‘The Challenge’ Stars Break Down ‘Return to Cutthroat’

The Challenge is back. Season 42, subtitled The Challenge: Cutthroat, premiered on Wednesday (August 5) and wasted no time bringing its more-than-two-dozen competitors into the action. Warning: The following post contains spoilers for The Challenge‘s Season 42 premiere.

The inaugural episode, “Return to Cutthroat,” took the cast to Bangkok, Thailand, with an array of OGs, relative newcomers, and first-timers all sent sprinting through the city for their first chance at gaining power.

The introductory challenge found Sydney Segal finishing first and thus showing that her excellent performance in the previous season wasn’t a one-off. The Survivor alum told TV Insider of her unabashed self-confidence, “The Challenge is so political and athletic, and you have to confront your enemies, unlike Survivor, where you’re blindsiding like a wuss. I do think it serves me really well in this particular setting because then, I came from a position of power, fear, and thank God for that because I can’t do it any other way.”

Finishing second in the race was Izzy Fairthorne, who made it halfway through her debut season on Vets & New Threats but originally hailed from Too Hot to Handle. Comparing her experiences on those shows, she revealed, is a very apples-and-oranges situation. “I’ve done one [dating show], and I feel like it made me kind of naive going in because obviously I feel like I’ve done shows before, I’ve got the experience, and things like that, but going to The Challenge, especially this season, was absolutely crazy. The mental toughness that you need to have and resilience… a social game matters, but just because you’re good at dating doesn’t mean you’re going to have a good social game… it sometimes makes it worse,” she explained.

Placing third in the first daily was Josh Goldstein, a newcomer to The Challenge (and Love Island and Love Island Games alum), who’d been itching to join the show for years. “I was an alternate on USA 1, didn’t make the cut, and then for the last four years was just biting the bullet, wanting to come back. It was such a fun experience. I think watching all of the OGs that have been there for so long — because I would watch seasons periodically with my family growing up, like Brad [Fiorenza], [Johnny] Bananas, C.T. [Tamburello] — everyone was really cool. Finally, being in the mix with them… It’s one thing watching somebody, and that’s another thing being there and seeing what goes on behind the scenes.”

Fourth place for the opening run was Chris Underwood, who previously won on The Challenge: USA‘s second season, and rounding out the top eight were Will Gagnon, Justin Hinsley, Leonardo “Leo” Dionicio, and Anna Leigh Wilson.

Host T.J. Lavin then put all eight of them through another test: Scour the new Challenge house for boxes containing a puzzle and finish them first. The top three would then become team captains.

Paramount+ / YouTube

Finishing first in the captains’ cup was Anna Leigh, who was in her first season after competing on The Amazing Race. While she was excited by her excellent showing at first, she soon came to regret it. “I was trying to look confident going in, but whether it worked or not is a completely different story. I mean, it lasted for maybe five seconds until I realized what that captain position actually meant… My confidence? It didn’t help much. It actually knocked it down very quickly,” she admitted.

The second captain was Chris, and he was delighted to stand out from the get-go. “The momentum was amazing. Just coming from the position that I played The Challenge: USA from just being a complete underdog… now to where I come in and not only am I able to control the game, but really have respect,” he explained. “No one from The Challenge knew who I was, even on Survivor. I didn’t get that much love after my wins, so coming into this season, there was just a lot more respect, a lot more notoriety. I think people took it a lot more seriously, and then to be a captain and to be in that position of power was great.”

Earning the third and final captain spot was Justin Hinsley, who was way underestimated on Vets & New Threats. According to Justin, despite his impressive elimination showings past and winning a captain’s slot, the other cast members would still underestimate him greatly in Season 42. “I think I will always be the underestimated kid. I don’t think that people will ever sway away from that, which is totally fine because I’ll show up and I’ll show out when it’s when the time is right. But I can definitely say that there are some moments where the underestimated portion comes into play again this season,” he teased.

Before the next order of business — that is, team selection — would carry on, it was party time for the cast, which started with, per tradition, Johnny Bananas giving a toast.

