[5] For the first time since Survivor: Borneo, the winner was revealed at Final Tribal Council immediately after the jury cast their votes.

Although production and filming were initially scheduled to start on March 24, 2020, and were to conclude on May 1 with a standard 39 days of gameplay, they were pushed back until 2021 due to international travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

[11] 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.

[16] 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.

[20][21] 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.

Their strong partnership enabled them to reach the merge, where they initially aligned with Luvu against the surviving Yase members.

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.

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.

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.

While setting up the tribe's camp, JD started Ua's fire and forged bonds with his tribemates, but some of them saw his attempts as overbearing.

As punishment for losing the opening challenge, Luvu and Yase had four hours to either solve a puzzle or nominate two tribe members to carry ocean water to fill two large buckets.

On Day 2, the three tribes were asked to pick a representative to take a journey; Danny volunteered for Luvu, JD was sent for Ua by random draw, and Yase agreed on Xander.

This made Evvie and Liana consider voting out Tiffany to preserve strength, but at Tribal Council, the women stuck together to blindside Voce from the game.

Additionally, Brad found a second “Beware” advantage requiring him to travel to a separate island or else lose his vote.

Shan was the swing vote; at Tribal Council, she sided with JD and Ricard to blindside Brad with two advantages in his pocket.

The four Yase members enjoyed their fish reward and witnessed baby turtles moving to the ocean, while at Luvu, Erika proposed voting out Sydney to Deshawn.

For not being chosen, Erika was sent to Exile Island with meager supplies and was visited by Jeff, who informed her of a choice she had to make.

She could either let the game continue as is, or "go back in time" and transfer the winning team's immunity to the other castaways and herself by smashing an hourglass Jeff provided to her.

Now fully merged as Viakana, the tribe saw three of its members, the former Yase alliance, plead their case separately to their new tribemates, but Deshawn remained unwilling to work with them as they voted for him the night before.

He searched the sit-out bench for an advantage but was unable to find it, and the blue team (Danny, Deshawn, Erika, Evvie, and Ricard) won the challenge.

Those two voted against Erika at Tribal Council, but the rest of the tribe followed through with their split-vote plan, causing a tie between Shan and Liana.

Both Liana and Deshawn were upset following Tribal Council, the former for her closest ally being blindsided and the latter for being called a snake by Shan upon her exit.

The next morning, Danny confided in Deshawn about the passing of his father 25 years earlier and how he has slowly been letting go of the negative emotions surrounding it.

At Tribal Council, Deshawn became emotional over his vote against Shan, leading to a healthy discussion about racial equality among the tribe.

They discussed going to the final three together due to their differing styles of gameplay, with Deshawn trying to convince Erika that her and Heather's games would be seen as too similar by the jury.

At the Final Tribal Council, jurors questioned Xander’s social awareness; he was criticized for misreading the jury’s perception of Erika and underestimating her gameplay by giving her a free pass to the end.

Immediately after the final vote reading, the jury and the finalists discuss the season with host Jeff Probst in the "Survivor After Show".

"[49] Andy Dehnart of reality blurred praised the cast but was highly critical about the overabundance of twists and advantages.

[50] Outlets including TVLine, Insider, and Screen Rant expressed similar criticisms regarding the number of twists in this season.

[51][52][53] Harper Lambert of TheWrap was more critical of the cast due to a "near-total lack of conflict and striking personalities.