Survivor 51's [Spoiler] Reveals Two Unseen Plans That Could've Potentially Saved Her Game

Spoilers from Wednesday's "Survivor" below!

Like Chrissy and Coach before them, two "Survivor 51" castaways were dealt a crushing blow thanks to the game's devilish duos twist.

After Sharonda and Lewis won immunity in the three-stage immunity challenge, island besties Devin and Jelly appeared to be the easy target. But unbeknownst to the group, Jelly was still holding on to her immunity idol, and as per the rules of the twist, one idol was good to save an entire duo. When Jelly whipped out her advantage at Tribal Council, she and her partner remained safe from the vote, and it was a well-timed play: Dev and Jelly received a total of eight votes, none of which counted in the final tally. After two Shots in the Dark were played (one giving safety to Christian and Carter), only one vote remained to topple a duo's game, and that vote was for Kristin and Kilby. (Read our full recap here, then check out our exit interview with Kilby.)

Below, Kristin talks to TVLine about everything that happened at Tribal Council, her rising threat level, broken foot, and that very awkward conversation with Mike before last week's elimination.

TVLINE | Heading into Tribal Council and with of all of this permanent uncertainty swirling about — what did you think your chances were at surviving this vote?
I thought that they were approximately 1.667, right? Going into Tribal Council, I knew that my name had been floated the day before, at least, and that it was probably being floated that day as well. I had put a tricky little thing into play that didn't quite end up executing, so we didn't see it, but I had come up with the idea that, OK, I've got firepower in the form of a tethered idol, and Sharonda's got firepower in terms of the necklace. We couldn't do anything with it, unless she had given me the necklace, I had played the tethered idol on her, it saves everybody. So I came up with this just in time to signal Lewis at camp, like, "Would you... necklace?", and he went and asked somebody about it, and then we had to go to Tribal.

So at Tribal, I leaned over and, you can see me leaning over behind Maggie, whispering with Sharonda saying, "Hey, do you know if you can give up your necklace?" And she was like, "No, I don't know." Maggie hears. Maggie is like, "Don't give up your necklace. Don't let her do that." And Sharonda was like, "Well, I'm not going to," and then Jeff got involved, it became this whole thing, and I just let it die. I was like, "Nothing to see here! Not a threat, not trying to do anything sneaky, don't worry about it." So, I thought that I was in trouble. I didn't know how in trouble, and there was a lot of conversation. Christian and I were both talking about, are we each gonna play our shots? Kilby and I talked about which one of us would play [it]. It was like, we gotta do something. [It was] just figuring out what level of something to do.

TVLINE | Do you regret not pushing that further? Yes, it would've been obvious you were being sneaky, but maybe just doing it anyway?
It's so interesting because Jeff says, play your first time like it's your second time, and that has never really made sense until this moment. Then I was like, "Oh, what makes sense to me is play your first time or play every time like you know you're going back." Then you're not going to second guess. You're not going to worry if you fall on your face. You will commit to the thing and you'll be like, "Yeah, I'm coming back." It's hard when you're sitting there thinking, "Hey, this is my dream and my threat level's really high and it's skyrocketing. I should just make my threat level lower." I try not to live in regrets, right? That's just no fun. But the thing I took away was in this season, with this group of people, they thought I had an idol, they thought I had two, I could have said, "I've got four." I could have just gone big and just been like, come at me. Do you want to play with me or do you want to tango? So, we could have done it differently. I know all the things that we could have done differently. I know what I could have done differently. I know what Christian could have done differently. I know what everyone could have done differently. You know, we didn't do it.

TVLINE | Did you feel the pressure of everyone's assumption that you received an advantage from Exile Island? That seemed top of mind for a lot of people out there.
My threat level kept increasing, and even with that, it took like four intersecting twists to take me out with half a vote. So I just want to be clear that yeah, I could have done a bunch of stuff, and it just... half a freaking vote, man! But the thing about Exile is, and listen, there's so much they can't show because No. 1, there's a lot going on. No. 2, this cast was doing the most from the second it started to the end. We were all doing everything. At Exile, I absolutely knew that this was going to be an issue and that people would think that I had something, so I had to give them something. I had stolen a long string of beads off of the Savu flag in the days when I was laid up in camp because they left me alone, they thought I couldn't move anywhere. So I crawled over that camp, stole a bunch of stuff, and on Exile, I made a fake idol. And when I came back, the story I told was, of course there was something, and there was a placard and it said, "Here's something to help you pass your time on Exile Island," and it was a fake idol-making kit. And if you know, you know. And there were people that I knew would get that reference, and I put it down in the middle of camp and I said, "Here it is, I don't want it. If y'all wanna use it, go for it." And then they said, it's probably a cursed idol. There's no such thing as a cursed idol. We were all like playing seven-dimensional chess, and even when I was like, "Here's everything, let me give it to you!" they were like, no, it's probably something worse.

