CBSWatching Survivor: Redemption Island from our comfy couches at home, we can laugh at the crazy antics of Special Agent Samurai Sheppard Feather Hawk of the Cherokee Buddhist Nation.
But as the latest eliminee revealed to us this morning, his tribemates were genuinely afraid of him.
"It got to the point at the end where we didn't feel safe around Phillip," the Castaway admitted.
Read on to find out surprising measures Phillip's enemies took to protect themselves; plus, what shocking strategy almost saved Russell Hantz?
"When he threw that racial card we were like, he is a lunatic," said firefighter Julie Wolfe. "We were really scared for our safety...Every day got worse with him."
In fact, the Castaways confronted the Survivor producers about the loose cannon. "We actually did, really," Julie confirms. "We were really concerned for our safety after that racial fight, because there was that tension, and it came out of the craziness.
"All the threats, they felt real. We kinda slept with one eye open—we never did really sleep, but we had our eyes open looking for that guy."
Fortunately—maybe because she's safe at home?—Julie says, "I laugh about it now. [But] it was a true concern."
Although he never posed a physical threat, Julie says her Zapatera alliance was also very concerned about Russell Hantz, and were determined to get "him off as soon as possible":
"Russell is so good at the game, with so much ammunition for strategy, darts and arrows were coming out of nowhere."
Including a huge lie, that could have been a game changer if Julie had decided to flip.
"He told me he had an [Immunity] Idol. He said, 'You know what, I had an Idol before I got on this game—production gave me an Idol.' I believed him. I was gonna do anything I could to make that man believe I was on his side, because I didn't want him to use that Idol that someone gave him before the [game started]. He had killer strategy."
Julie insists, "If Rob was on our tribe he also would've been the first to go." But would they have thrown a challenge to lose Rob? "I don't think we would have," she said. "Russell was so useless at camp, you just resented him being around."
Not going anywhere, of course, is Matt, whom Julie characterizes as "a broken soldier" when she first arrived at Redemption Island. "He was just whooped. And he was very embarrassed by being played by his whole Ometepe tribe. I told him, 'You have nothing to be embarrassed about—you live by your morals.'"
Matt's faith had such a profound effect on Julie that she returned to her church as promised after her exit from the game.
"Witness[ing] what Matt was going through, his whole story, that's when I realized I'm here for a reason and it might not be for the million dollars. I knew I was there for a reason, and that was to have a reborn relationship with God—and you can't put a price tag on that."
Do you think Phillip and his feather headdress should be in a cuckoo's nest instead of Survivor, or were his tribemates overreacting? Go crazy in the comments.