This season introduced many new twists, including the "Shot in the Dark" which offered players at Tribal Council a chance for immunity in exchange for giving up one's vote, the "Beware Advantage" which restricted players' ability to vote until their immunity idols became active, and decision games which forced players to make game-altering choices. This is 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. The vote reveal was then followed by a Survivor After Show special with the final players and the jury instead of a live reunion. For the first time since Survivor: Borneo, the season's winner was revealed during Final Tribal Council as production was unsure on the ability to have a live finale due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike most Survivor seasons, it is a shortened season spanning only 26 out of the usual 39 days, due to the COVID-19 pandemic requiring all cast and production members to quarantine for 14 days and taking up some of the short production time. The forty-first season debuted in September 2021. On March 22, 2021, Jeff Probst announced on-location that production of this season was set to start. On February 11, 2021, Faiyaz Koya, the Fijian Minister of Commerce, Trade, Tourism and Transport, approved filming for this season with the crew required to arrive in groups and quarantine before filming. Production had considered filming domestically in Georgia or Hawaii, but the unpredictability of the pandemic pushed filming back to 2021. But due to the pandemic, the Survivor crew was not able to produce this and the subsequent 42nd season in 2020. Usually, the show releases two seasons per television season year-one debuting around the fall (September) and the other debuting around late winter/early spring (February or March). This season was originally to be entitled Survivor: Dawn of a New Era according to Jeff Probst, although production and filming was initially scheduled to start on March 24, 2020, but it was pushed back until 2021 due to surrounding international travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
See also: Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on television in the United States and COVID-19 pandemic in Fiji
Filming in Fiji, the ninth consecutive season at that location, had been planned from March to May 2020 with the season scheduled to air on CBS starting in September 2020, but worldwide travel restrictions and Fiji's border closures forced production to start in March 2021, and the broadcast pushed into the 2021–22 television season. Production and broadcast of the season was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. īoth the 41st and 42nd season of Survivor were ordered in May 2020. Casupanan also became the first Canadian castaway to win the title, the first of Filipino descent to win, as well as the first woman to win in seven seasons, the last one being Sarah Lacina in Survivor: Game Changers. It ended on December 15, 2021, when Erika Casupanan was voted the Sole Survivor, defeating Deshawn Radden and Xander Hastings in a 7–1–0 vote. The season was first broadcast on September 22, 2021, on CBS in the United States and Global in Canada.
Survivor 41 is the forty-first season of the American competition television series Survivor.