The Challenge Megathread - Flagship, USA, All-Stars & More?

**Byrd** · 2024-02-27 12:50

Starting a new one-time thread for The Challenge rather than a new thread for each season, since our fantasy league seems to have petered out. No need to refresh a new thread every 6-9 months to talk about a show that is basically ongoing every week in some format or another.

More importantly, the All-Stars trailer dropped, and it looks intense. It premieres April 10 on Paramount Plus. This season's womens' cast is stacked, although I'm a little sad at my personal mega-crush Averey not being in the trailer much. Full cast breakdown is here.

**Xno Kappa** · 2024-02-27 15:22

That female cast is going to be messy as hell lol

**Byrd** · 2024-02-27 15:32

Originally Posted by Xno Kappa

That female cast is going to be messy as hell lol

Yup. Having Brandon and Tony back is intriguing, but the women's' cast is going to be the main event on this one, and the trailer seems to confirm that.

**Byrd** · 2024-03-13 17:26

So Season 40 has gone to film, and the cast is 40 people big, including some huge names. Challenge XL (may or may not be its official title) is certainly fitting for both the size and prestige of the cast.

Women

Men

**Xno Kappa** · 2024-03-20 20:32

Bhanu was a plant by the producers on Survivor. Nobody can change my mind.

**Byrd** · 2024-07-17 13:21

**Vil** · 2024-07-23 21:20

XL can't be worse than 39... right?

That was a few months ago and maybe I'll look at that thread to see what ppl here thought of that disaster, but outside of like Kyland and Nurys... maybe Horacio, I don't know if there was anybody who I had a better opinion of after being on this season. Probably half the cast I'd say went WAY down. How much must production hate Emanuel with that edit? I remember sitting there thinking "there's no way anybody beats him... but would they really present their winner like this?"

And All Stars. The format was actually kind of pretty dope? The problem with the skulls in the mainline series was the absolute lack of scarcity. As much as some fans want the "lol, sucks to be you, the final starts and you don't have a star" moment, I am more than fine with the one last chance thing like they had. The Adam confessional closing that one episode towards the end may have been the more shocking things I've seen on this show in some time. I kept sitting there waiting for a "ok, I'm kidding", but it actually just kept getting worse. Get over yourself, dude.

I don't really know much about XL other than seeing the cast and I think I saw that they have to "make the team" or something. So only 25 episode season, maybe? Cast-wise it's impressive the group they amassed. No shortage of people to root against.

**Byrd** · 2024-08-07 10:30

Episode Zero is tonight.

First two minutes can be found here.

**Vil** · 2024-08-07 17:25

Thanks for pointing that out. This series tends to be a mess for my dvr, sometimes missing them or wanting to record like 8 episodes in a row of some past season because they're not labeled repeat.

Are episodes this season just an hour?

**Byrd** · 2024-08-07 19:14

Originally Posted by Vil

Thanks for pointing that out. This series tends to be a mess for my dvr, sometimes missing them or wanting to record like 8 episodes in a row of some past season because they're not labeled repeat.

Are episodes this season just an hour?

I don't know, my guess is that is just tonight's episode. For whatever reason, these 'intro' episodes don't tend to get recorded by my DVR either. If it wasn't for Reddit, I would've missed it, too.

**Vil** · 2024-08-07 22:14

Yeah, looks like they're 90 min for the actual episodes. That was a struggle filling those some of those recent seasons, but they ought to be able to manage that in a big milestone season. Well, unless they purge half the entertaining people in the next two weeks.

It looked like there were some cool challenges in the preview at the end. Hopefully they don't disappoint. I'm not sure if I remember a big team rowing thing before, so I can't wait for that to go extremely poorly for one or more teams.

**Byrd** · 2024-08-08 12:29

The entire Episode Zero is available on Youtube, that's some quality marketing. And here it is:

I have to assume Devyn and Da'Vonne were only there for the opening episode, but if they are there the whole time, that might be kind of entertaining? Also, can we call them DVDA? Because that would be very entertaining.

**Vil** · 2024-08-14 12:39

I assumed that they were just there for the opening event or w/e, but that gave me a thought earlier. Not saying it's a good idea, but I was imagining those two commentating like it's MXC.

Is the premiere tonight supposed to be only about 1:20? I might not be watching live and wasn't sure if my guide was screwy or if it's just a little less time tonight.

**Vil** · 2024-08-14 21:47

I don't understand putting a 10 minute rerun of Ridiculousness to fill out that half hour. The show has found so many terrible ways to pad out episodes in recent seasons, so weird that they cut off early. So many people I like (or at least better than others on their teams) getting last place lmao. This is a disaster!

