MINNEAPOLIS — After barely being shown in a previous “Survivor 48” episode, Eagan native Eva Erickson was front and center in the most recent show and won her first individual immunity idol.

The show last week opened with an Erickson-led discussion about the largest animal you could take on in a fight — her answer was a female deer — before moving onto strategy discussions.

Erickson, who is the show’s first openly autistic player, remains a member of a five-person alliance consisting of the season’s physically strongest players: Her day-one ally Joe Hunter, stuntman David Kinne, debate professor Shauhin Davari and lawyer Kyle Fraser. At Kinne’s request, they added substance abuse counselor Mary Zheng, to give them a solid six against the four remaining castaways.

Said alliance is not exactly a secret one, and fire lieutenant Chrissy Sarnowsky openly discussed taking it down. That instantly made her a target.

“We have created a very strong, loyal group of five people that I trust that are all big threats,” Erickson said. “Chrissy is the kind of person who will come in and try to bust up what we’ve built and I don’t want to play with someone like that.”

The 10 players divided into pairs for the massive reward/immunity challenge, which was staggered to knock off two teams at the first stopping point, one more at the next, with the final four then competing individually in an endurance challenge. While there was only one immunity winner, those final four did get to share a reward, a lavish taco feast back at camp.

Erickson paired up with Hunter and they proved to be quite adept, winning the first leg and coming in second for the one that followed. The final challenge is a “Survivor” mainstay where castaways need to hold onto a large pole with extremely small footholds. The final person still hanging on wins immunity. Host Jeff Probst called it one of the show’s most iconic challenges.

Hunter and Kinne, who are both built like superheroes, predictably fell off quickly, as this is a challenge that favors more lean muscle. That left Erickson and Zheng each curled around their pole, waiting for the other to fall. Although it took a while, Zheng did lose her grip, leaving Erickson as the winner.

Zheng gave Erickson a congratulatory hug as Erickson told her, “Good job, good job. That was really fun.”

When Probst asked Erickson about winning, she said she knew she’d win on the pole: “I was like, I have the hockey legs, there is no way I’m losing this challenge. And when I found out there was tacos on the line, too, I was like there is no shot in hell that I’m not there for that.”

At the feast that followed, the four wolfed down tacos and all the fixings. At one point Erickson, with salsa smeared on her chin, closed her eyes and leaned on Hunter with a look of sheer contentment.

While grabbing a chip, Erickson spotted a small, rolled-up scroll in the bowl, which she quickly stuffed in her pants without being seen by her fellow players.

Of course, consuming all that food at once when you’ve barely been eating anything leads to some stomach issues. Once they were finished, Erickson announced: “I’m gonna lay down for a little bit and then I might go yak … I am feeling like I’m going to absolutely puke my guts out.”

While we don’t see Erickson lose her lunch, she does belch, repeatedly, in the segment that followed.

While on the beach, away from the other players, she reads the scroll, which promises she’ll find a secret advantage the following night if she sneaks away from the shelter to the opposite side of camp.

Erickson also decided to keep the advantage to herself as everyone knows she already has a hidden immunity idol: “It might be nice to have something that’s private knowledge to me.”

From there, the episode focused on the strong alliance of six battling over who they were going to boot from the game, ultimately choosing Sarnowsky after some fierce debate.

The preview for this week’s show suggested that strong alliance is developing some serious cracks.

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(“Survivor 48” airs at 7 p.m. Central Wednesdays on CBS and streams the next day on Paramount+.)

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