The Challenge: USA Season 2 Premiere Recap: [Spoiler] Goes Rogue as a New Voting Twist Changes Everything
Six MTV legends, 18 CBS reality favorites and another $500,000 on the line. This time, it’s not going to be a walk in the park for the veterans.
Welcome back for another season of The Challenge: USA, which now features some of the MTV show’s fiercest competitors. Johnny Bananas, Wes Bergmann, Tori Deal, Jonna Mannion Stephens, Amanda Garcia and Cory Wharton are coming in hot to try and get their paws on that hefty prize money. But will anyone from Survivor, Big Brother or The Amazing Race be able to stop them? (Get the lowdown on who’s battling it out here.)
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After host TJ Lavin brings in the MTV crew, he tells them the game will be played in teams. After a schoolyard pick’em, the breakdown is as follows:
Red Team: Michele, Jonna, Josh, Paulie, Chanelle, Bananas, Dusty and Tiffany
Blue Team: Cory, Cassidy, Tori, Chris, Faysal, Sebastian and both Alyssas
Green Team: Michaela, Desi, Wes, Monte, Ameerah, Luis, Amanda and Tyler
If you’re wondering who’s going to be the source of the most drama (and we mean besides Amanda, who Tori pleaded the fifth about in our recent Q&A), Josh and Paulie have a lot of prior beef to contend with. Judging by Paulie’s take on the whole thing, I think it’s safe to say we’re probably gonna see some fireworks this season. “Part of me wants to hug him, put the differences beside me, and then there’s that other side of me, that’s like, ‘I kind of want to rip your head off,'” he tells us. Game on!
FIRST CHALLENGE | In “Storm the Castle,” teams must carry statues of the veteran players all the way up to some castle ruins. Along the way, there are puzzles that will help them with their task if they can complete them. The first team to place both statues at the finish wins the challenge, is safe from elimination and gets to select two players to be at risk for elimination.
Blue gets the job done the fastest, and when they head back to the house, they must nominate one male and one female from either the Red or Green teams. As for the rest of them, they’ll be casting one vote for any player from the losing teams… in secret. A huge game-changer! Sure, it’s been done before in the Challenge world, but it always ups the ante.
NOMINATIONS AND VOTING | Thanks to their relationship with Josh, the Blue team decides to align with and protect the Red team. They ultimately select Luis and Ameerah for possible elimination. At the Arena, TJ reveals the results of the secret vote. Wes and Dusty get two votes each; Desi, one; Michele, three; and Monte and Bananas, four a piece. All of those votes are then thrown into the Hopper. One ball will be randomly selected and that person will determine whether it’s a male or female elimination.
But it wouldn’t be The Challenge without a bit of shadiness. Despite the Red team agreeing that they wouldn’t vote for any of their own, Jonna goes rogue and votes for Michele. The All Stars Season 2 and 3 winner says that Wes, her only true friend in this game, warned her about the Survivor winner before heading out to film. And since the votes this season are cast in secret, it gives Jonna the perfect opportunity to take the shot.
Will Jonna’s decision come back to bite her and who will go head-to-head in the first elimination? You’ll have to tune in Sunday at 9/8c to find out!
So what did you think about the Challenge: USA premiere? Grade it below, then fire away in the comments!
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