Dope first challenge though. I don't know how tough that puzzle would have been, but I just think the limited lighting would have made that real tough. Tony being a disaster on the puzzle and thinking he had it right was one of the reasons I'm glad he's here.

Not sure how much of the next episode the eliminations will take, but it'll be great to get to an (almost) manageable cast size. I don't expect them to do a full check-in with everybody, but there were many people that I completely forgot were on this season until I saw them as vote options in deliberation. But some of them being completely ignored before it, it's like "k, they're not an option".

**Byrd** · 2024-08-16 16:43

Originally Posted by Vil

I don't understand putting a 10 minute rerun of Ridiculousness to fill out that half hour.

I feel they could have found another 10 minutes worth of confessionals to fill out that episode over Ridiculousness. I just don't get it, although I suppose that's some of what Episode Zero was for.

Originally Posted by Vil

Not sure how much of the next episode the eliminations will take, but it'll be great to get to an (almost) manageable cast size.

I bet it's pretty much the whole episode. Finish deliberations + select contestants + EIGHT eliminations sounds like a full episode to me.

Originally Posted by Vil

I don't expect them to do a full check-in with everybody, but there were many people that I completely forgot were on this season until I saw them as vote options in deliberation. But some of them being completely ignored before it, it's like "k, they're not an option".

There are 40 people, there are definitely people I completely forgot were on the season through most of the episode, and - for what its worth - I bet there will be several times this season where I'm like "Oh yeah, so and so is still here. Haven't seen them in three episodes."

From /u/willseamon on Reddit, the confessional count for the episode is interesting.

Spoiler: show

Definitely some people I was expecting more of (Derek, Tori, Josh) , and others I was expecting less of (Emily, Ryan, Aviv). It will be interesting to see how well this correpsonds to the end of the season final results. It doesn't feel like a season where they need to do too much character development since so many of these people are so familiar to us already.

**Xno Kappa** · 2024-08-16 17:27

I really hope a lot of the era 1 egos shutdown the others. Especially era 3 lol. I liked the first episode. Hopefully it’s a banger of a season.

**Vil** · 2024-08-21 21:22

lol @ not even showing the end of deliberations/locking in the votes and just opening the ep with the people walking in with their uniforms on a full day later. I'm fine with supplementing flashbacks with confessionals to break up a looooong block of eliminations, but the editing was all over the place and it didn't always work.

Have they really not had any "iconic" elimination challenges in the past 10 seasons that they used that 4th one? It's a good one, but had it even been done more than once? I guess there's the matter that they'd want 4 things that they could just move in/move out with less hassle, so that narrows a lot. Knot So Fast was in the 20s and this is essentially a variant of it works. Might have been nice to see some sort of more mental thing, but the first 3 eliminations are kind of the big 3. I don't know if we're going to get mostly previously used eliminations or get some new-ish ones later this season, but if they do end up with repeats, give me some things styled like some of the goofy ones from like era 1.

I'm looking forward to getting the regular season going next week to see how this is going to work. I don't think they've done 4 teams before, so really wondering if they're going to do 1 or 2 teams safe (or some of each).

**Byrd** · 2024-08-29 11:42

Well, that was an excellent third episode, this season is off to a great start.

Spoiler: show

**Vil** · 2024-08-29 12:31

Yeah, I'm kinda so-so on that aspect of the format but it's interesting overall so far. That's so many people getting a "week off" the way this works. I get there is a little more incentive than that since some people may want their team to win the challenge, but that's a whole lot of time where the potential people up for elimination are locked in. We'll see how it goes though. I do like that they're doing two separate eliminations. Winners only having two options feels a little too narrow, but I guess most of the maneuvering will be in terms of picking the targets from each team. Hopefully that's something that will be bouncing around rather than a large multi-team group solving a method in the next two weeks.

Oh and Tony. I was happy to see him on AS, bummed he had to walk in the first ep or w/e, and was looking forward to him here. Yeah, I'm good not seeing him for a bit. Maybe Tony 5.0 will be the form where he gets things figured out. Ignoring if he wanted to be there or not (the performance seemed to validate her comments, but why wouldn't the edit bury him prior to that? Oh right, these editors are clueless), the move was just dumb. He's not going to be a big priority for E4 folks when he's teammates with Devin and Jordan.

**Xno Kappa** · 2024-08-29 19:01

Oh Tony.

Also fuck yeah Avery! These first few episodes have been fantastic. But fuck man I hope CT doesn’t go out on a medical exit.

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