Top 5 Challenge Seasons Where Men Had Too Much Impact on Women’s Games

I’ve been covering The Challenge for 10 years now, and in that time, it’s been astonishing to watch the evolution and growth in women’s competitors. When I first started covering the show, I felt like I was watching the beginning of a revolution where awesome competitors & personalities like Ashley, Tori, Kailah, Amanda, and Kam were all dropped into the universe at roughly the same time. Some of them were fit, some were good at puzzles, some were unafraid badasses, and some were all of the above. The Challenge already had strong women before them, including Cara, who had become the face of the franchise. However, I thought those ladies did a good job in upping the level of competition and the power of presence that women held on The Challenge in terms of political, physical, and entertainment.

People tried to clown on them in the moment. Still, the Lavender Ladies were an alliance of non-super-physical female competitors that produced Championships, Finals, elimination upsets, iconic fights, jaw-dropping moments, and the first Millionaire in Challenge history. And then after their run on Final Reckoning, MTV’s cast continued to up the level of female competitors. So much so that it’s hit a point where the female casts have been consistently stronger than the men’s casts in the 2020’s, which is something that makes me really happy, yet also transitions us into the thesis & title of this blog.

Which is, there is a long history of the men on The Challenge being overly involved in the women’s game on the show, whether it be consciously or unconsciously. In my opinion, unless it is a co-ed partner season — the men should focus on the men and the women should focus on the women. Sadly, that has not always been the case, and so I want to go through and highlight 5/6 seasons where men had way too much influence on the women’s games.

Let’s jump into it (also, I did a video ranking all the Survivor Men on The Challenge, link/video is above).

5 Vendettas

The most interesting storyline going into Vendettas was Cara Maria vs. Kailah after their fallout from Dirty 30 and the social media war that ensued between them. During this era of The Challenge, anything I blogged out about either Kailah or Cara would get 10x the pageviews of any other cast member. Going into Vendettas, they should have built up these two against each other the same way they did with Wes & Kenny on Fresh Meat 2.

Instead, Vendettas had a format with “genderless” winners for almost all of the Troikas. Which ultimately meant that men would take up most of the winners’ spots and would then control most of the decisions in the game. In this season, 22/30 Troika slots were taken up by men, and every single women’s elimination day of the season had 2/3 or 3/3 men in the Troika. This meant the women in the game who were at odds couldn’t even take shots at each other.

What is a bit funny is the fact that those men made a concerted effort to keep the strongest women in the game just in case they’d have to run a Final with them. Which backfired as Cara ended up beating them in the Final to take home the win after only 1 daily challenge & 0 elimination wins all season. Still, it’s frustrating that we missed out on Cara & Kailah gunning for each other in a real way. Then Kailah got DQ’d on Final Reckoning and the potential all-time rivalry became a “what could’ve been”.

4 Gauntlet 1 & Inferno 1

Both the original Gauntlet & Inferno had genderless eliminations. Thus, in these big team formats, the game always devolved into the men tossing the women into elimination as a means to “trim the fat” before the Final. This style of gameplay actually did lead to some iconic stretches like Sarah Greyson winning 5 eliminations on The Gauntlet or Katie winning 2 eliminations on The Inferno after her team threw challenges to get her out. Regardless, these formats gave men an outsized influence on the game.

3 Challenge USA 1

The women on Challenge USA 1 were excellent. Desi, Angela, Justine, and Sarah all looked like women who could go toe-to-toe with any of the best ladies on the flagship — and then I found myself impressed as well by Cayla, Alyssa, and Kyra at points throughout the season.

At the same time, USA 1 had the weakest male cast this show has ever seen. There were 3 good male competitors in Tyson, Danny, and Kyland — and then, if you want to be generous, Ben was half-decent and always gave 150%. After that, we are talking about a group of unathletic and unfit men. If you threw Josh Martinez on that cast — he’s easily in the Top 5. The reason I bring this up is because USA 1 was a season that worked largely in partnerships. Week after week, these women were shackled with deadweight competitors in the daily challenge — which honestly, isn’t a big deal given that there have been plenty of seasons where the female casts have been the strongest and held back men in partnerships.

The reason it was a MAJOR ISSUE was that they still did partner stuff in the Final. Which was odd given that production chose to medically DQ Ben right before the Final started and forced women to compete solo in some incredibly brutal legs. Including a leg that would have been impossible for Angela Rummans to complete, so she decided to sit out and was DQ’d even though other players timed out of other portions. Enzo Palumbo not being able to swim more than 5 feet took out Desi Williams, which was completely unfair as the partnerships were randomized. Two men who basically didn’t even participate in a Final took out the two strongest women in the game. That is preposterous.

2 The Island

When I went back and did some research, I found the men & women had the same total participation in Face-Offs on The Island, and there were 4 men and 4 Women who made it to the Final. Which, when you look at it from the outside — it makes The Island seem like a fair season. That said, anyone who watched The Island will let you know that it was a season littered with misogyny. Men took control of the first 4 keys of the game, and from there, it felt like any key given from there was scraps from women/outliers. Bananas & Kenny hurled many names at women. Dunbar was blaming women for eating food and not giving him more as the reason for him being an asshole. And they made sure to silence/go after any strong women — voting out Rachel early, and then making KellyAnne & Evelyn public enemies #1 and 2.

Even Evelyn’s big moment at the end of the game was her having to make a deal with the devil where she still joined a boat with 3 other men who were against her the entire game to win. To which, I don’t blame Evelyn for doing it because if she hadn’t done it — she would have had to watch those same men and not have any money in her pocket.

It really does suck looking back that we had Rachel & Evelyn on a season together and they never got to go head-to-head in anything.

1 Battle of the Eras

Allan@TheAllanAguirre

I don't think I'm overreacting when I say that Rachel just gave the best toast in Challenge history tonight. Also, credit to the editing team for the fantastic montage of The Challenge's badass women. #TheChallenge40

12:39 AM · Aug 8, 2024 · 95.4K Views

23 Replies · 161 Reposts · 1.72K Likes

Hand up, I haven’t gotten over the fact that Battle of the Eras was completely underwhelming and became a dragged-out slog despite having one of the most stacked casts in Challenge history. We had Laurel, Cara, Rachel, Jenny, Emily, Tori, Kaycee, Jodi, and so on all in the same house — and yet these women basically didn’t get to take shots at one another besides the opening challenge of the season.

Once it became an individual game, the men were the ones who had the deciding vote for women to go into elimination, and they were the ones who decided the targets coming out of elimination. This made the second half of the game really boring. It would’ve been way more awesome and fulfilling to watch Tori actively take shots at Jenny and Rachel or vice versa. These women should have been able to go into war, and instead, they were just passive-aggressive with each other because they knew they ultimately couldn’t vote each other in.

Splitting up men’s & women’s elimination days was MTV’s way of extending the season for more episodes, and by giving voting power to the opposite gender, it incentivized people to give effort in every daily challenge. Except in doing so, they nerfed the potential entertainment & high-level gameplay we could have seen from these women. It’s an absolute shame, especially knowing that we are likely never going to get a female cast of this magnitude ever again. Sucks to suck