For two votes on Micronesia, Airai was Joel's tribe and everybody knew it. The firefighter ran the strong-guy alliance that took out Mary, then sent Mikey B home without breaking a sweat, all while telling anyone who'd listen that the weaker players were dead weight. Loud, in charge, sure he had the place read.
Then the swap came and dropped him into a camp full of women who were quietly done with him. They banded together for the first real power move of the season — the seed of what became the Black Widow Brigade — and flipped the numbers before Joel saw it coming. He got blindsided out sixteenth, never sniffed the merge, the guy who'd been bossing the whole tribe gone a swap after he stopped controlling who he was sitting next to. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving alpha.
