After decades of drunken fights over frozen pizzas, semi-erotic mud-pit wrestling matches, and forbidden coach-bus trysts, 40 of the fiercest Challenge competitors are reuniting for the MTV mainstay’s historic 40th season. Beginning in 1998, The Challenge was originally an offshoot of the popular Road Rules series, which featured hot 22-year-olds causing a ruckus in an RV. It quickly expanded to include alums from The Real World. Then it began integrating standouts from any reality show in the Paramount Global ecosystem (and that’s why we stan a merger). Unlike similar strategy-competition shows like Survivor or Big Brother, which introduce us to a brand-new cast each season, The Challenge rotates the same pool of outrageous characters year after year while “promoting” rookies to main players if they’re successful in the hard-won battle of pulling screen time away from the fan favorites.
We’ve watched these Not Serious People™ grow up in real time, from chasing each other around a mansion with a bottle of ketchup or hosting a funeral for a wig to maturing into semi-respectable, semi-functioning adults. To celebrate the milestone season, The Challenge has assembled an all-star cast for the ages, including GOATs like Johnny Bananas and Cara Maria, newer faces like Survivor champ Michele Fitzgerald, and “retired” players like Emily, Leroy, and Aviv, returning to their roots for a last hurrah. On The Challenge: Battle of the Eras, these now-geriatric degenerates will duke it out for the only prize worth fighting for: making their kids proud.
Okay, they’re actually competing for a million dollars, but all any of them will talk about, with the exception of Aviv and her boob-job aspirations, are their little monsters at home. You know you’re old when even The Challenge, a halcyon of debauchery, doesn’t offer a respite from baby babble.
Our cast is carted into their first challenge in a giant storage trailer like they’re Cara Maria’s horses, then dumped upon a scenic landing in Vietnam as drones shoot off in the distance because it’s 2024, bitch. The players divide themselves up into “Eras” numbered I–IV, correlating with when in the show’s 26-year run they first appeared.
As always, host T.J. Lavin arrives on the scene, dressed appropriately for obnoxious sideline coaching at his son’s Little League soccer game. He starts in on his usual cue-card spiel, but can only get through about a sentence and a half before C.T. “I will smash his head and eat it” Tamburello starts crying, overcome with emotion. He’ll be getting an earful from Josh’s agent — that’s Josh’s signature move!
All the fuzzy feelings of nostalgia and good vibes are quickly drop-kicked off the Burj Khalifa when T.J. informs the gang that in order to advance into the next stage of the game, they’ll have to compete against their Era teammates in the Era Invitational.
No, this is not an invitation to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, despite the painfully misleading title. It’s a purgelike event where the losing man and woman from each Era will be forced to fight for their spot in the game in an elimination round. Their opponent will be decided by their team’s winners.
Yup, that means eight players will be sent home almost immediately, which is kind of a downer. One of the main draws of this milestone season is its all-star cast, 20 percent of whom will only enjoy mere minutes of screen time before being relegated back to diaper duty at home. I’m not usually a fan of redemption houses, but I would take one this season.
To secure their safety, the challengers will compete in a game called Light Up. Players must first race to build a 3-D puzzle of the number 40. They’ll then climb into a tiny glow-in-the-dark boat that looks like a Disney teacup on molly so that they can collect ten correctly colored strobe lights attached to buoys amid the sea. The first man and woman from each Era to make it back to shore and insert their strobes at their station win.
This puzzle is either deceptively difficult, or the contestants are truly as dumb as their past trivia performances indicate (never forget the fabled “northern continent”), because we probably spend 20-plus minutes of the hour-long episode watching Tony ask for checks on obviously incorrect combinations, as if he can simply will the right answer with his very big arms and very small mind.
Laurel, the human embodiment of road rage, builds her 40 first and makes quick work of her strobes. All the while, her “little sister” Cara Maria is seconds behind her. (Laurel and Cara are the same age; Laurel just calls her that because condescension is her first and only language.)
It’s been more than a decade since Laurel first tore Cara to shreds on Cutthroat, but Cara still cares about her approval despite the fact that she’s since surpassed her in stats like final appearances, elimination wins, and money earned. In a confessional, Cara admits that Laurel is only nice to her when she feels secure that she’s doing better than Cara, which is the mark of an honorable, totally not toxic person that you should definitely seek affirmation from.
Laurel edges out Cara for the Era II women’s winner spot, with Bananas coming in first for the men. KellyAnne and Ryan lose, to which I say, “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
Two-time champ Rachel wins for Era I alongside puzzle master C.T., who bloviates on how when it comes to puzzles, he sees the whole board like some kind of hulked-up Bobby Fischer. Grandpa Mark and Katie “I’m on vacation” Cooley finish last, to no one’s surprise.
The lads of Era III take a beating — losing a puzzle challenge to Cory is like the equivalent of flunking out of Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? in the first round. After Devin’s teacup capsizes, he elects to swim through the rest of his strobe collection, washing up onshore and coughing up water like a sickly Victorian child. Everyone thinks this is very G. Tori wins for the women, with Nia and Leroy falling short.