TVLINE | What was the deal with Mike? He tried to give you a warning last week, but delivered it in absolutely the wrong way. What happened there?
So, listen, No.1, I was the only person that went to one Tribal Council pre-merge, right? So other people were building through attrition. They were going to Tribals. They were voting people out. They had more experience with each other. I had to build through addition. So I had a relationship with Mike, I had a relationship with Brady, I had a relationship with Carter and Maggie and everybody. Behind the scenes exclusive that you didn't see is we had a 600 pounds alliance, where all of the guys on Toca and I were sitting in the hammock one night and we formed a barbershop quartet and we sang a song. It became this funny thing, so I knew that Mike and I had something, right? When he came up to me, however, he stepped all over the things that activate me. I don't love feeling bullied. I don't love feeling threatened. I don't love it when people tell me what to do. I don't know a lot of people that do. And unfortunately in that moment, Mike had a miscommunication. I had a misunderstanding. And after I went to my confessional and said the things I said, I came back out and found Mike and said, "Hey man. I don't love how you spoke to me." And he said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "You threatened me." And he was like, "Oh my God, no, I was trying to save you!" And I could see it all over his face that he was telling me the truth.

We quickly got on the same page and I was like, well then what are we doing? He said, Brady, we started counting votes, and then we went off. I went off to Savu, he went off to Toka, and we whipped votes. A lot of people whipped votes that day, to be fair, but we were whipping votes. And then I went to Brady to confirm I needed more information to make sure this was accurate. Brady very quickly did some things that showed me that he was an erratic player. He was going to potentially take my game down with his because he couldn't stay calm, and my whole game was to calm the chaos. Get people calm, see who sticks their head up and moves funny. It worked with the Ana vote, it worked with the Brady vote, and Mike, to his credit, was very calm, and I knew I could trust him after we had a conversation.

TVLINE | How's the broken foot doing?
The foot is still attached. For people who want to know, it was a real break. It was a three millimeter spiral pseudo-Jones fracture. It's a thing. I had 12 weeks of physical therapy. I asked one question, which is, would you clear me to play again? The answer was yes. So I think I'm healed.

TVLINE | Here's a very ridiculous hypothetical I want to pose to you: If Jeff said, "Hey, we have a new twist. It's the Grubs Twist, and if you eat five grubs in under a minute, it will reverse the Tribal Council vote and you can stay!" What say you?
That is great for somebody else. I mean, it's not for me. The thing about that is I truly considered it. I'm a fan of the game, a student of the game. I know myself. I know that gross food is the thing that would be the hardest for me, that is a weakness, and I'm not interested in killing living things for charcuterie, for a chance at a game. For me, it's not where it's at. For other people, that's cool. It's just not for me.

TVLINE | You've been applying to get on the show ever since Season 2. What are a few things that you did to prepare that helped steer you toward success out there?
I did everything, man. I listened to a lot of podcasts. I diagrammed games. I've been practicing balance for years, which is so funny given what happened with the double duos, but you know, I had a broken foot. I went and studied as much as I possibly could. The thinking was I would have a Rolodex of things I could access, and then kind of like throw away the structure and play loose. So for me, knowing everything that I could was helpful, not because it made me a game bot, but because it gave me options and fluidity. I ate a week of only coconut. I worked with a dietitian because I wanted to know what my body would feel like. For me, understanding uncertainty and how you will feel in it is really critical. And if you're a crisis manager, its reps. If you go through the things enough times, you say, I understand what this is. Stay calm, this isn't a thing to freak out about, or this is very dangerous, we have to take it seriously. I understood on Day 4, my body would start feeling a certain way because I'd gone through it. So I tried to put myself through as many real life situations as I could, so that I could stay calm and keep my wits about me.

TVLINE | If you had survived this vote, what would've been your game plan to make it to the end?
If I had gotten through this, I feel like I could work some angles. We would have then gained trust, right? I spent a lot of time that day with people that I hadn't spent time with. I spent a lot of time with Dev, a lot of time with Jelly, a lot of time with Maggie, a lot of time with Lewis, actually. Lewis came to me and said, "I think the door is closing on us playing together. I don't want that to happen. Would you do something crazy with me?" And I said, "For sure. What do you have in mind?" He said, "Well, I've got this spare parchment. I'm going to write, Knowledge Is Power on it. And then I'm going to ask you for something at Tribal. Here, I'll give you this extra vote. You can use it and then give it to me, and then people will know that that's all you had." And I said, "No, no, no, too complicated. Ask me for an idol. I won't give you an idol. Everything will be cleared. We can play together." He didn't play it because a lot of other stuff happened, but I knew with Lewis, like, oh man, I have the knowledge of the game, and he has wild creativity and the willingness to do it. I think the two of us would have done some really cool stuff together.

TVLINE | And that would've cleared you from having potential Exile goodies!
He had a really smart plan, yeah.