Warning: This story contains spoilers for the April 1 episode of Survivor‘s 50th season.

NEED TO KNOW

• Survivor‘s Blood Moon twist sent three players home in one night, including four-time all-star Colby Donaldson

• Speaking with PEOPLE, Colby discusses the parts of his strategic game that weren’t shown and his relationship with new era players like Genevieve and Rizo

• The season 2 runner-up also revealed how serious his foot injury was

As the game hit a new stage, Survivor said goodbye to a legend of the game.

After first stepping out for the adventure on the show’s second season that aired in 2001 and playing four times total, Colby Donaldson had his torch snuffed one last time on the April 1 episode of Survivor‘s milestone 50th season.

Knowing it was likely his time to go, Colby used tribal council to share his appreciation for the part Survivor has played in his life, revealing that he had more fun this time around than in previous seasons.

“I came into it with a completely different attitude and a set of goals for me. There are certainly days that suck, especially when you’re injured and don’t have a vote, but I chose to find the joy in it. Half of my life has transpired since the first time I played. Half of my life,” he said in the episode. “Jeff, I’m in my 50s now, and they say this is the decade of reflection. That’s truly it. I’ve reflected on my life and how Survivor has woven through so much of it.”

“I just appreciate the opportunity to come back one more time,” he added.

Speaking to PEOPLE the morning after his exit episode, Colby shares what was going through his head at tribal council, talks about his connections with new-era players like Genevieve and Rizo, and reveals that he wasn’t long for the game even if he hadn’t been voted out due to a severe infection.

First of all, happy birthday! When did you realize that your boot episode was falling on your birthday?

I mean, what the hell? You turn 52, and you get voted out on the same night? That’s not ideal. We put it together early on in the season, and a couple others and I were laughing about it. They weren’t laughing at my expense — I was laughing about it; they thought it was sad. I said, “Eh, don’t be sad.” It is what it is.

It was a good episode, it was fun to watch. Not fun to watch getting voted out. That part of it wasn’t. But finally we get to the chaos of the game. As players, we’d been anticipating it this whole time. We knew this season had to pace up. It didn’t feel, for a long time, like it was gearing the way it should, then all of a sudden this starts to happen. The chaos is wild, it’s fun. You like it when there’s a lot of action, there’s a lot of things going on, and you’ve got to work mentally.

I want to talk about your foot injury. Were you ever in danger of being medically evacuated from the game, like Dee and Emily said?

I appreciated seeing that part of the conversation. I didn’t realize they had that discussion. Not a bad discussion to have because the truth is I had two injuries in the same foot. One was a torn ligament. That wouldn’t have taken me out of the game. It was painful, but the doc said, “Look, Colby, it’s gonna suck for you. You’re not going to do very good in the challenges. However, it’s not something I’m going to take you out of the game [for].”

The other injury, which was unrelated but on the same foot, was a puncture wound I got somewhere that introduced some bacteria that led to an infection. That infection kept getting worse day after day, starting on day 9 and last night’s episode was day 12. So we had been monitoring it. I couldn’t hide it from everyone because my limp was so bad, and my pride and ego helped me off the tribal council stage. But around camp, it was obvious that I had an injury. Because they can’t treat it in the game, that infection was only going to fester and get worse, and it was on the bottom of my foot, so it wasn’t something I could keep clean necessarily all the time.

Dr. Joe talked to me right before tribal and said, “Colby, we’ve got to do something about this, and I can’t give you any antibiotics in the game.” And I said, “Well, I’m going home tonight. For some reason, if something gets squirrelly and I don’t get voted out, we’ll address it tomorrow. But please let me go to this final tribal — my final tribal — and say my goodbyes.” So he did.

To answer your question bluntly, I don’t think I could have made it through the game with the infection. It would have taken over. By the time Joe treated it after my game was over, he said it’s the worst infection he’s seen on the show. So it was bad.

It was an emotional tribal council, and it seemed you knew it was your time to go. What was going through your head in that moment?

One, I was appreciative of Cirie and Coach both being there because we’re similarly in how big of a chapter Survivor has played in our lives. At least I had two players there who understood. Obviously, Probst does as well. He gets it. And not to say that Dee and Emily couldn’t connect with it at all. But it was special to me that Coach and Cirie were there because I knew I was going.

