Destination X’s Jonah Evarts Was Shocked By His Own Gameplay: "I'm a Very Competitive Person!"

In the second episode of NBC’s Destination X, the locales got brisker and the remaining contestants on the bus got chillingly  Machiavellian towards the sweetest guy in the game, Jonah Evarts.

The brand-new competition reality series puts contestants inside a blacked-out bus that travels across Europe. With challenges and clues, they have to guess where they are for the chance at a $250,000 prize. 

RELATED: How to Watch and Stream Destination X on NBC & Peacock

SPOILER ALERT: This article will discuss Episode 2 of Destination X.

For Evarts, it wasn’t the mountainside competitions or memory games that brought him down. It was the claustrophbic nature and isolation of being inside a windowless bus for sometimes 48-hours at a time that got inside his head. 

"It was the pressure cooker of we're all playing a game here and I don't know who I can trust,” Evarts told NBC Insider on the heels of his elimination in the game. "I don't know what they're doing. And not having any privacy in a game like that is very, very intense."

We got into it with Evarts about playing an emotionally vulnerable game, if he felt betrayed by being placed in the Map Room by several of his peers, and how was surprised by his own reticence throughout the game. 

Destination X's Jonah Evarts couldn't get acclimating to the pressures of the game?

Already a world-traveler and a publisher author, Jonah seemed like a perfect, well-read competitor who could dominate in Destination X. However, Jonah struggled to find his game legs and never seemed at ease with either the social game or going into the competitions. 

He said Ally Bross helped him a lot during the game and he sought her counsel a lot on the bus.

"I was kind of looking up to her in a lot of ways,” he admitted. "She was so on top of her game the whole time. Honestly, I was kind of envious of that. I was like, 'Man, she's got this s--- figured out.' I felt that way about everyone, even someone like Rick, who was kind of being ostracized, I was like, 'Man, he's really handling this better than I am, and I'm not even in that position.’"

RELATED: Jeffrey Dean Morgan "Didn't Picture" Himself Hosting Destination X Until He Got This Advice

Jonah blamed his honest gameplay for ultimately undermining his ability to make allies in the game. 

"I had a fear in my mind that because I was playing the game so straightforward and being vocal and honest about how I was playing that people weren't going to want to ally themselves with me,” he explained. "Being that way kind of exposes you to almost being stepped on. It makes it so you're vulnerable. And obviously people don't want to work with someone that they find to be a vulnerable player in the game, so that was something always in my mind. But I never once thought about changing how I was playing, because I don't want to be someone I'm not."

Jonah Evarts admits he was nervous about seeing his Destination X breakdown

Jonah was last to volunteer for his rotation in the cuckoo memory game administered by Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the chalet and afterwards melted down to Shayne and Ally about how the pressure was getting to him. It was a real moment and a vulnerable one that Jonah admits he was worried about watching when it aired. 

"Honestly, I've been dreading it,” he shared. "I knew that, 'Oh man, I'm going to cry on TV.' I haven't cried in front of people in a really long time, so it was a very exposing moment for me. I felt very naked in that moment. But honestly, that's who I am. I'm a very emotional, sensitive person and I have no shame about that."

What’s surprised him is how supportive how his cast mates and his family and friends reacted to that portion of the episode. 

"A bunch of people have been reaching out saying, "I'm so proud of you, Jonah." Part of what made the game hard for me is I really do love everyone from that bus,” he explained. "They're all such kind of people. Obviously we're playing a game but outside the context of the game, any one of those people, I would trust them with anything. I love all of them."

RELATED: How to Play (and Win) Destination X, NBC's Adventurous New Reality Competition Series

Even when Ally and Shayne and Kim used his vulnerability against him?

"I mean, I understand, sort of like, why,” he said of their inferring he was too weak for the game and putting him up for the Map Room. "Because I was playing the way I was, it made me a little bit vulnerable to people using me because they don't see me so much as a threat. It's more about, this is a player that I can use to get where I need to go."

"It does feel a little bit bad,” he continued. “But I gotta be honest, in retrospect, I feel like it would have been a good idea to keep me in the game until later. You want to get the really strong people out early, right? To me, that makes more sense and that's how I would have played it if I was still there. I get it, but also maybe they should have kept me in longer."

Jonah Evarts on his Destination X Exit

Asked how he felt going into the Map Room, Jonah said it felt like a “pressure cooker” to be in there. 

"I'm a textbook over thinker, so everything I see, I'm overthinking because you never know what's a right herring or what's real,” he said of his overall mindset. "Then to go in the Map Room, all that pressure condenses into this one moment that is just so crushing. I went in there and my ribs were hugging me. I was so nervous. I went in as fast as I could. I put my X down and I walked out. I didn't want to think too much, or I'm going to end up putting my X 1000 miles away."

In the end, he only ended up being 105 miles away from Lake Geneva when he selected Bern, Switzerland. But he was the furthest and was sent home. 

RELATED: Josh Martinez Explains How Big Brother and Destination X Differ: “The Bus Was Way Harder"

Looking back, he laughed about walking off the bus to meet Jeffrey. "I didn't know where I was, even when I walked off the bus.

"Watching the first episode with Josh, he turns around and there's a Coliseum. I get off, and there's a Ferris Wheel,” he joked. "I don't know where this is! But I got to spend the rest of that day in Geneva, which was really cool. I got to just walk around and then I can't say where I went next, but I got to follow the bus and I got to go somewhere incredible."

Now that he’s been through the Destination X gauntlet, would he try being a competition reality player again?

"I feel like if I was to do something like this again, I would be way better prepared,” he mused. "I would know what to expect going in from myself, which would help me figure it out. I really did think that the competitor in me would kind of awaken because I'm a very competitive person and I don't think that comes across at all in this."

"If I play a board game with my friends, I am like the hand of justice and I am going to destroy them,” he said dramatically. "In this, I think the stakes were so high, and it's hard for me to remove the human element from it. Going in knowing that about myself, that that's stronger in me than my competitor, I think I would be able to handle it better. I just didn't expect that from myself, and it was a learning experience."

Watch Destination X Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on NBC. Episodes are available to stream next day on Peacock.