Dalton Ross at EW says it way better than we can, "It's not the fact that the cliffhanger is not really a cliffhanger that I object to — it is what that fact illustrates: that the team that just fought so hard to win a challenge they were told would give them safety to the merge were actually competing to lose. Think of it this way: Survivor producers are smart. They work through every scenario before they put something into motion. What do you think the chances are that anyone who ended up on Exile Island and was therefore in danger of going home and did not have two days to bond with their tribemates doing the voting would not smash the hourglass and just leave the game as it was? Extremely low, right? So the producers knew when that challenge started that the winners of it were actually the losers. So from a strictly game perspective, the twist is pretty much indefensible. You are straight up punishing people for winning when you told them winning was what they wanted to do." That is what we are discussing in today's episode!