I agree with you for the most part. I have a hard time believing at this point, given the Survivor Phoenix report, that there will not be a ghost tribe. It is going to happen (or MB managed to trick some of the best spoilers in the business). I agree that while ALL bootees will compete, only ONE will return (and our best information seems to strongly suggest Lil).

Exactly how it is decided who gets to come back is a mystery at this point. Maybe it is the tribe that placed second behind the ghost tribe. Maybe the ghost tribe votes who gets to go back. However, only one gets back in the game and the rest go to LL (and finally get to scuba, etc). I also agree that it seems likely at the same time one of the tribes has to vote someone out. Lil does not "join" the tribe that lost a player, but rather it is time for the standard merge of ten people. They have individual competitions, and someone else is voted off.

There is a big problem with this scenario. There is not really enough time to do all of this in one hour. You have to have three votes (two voted off and one voted back on) and the two competitions (one to determine if ghost tribe gets to put someone back and one for individual immunity). I am not sure you could fit all that in during a single episode (if you include any of the game play scenes that people need to have any understanding of people's strategies).

The one thing I am pretty comfortable with, however, is that it will not be overly complicated. It will be a one shot deal with only one person reentering. Remember the spoiler's mantra "Occam's Razor" (sp?). Try to look for the simplest answer to fit the evidence (think horses not zebras when you hear hoofbeats).