Pearl Islands

Survivor: Pearl Islands · Season 7

Episode Guide

How Survivor: Pearl Islands unfolded, week by week.

  1. 1“Beg, Barter, Steal”Sep 18, 2003The pirate season opens with a twist: sixteen players are dropped in a Panamanian town with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a little money, told to barter for supplies before heading to camp. Rupert Boneham sets the tone by swiping the Morgan tribe's shoes to trade for gear, and the outmatched Morgan drops the opener. They vote out Nicole Delma first.
  2. 2“To Quit or Not to Quit”Sep 25, 2003Osten Taylor, already miserable and homesick, openly floats quitting the game, and his tribe talks him off the ledge for now. Morgan loses again, and Ryan Shoulders is the one voted out as the weaker tribe keeps stumbling.
  3. 3“United We Stand, Divided We...?”Oct 2, 2003Drake finally hits Tribal, and the tribe trims what it sees as a weaker link, voting out Lillian Morris, the earnest Boy Scout leader. It looks like the end of her game, but in this season, getting voted out doesn't always mean going home.
  4. 4“Pick a Castaway...Any Castaway”Oct 9, 2003Burton Roberts, Drake's confident alpha, gets a little too cute and even tries to throw a challenge to steer the vote his way. It backfires spectacularly; his own tribe turns on him, and Burton is blindsided out, joining the growing pile of cast-offs.
  5. 5“Everyone's Hero”Oct 16, 2003Morgan keeps losing, and Michelle Tesauro is the next to go, voted out as the struggling tribe continues to bleed members.
  6. 6“Me and My Snake”Oct 23, 2003Drake's dominance holds, and Morgan is back at Tribal yet again. Trish Dunn, on the outs with the tribe's tightening core, is voted out.
  7. 7“What the...?, Part 1”Oct 30, 2003Probst springs the twist nobody saw coming: the players who'd been voted out are still in the game, living together as the Outcasts and about to fight their way back. On a brutal night, both tribes are sent to Tribal. Drake votes out Shawn Cohen, and over at Morgan, Osten Taylor finally follows through on his threat and quits outright, asking to leave; a disgusted Probst simply snuffs his torch without a vote.
  8. 8“What the...?, Part 2”Nov 6, 2003The Outcasts get their shot, and the twist lands hard: the cast-offs win the right to send two of their own back into the game, and Burton Roberts and Lillian Morris are voted back in. As the tribes merge into Balboa, the returnees scramble the numbers, and Andrew Savage, the confident Morgan leader who'd been steering his alliance toward the end, is blindsided out, never seeing the comeback coming.
  9. 9“Shocking! Simply Shocking!”Nov 13, 2003With the game upended, the new majority sorts itself out. Ryan Opray, caught on the wrong side of the post-twist math, is voted out as the first member of the jury.
  10. 10“Swimming with Sharks”Nov 20, 2003The most beloved player in the game goes down. Rupert Boneham, the tie-dyed fan favorite who'd anchored Drake from day one, is blindsided and voted out, a stunner that sends the gentle giant to the jury and leaves the schemers in charge.
  11. 11“The Great Lie”Nov 26, 2003One of the most infamous moments in Survivor history. During the loved-ones visit, Jonny Fairplay has his buddy 'Thunder D' arrive and solemnly tell him, in front of everyone, that his grandmother has died, complete with a line about her being the greatest woman who ever lived. It's a total fabrication, his grandmother is alive and well, but the sympathy play works to perfection. In the fallout, Tijuana Bradley is voted out to the jury.
  12. 12“Would You Be My Brutus Today?”Dec 4, 2003The maneuvering tightens as the endgame nears. Christa Hastie, Sandra's closest ally from the old Drake tribe, is voted out to the jury, leaving Sandra to pick her way through the final stretch on her own.
  13. 13“Mutiny”Dec 11, 2003Burton Roberts had clawed his way back into the game once, but his second life doesn't last. The alliance turns on the returnee again, and Burton is voted out a second time, the only thing left to do with a player too dangerous to carry to the end.
  14. 14“Flames and Endurance”FinaleDec 14, 2003Finale night. Darrah Johnson, the quiet Southerner who'd quietly become a late-game immunity threat, is voted out in fourth. At the final three, Lillian Morris wins the grueling endurance immunity and makes the fateful choice to take Sandra Diaz-Twine to the end over the schemer Jonny Fairplay, who's sent to the jury in third. At Final Tribal, the jury rewards Sandra's scrappy, unapologetically cutthroat game over Lill, and Sandra wins 6-1 to claim the first of her two titles, with only Tijuana voting for Lill.