Warning: This story contains spoilers for the Wednesday, Oct. 7 episode of Survivor.

Jeff Probst is sharing his thoughts after a Survivor 51 contestant left the game in an unexpected way.

The Wednesday, Oct. 7 episode of Survivor picked up on day five of the game as the Savu tribe returned to their camp after an eventful tribal council, which saw Ana Sani go home after Rob Antonson’s plan to sacrifice himself was foiled by one of the show’s main rules: You can’t vote yourself out. Antonson separated himself from the rest of his tribe after being blindsided by the series of events, lying down in the sand alone.

In a confessional, the 40-year-old airline gate agent from Rhode Island explained that he was willing to put his own name down but didn’t want to “just quit.”

“I feel like just quitting is just ruining the game,” he says, before adding, “If you’re going out for medical reasons, that’s totally different.”

Antonson then revealed for the first time that he was experiencing “extreme pain” in his foot and leg after stepping on something in the ocean the previous day. The next morning, he told his tribemates that he thought he had “an infection up to my knee.”

In confessionals, some of Antonson’s tribemates express their doubts about his injury. Ori Jean-Charles told the camera, “My mom named me ‘Ori,’ not ‘stupid.’ You’ve been fine for the past 48 hours, but the day things don’t go your way, now all of a sudden, it’s a medical issue. My honest opinion is Rob is looking for an easy out.”

Probst and Dr. Barry from Survivor’s medical team arrive at the Savu beach, where they discuss the injury and do an examination. The doctor pointed out a small cut on Antonson’s foot but clarified that he wasn’t seeing anything concerning.

“What do you think infection-wise?” Antonson asked the doctor, who told him, “With cuts like that, there’s always that risk.”

The father of three then told Probst and Dr. Barry, “Infections scare the hell out of me. If this is something that could be an infection or something, then yeah, I would take myself out of the game. I’m not going to put my health at risk.”

After Probst and Antonson inform the rest of Savu of the choice, Jean-Charles said in a confessional, “You’re quitting. Let’s call a spade a spade.”

In his field notes from the episode, shared on the show’s Instagram account, Probst wrote, “Rob’s decision to voluntarily leave the game caught me off guard. He had said in interview that he stepped on something in the ocean, but never once asked for medical to check him out. That’s unusual, as we check in on the players quite frequently.”

“When we finally had Dr. Barry give him an examination at camp, Dr. Barry couldn’t find anything wrong with Rob. To be clear, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t in pain. It only means we couldn’t find any medical evidence of anything wrong.”

Probst added in his “personal observations” that Antonson “looked and sounded emotionally exhausted, which can happen to the strongest of humans.”

“Survivor humbles you very quickly and can get you in a variety of ways,” the Emmy winner added. “Days four, five and six are often VERY tough for players. This is a threshold point that you have to get past. If you can find a way through the desire to give up, you almost always find that second wind.”

Probst added, “Speculation from Rob’s tribemates was very clear — they believe he engineered a quit.”

There have been several quits in Survivor’s 26-year run, most famously when NaOnka Mixon and Kelly Shinn (known to Survivor fans as “Purple Kelly”) both voluntarily ended their games on day 28 of Survivor: Nicaragua.

More recently, two players voluntarily stepped away in the early days of the show’s 45th season. After those episodes aired in 2023, Probst said on Live with Kelly and Mark that quitters would no longer experience a Survivor mainstay.

“I want to declare right here on your show that from this point forward if you are a Survivor player and you quit, your torch will not be snuffed. That’s over,” the host said, per EW. “To get your torch snuffed, you got to play the game.”

Only three episodes in, Survivor 51 has also been plagued by injuries. The season’s second episode showed Brady Booker accidentally hit himself with a machete while chopping wood, resulting in part of his thumb being severed — and later found in the dirt and shown on camera. In the same episode, Kristin Flickinger injured her foot while competing blindfolded in the reward challenge. Even though Probst wrote in his field notes that she “maybe even fractured her foot,” the show’s medical team determined it was “not serious enough to impact her abilities, so nothing to do on our end. Not in danger of being pulled. It’s her decision if it becomes so painful she wants to leave the game.”

Both Booker and Flickinger remained in the game.

New episodes of Survivor air Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS then stream on Paramount+.