rob is being serious or not is open to debate. When he spoke to EW the day before filming began on Winners at War, Rob claimed he did no pre-game alliance making. “I don't play that,” he said in 2019. “I don't play it at all. I did not call not one single person, maybe to my detriment, but I have always believed that I'm better building and fostering relationships in person.”

It was Sandra who told him then how the game before the game works. “Now, I understand, like on Game Changers, Sandra told me on 39 that everybody out there had their pre-existing alliance before they got to the beach and if you weren't a part of it, then you were gone, one, two, three, four, and that might happen to me.” Indeed, Rob and his spouse Amber and old school friends Ethan Zohn, Parvati Shallow, Tyson Apostol, and Sandra ended up being voted out second, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth.

So has Rob reconsidered his stance on pre-gaming? More importantly, will he even return for Survivor 50 (which would film in 2025 to air in the spring of 2026)?  When asked by EW earlier this year about a possible return, Rob noted that “I've always said it would take some kind of unique format change to make me go back and compete over there. Something would have to happen, otherwise we're faced with the same situation where they gang up on me and want to get me out, or keep me around for a little bit, or whatever.”

Now that Probst has made it official that the season will be a battle between former contestants, has that changed Rob’s outlook? “Like I told you the last time we talked, the current format, I don't feel the need to go back out there and play Survivor again, where we're going to go through the motions and they're going to vote me out.”

But then the man who literally had a giant statue of his head built onto a beach pauses and reconsiders. “Well, you never know. Maybe somebody in creative over there has some ideas.”

Of course, it would not be Rob’s first time back on an island in the past few years. The reality TV icon is fresh off a final four finish on Deal or No Deal Island, which featured a controversial end when Rob was eliminated after being assessed a penalty for absent-mindedly copying from another player’s finished number puzzle — a move perhaps ingrained from years on Survivor, where looking at other people’s puzzles is permitted and commonplace.

But instead of a return to Fiji, could Rob’s next reality TV move actually be to Scotland? “I would love to play The Traitors,” he says. “I really would. I think after watching the first two seasons, it would be a lot of fun.”

But would the master manipulator who once convinced other Amazing Race teams to take a two-hour food penalty want to be a Traitor or a Faithful? He considers the pros and cons of each. “I think I would be really good as a Faithful being able to figure out who the Traitors are, but I think the Traitors have more fun, too. So I don't know. But I'm looking forward to just relaxing a little bit and having a good summer with the kids."

 At least when not busy checking for DMs from former Survivors.