Era IV has been a mess fest since preseason, and the chaos train shows no signs of stopping. Horacio and his glistening ten-pack win the challenge, alongside Survivor champ Michele, but Horacio’s power is worthless when it comes to protecting Nuracio — there’s nothing he can do to save his beloved girlfriend Nurys, who loses alongside U.K. baddie Theo.
Nurys has a breakdown, feeling like she’s automatically going to be sent home since her female competitors are so formidable: Her options are Jenny, a literal bodybuilder who beat all of the men in her winning season Total Madness; Kaycee and her 7–2 elimination record (the two losses can be attributed to when she was severely handicapped by her noodle-limbed brother on Ride or Dies); and Olivia, the Lorde to her Charli.
It’s a lineup that would instill the fear of Pazuzu in most, but Nurys is selling herself short! We can’t forget that she sent home Horacio and Kyland, two of the most dominant men of Battle for a New Champion, just last season in a daunting elimination round.
Post-challenge, we get our first look at this season’s mansion, which is decked out in grotesque, fire-truck-red upholstery, giving the whole space a seedy, “McDonald’s After Dark” aesthetic. Upstairs in the bedrooms, C.T. and Darrell host an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, where they lament that plastics are bad for you now and breathe a sigh of relief that their arthritic joints don’t have to endure bunk beds this season. Okay, so The Challenge contestants are officially too old for bunk beds, but they’re totally kosher for the ladies of The Golden Bachelor. Interesting.
Speaking of old people, as the house breaks out into a (relatively tame) late-night pool party, the Era I Elders are ready for their cup of Sleepytime Tea and melatonin gummy. But I have to hand it to them: None of them make a big fuss about the noise — they know what they signed up for and let the youths flounce about it in their skivvies.
While Olivia and Theo debate making out, enemies Cory and Tony calmly discuss the central tension of the episode: Is it most strategic to protect the strongest players on your team to pave a path to the final, or knock them out when you have the chance so you don’t have to face them down the line?
This question looms over the four conversations taking place in the Chamber, this year’s arbitrary term for deliberation. The moniker kind of matches the BDSM vibes of the sex-dungeon mansion, and that’s what we call corporate synergy.
Unlike the usual “beg the winners to spare you” setup, which involves private meetings across an interrogation table, the Chamber is a full team discussion. Think trying to finish a high-school group project on a deadline, but all your classmates are coked up and addicted to getting the last word.
Kicking off in the Era I camp, C.T. wrestles with protecting his bro, Darrell, versus preserving a potential team asset in Brad. But before he has to make a tough decision, Derrick jumps to his rescue, nominating himself to go up against Mark to repay Darrell for unknown favors from their personal life (Darrell says he would have never done this for Derrick). For the women, Rachel abdicates all responsibility in the decision-making process, claiming that it’s more fair if C.T. decides for her because he’ll ensure that the strongest women stay safe, versus pursuing some alternative girly-pop agenda as us ladies are apt to do.
In the Era II Chamber, Ryan explains why he’d prefer to face off with Brandon instead of Derek or Nehemiah, but regardless of his choice, this is by far the least iconic male lineup of the cast — I miss Wes! For the women, it seems ridiculous to cut chronically in-shape Cara when there’s so much game left to conquer, but Laurel and Bananas are as suspicious as a Westchester mom whose husband came home from a boys’ weekend smelling of YSL Black Opium. To save herself, Cara offers a grandiose soliloquy that would make the Bard himself jealous, announcing that she’s bringing her “defense walls down” for the first time in her Challenge career and humbly asking the power duo to erase their storied past and work with her, arm in arm in the new era.
Theater-club auditions continue with Era III, where Jordan gives an emphatic “a Lannister always pays his debts” monologue, hitting on his integrity and ability to get his team to a final, thus pushing the vote toward Tony. Compelling rhetoric, but likely unnecessary — Cory already hates Tony, and Tori will never say Jordan, her EX-FIANCÉ’S (!!!) name. On the Era III women’s side, no one knows Averey, which makes her easy to dispose of, but Tori actively despises Amanda, which makes her as appealing as one of goddamned double-chocolate muffins from the Olympic Village.
Rivalries take center stage in Era IV when Nurys explains that she wants to go against Olivia, her bestie turned nemesis. Michele tries to make the argument that Olivia is to her what Nurys is to Horacio, and I’m like, “Bitch, you better be joking.” Horacio and Nurys are entwined in, as Bananas put it, a “junior-high vomit fest” whirlwind romance, with plans to move in together. Olivia is just a girl you were chill with for one season. Michele hits us with the crocodile tears, and it’s only episode one.
The matter of the Era IV men is decidedly less fraught. Ever since their infamous snog on War of the Worlds II, Paulie and Theo have been desperate to take their enemies-to-lovers smut-fest to the mat. Here’s hoping it’s a pole wrestle.
