1-Time Survivor Challenges That Need to Come Back

To begin, this is still, by design, my favorite Final Immunity Challenge to date. It is a massive shame that it still has never returned to the show, and while it surely wouldn't feel as epic if not played in an awesome, eerie cave like it was in Thailand, it would still be tons of fun. I would love to see this return as one of the final immunity challenges in a modern season.

Anyone who has seen Survivor: Vanuatu is bound to remember this challenge. Giant maze challenges near the end of the game are a Survivor tradition, but there is only one time they have done a vertical maze, and it was truly something special. Please, Survivor challenge team, make it happen again!

I love when Survivor challenges allow the teams to engage in a risk vs reward-type scenario within a challenge, and Survivor: Palau's first immunity challenge completely nails it! It saddens me that this challenge never went on to become a Survivor staple, because there are so many different ways it could play out and so many ways the concept could be reimagined, but as it stands, we have only seen it once.

This was a very creative tribal challenge, which I imagine requires very particular water conditions to be used, which potentially explains why we have only ever seen it once, but that is not definitively the case. Aside from its innovative concept, this challenge brought one of my favorite Jeff Probst moments with Penner's "oh please, Jeff," and him saying "Jonathon, getting frustrated by me!"

I truly believe that this is one of the best challenges Survivor has ever had. Before we even address the content of the challenge, it already gets my love for being a rare, night time challenge, something very refreshing for Survivor. But putting that fact aside, they literally set off fireworks in this challenge!!! That is sooooooo cool! And the whole thing is beautiful too, and I admire how its concept plays into the season's theme of Chinese culture. Of all the challenges on this list, this may be the one which would excite me the most to see make a surprising return.

Here is another great, albiet strange team challenge that we have only ever seen once, back in Survivor: Gabon. There is just something inherently fun about watching people throw fruit to each other while other people try and violently smash the flying fruit out of the air with a club. Really, this challenge needs to return some day.

This challenge is kind of a combintion of Gabon's Fruit Flies challenge, and a challenge from Micronesia where each tribe had 10 minutes to build a barricade which the other tribe would have to cross through. The result of this mixture was felt like another incredibly creative challenge. I will note however, that this challenge, in its current form, seems quite dangerous, what with the flying pigs shattering into sharp shards, as well as them being described as painful to catch. If this challenge were to return, which I hope it does, there should definitely be some adjustments made for a safer experience.

And here is yet another fantastic team challenge that we have only had the pleasure of seeing one time. Don't let this challenge's childish title distract you from what is an awesome, creative challenge involving a pinball table and impeccable concentration. The crazy thing is, this isn't even the last entry on this list which involves a pinball table. Apparently, mixing pinball with Survivor is just the golden formula for a great Survivor challenge. Anyway, this challenge's return is long overdue.

When looking back, I found that Survivor: San Juan del Sur actually had a surprising number of challenges which where, at the time, new to the franchise. Almost all of them were good, but something about this 2 on 2 basketball-throw challenge is particularly appealing to me. I love that there is a large consequence if you miss your shot, as you are forced back into the twisted obstacle course to retrieve your team-colored ball. It gives this challenge a very different feel, and like all of the challenges on this list, it needs to come back!

Do you remember how I was praising Survivor: Palau's first immunity challenge for its unique element of risk vs reward? Well, the first immunity challenge to be seen in the Mamanuca Islands deserves the same amount of praise. They didn't have to give the challenge this cool aspect of choice, they could have easily just left it as it was without the shortcut options and it still would have been a totally functional challenge; no one would have complained. But they didn't. The challenge team deserves a lot of credit here for putting in the extra effort for this premiere episode challenge, and their work payed off, as this will go down as one of my most remembered challenges. I'd love to see them do this type of thing again and again.

The Survivor Wiki considers this challenge simply to be a variation of Simmotion, the popular Final Immunity Challenge where you have to keep a number of balls from dropping to the ground as they roll down a metal track. And while the 2 challenges are similar in many ways, I think that to consider the challenges the same doesn't give this challenge, Always on the Run, the credit it deserves for being a fresh, entertaining yet extremely difficult team challenge. We need more challenges like this in Survivor.

Now to be fair, they haven't really had a chance to reuse this creative gem from the latest season of Survivor yet, but when the time is right, they've got to! The balance beam / seesaw section of the challenge is pure genius. To be candid, I actually think it's a shame that the entirety of the challenge wasn't based around the seesaw concept, having it applied in different ways, where instead the show fell back into the overused format of ending a challenge with a puzzle. Hopefully if this challenge returns, we can see its brilliance centralized and expanded upon.