It’s not often that you get an opportunity to go out like that. Normally, you’re blindsided at tribal, or there’s bad blood. Everybody’s fighting. It’s way more intense. And Probst knew what was going on, so I credit him for giving me the floor a little bit there — all of us — to reflect on what this adventure has been for us for decades. I feel very fortunate. If you’ve got to go out, that’s a pretty cool way to do it because at least when you know, you can have that conversation with Jeff and say the things you’ve been wanting to say or what Survivor has meant to you all along. I was given that platform, and that doesn’t happen very often.

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Because you didn’t go to tribal council before last night’s episode, we didn’t get to see much of your strategy. You were being lumped in with the “honor and integrity” alliance, but I don’t think you ever said those words yourself. Tell me about your alliances and how you were playing the game that we didn’t see much of.

You are correct. I did not ever say that. However, I was definitely playing with Joe and Coach because I like those guys. But I didn’t draw blood, put it on parchment and say, “We are in this ’til the end. Honor and integrity.”

I was actually proud of my strategic game, although it just didn’t come to light. Early on, Kyle from day 1. His injury was a bummer. Q — that was a bummer that he lost his vote, then got voted out. And I had no anticipation that Q and I would get along as well as we did, but I fell in love with that dude and had fun playing with him. Genevieve and I started on night 1. That was probably my biggest ally in the game besides Stephenie. None of our dynamic was shown. I liked her immediately. But Genevieve, the way she is — and I got to know her over there — she’s less likely to wrap her arms around you, metaphorically, in a hurry. It took me a while to crack her code, but once I did, we were playing together. If you recall, we tribe-swapped together, so I’d been with Genevieve from the beginning of the game. It was not until this “mergatory” that I lost contact with her. She’s a new-era player — everyone assumed that I was going to go “honor and integrity” or they assumed I was going to go old school, but I was playing a very different game. Yes, I still bring the same elements that are me. I’m not as good as Boston Rob or some of these guys that can just completely shapeshift; I just can’t do that. But I made a lot of effort to make sure I wasn’t pigeonholed with the “honor and integrity” guys or with the old-school players.

Speaking of, it was really fun to see you come around on Rizo, going from “he’s so annoying” to actually getting along and playing together.

He did annoy the s— out of me, and there were elements of Rizo that were annoying me the last time I saw him. I talked to him last week, and he said a couple of things I had to correct him on that— not correct him, but I give Rizo guidance. Not about the game — the dude knows how to play the game. That was part of the allure and the appeal: This is a young man who is such a fan, he’s a walking encyclopedia of Survivor knowledge. So he was an asset to me from that standpoint. But I also began to see the redeeming qualities in Rizo, and I could not help myself but to start to like the Rizo that a lot of times doesn’t get shown in the game.

Once you get to know Rizo, you know that some of the things he says are not how he had hoped to say them. It’s just a matter of how he articulates things, and that may come off as cocky or arrogant. The RizGod thing, I’m never going to buy into. I’ll never refer to him as that. But I don’t need to. He’s Rizo to me. I think he’s starting to learn, and these are conversations we’ve had, as he matures and gets perspective. He hadn’t seen himself on TV until now. In some of the conversations we’ve had, I know the young man is starting to figure out how he can better get his point across and articulate things without sounding arrogant.

We’ve completed the pre-jury part of the game. How was Ponderosa after you got voted off?

Well, you hate being at Ponderosa and not being on the jury. Let’s start by saying that. It sucks. You want to make the jury, you want to have an impact on the game in some way. In our Ponderosa, we were kept separate from the other Ponderosa where all the players are going once they’re on the jury. So that was a bummer, that we didn’t get to intermingle with the other players.

That being said, you make the most of it, and we dang sure made the most of our time at Ponderosa. It was a lot of fun. If you’re going to be stuck down there, you can’t go home with your loved ones and your family, you at least want to be around some people who like to have a good time, and we did that.

And that’s where I forged friendships with the players like Kamilla, who I didn’t play with. And Charlie. Didn’t get to know them until after the game. Then in New York for the premiere, we met their loved ones, and that’s special. That’s the takeaway for me that I really cherish.

You made it pretty clear that this was your last ride on Survivor. So what’s next for you?

This is it. That’s probably one of the only reasons I got an invitation — because my intentions were clear, both to myself internally and to my family and also to Probst and production. I only wanted to go back to play the game. I didn’t care about followers on social media, this propelling me into anything. I did all that and certainly squeezed every ounce of juice out of Survivor that I could for a lot of years. I’ve encouraged those younger than me or at a different place in life to do the same thing. It’s a great opportunity. I don’t fault anyone for doing that. But that just wasn’t why I came back.

I’m perfectly content sailing off into the sunset and slowly going back into obscurity and anonymity.