“There is somebody here who has been away from the show a little bit, and I think a lot of people here were worried that we were never going to see him again because he had a very unfortunate accident, but there’s nobody that I’ve met in my 25 seasons of this show that it meant more to than this guy right here. And I think I speak for all of us, everyone here holding the camera and all of America, it’s f**king great to have you back, Nelly,” he said, as a cascade of love began to pour out for Nelson Thomas, who made a remarkable comeback after having a below-the-knee amputation after a serious car crash.

Of that moment, Thomas told TV Insider, “Man, let’s be honest. The toast is everything when it comes to The Challenge. When you get into the house, you expect that toast from somebody to say something amazing. And when he handed me the mic, I wasn’t ready at all. But man, just to look around and to see everyone and realize to take a moment and to see where I’m at, and I said, ‘I’m really here. I’m really here.'”

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After a night of typical house debauchery, the gaming recommenced.

T.J. informed the captains that the teams would not be chosen by themselves but by their rival captains. Anna Leigh quickly discovered that Chris and Justin had an unspoken agreement to help each other out with the selections.

The team lineups ended up like so:

• Team Grey (Chris): Adrienne Naylor, Sydney, Nurys Mateo, Cory Wharton, Survivor and USA alum Cassidy Clark, Big Brother alum Keanu Soto, and Leo.
• Team Orange (Justin): Deb Chubb, Reilly Smedley, Will, Bananas, Michele Fitzgerald, Tori Deal, Izzy, and C.T.
• Team Blue (Anna Leigh): Big Brother‘s Cedric Hodges (who she openly did not want on her team), former wrestling pro and Deal or No Deal Island runner-up Alexis Lete, Brad, Nelson, Josh, and Cara Maria Sorbello.

They then picked cocaptains of the opposite sex: Anna Leigh picked Nelly, Chris chose Sydney, and Justin went with Michele.

From there, it was off to the races, so to speak.

The daily challenge was called “Right This Sway” and put the challengers on a giant bridge with ropes scattered underneath throughout. The goal was to get the most team players across the bridge the fastest, with just a 10-second head start before the opposing teams could wiggle the ropes. Team Grey dominated with just four players making it across, leaving Chris and Sydney with the power to choose who would battle in the arena from the losing team and the second-place team’s selections. Though Team Blue and Team Orange both had two players get across, Orange was the faster of the two and thus earned second place. That gave its captains, Justin and Michele, safety but also the responsibility of nominating a player from their team for possible elimination, with the house choosing the other.

Jonne Roriz / Paramount+

This week’s elimination was a men’s elimination, which meant only C.T. and Bananas were options for Team Orange. Michele and Tori, who were loyal to both as fellow veterans, schemed to force a stalemate, but Michele ultimately, reluctantly picked Bananas to go in. The nominees from Team Orange were then named as Bananas and Will.

Michele was highly emotional about her decision, worrying that it would fracture her friendship with Bananas forevermore, but Cara consoled her. “I feel like on [Season] 40, my back was so against a wall. The format required me to go into the sand and fight with my physical attributes, and I really wanted to know that I had that in me, but also like I am a strategist. I am a gamer,” Michele told TVI. “I like the social aspect of the game, and so I wanted to take, like, the confidence that I felt from 40, and also the skills that I already knew I had, and bring them into this game, and mesh it together. And I think that I wanted to maybe not have meltdowns as much, maybe get control of my emotions a little bit more, make sure that my relationships are tight, and in a way that I could be OK with making the decisions that I had to make without having a spiral breakdown, which has been my kind of pitfalls in the past… I tried to look back, see all the mistakes that I made, and implement them in this game. And it made it a lot easier to be on a team that I genuinely loved. That made it a lot lighter. I have a tendency to find the heaviness in the game, and so kudos to all these people who kept me sane. It’s a full-time job.”

From the two, Sydney and Chris easily chose Bananas and then threw in Team Blue’s Cedric to the arena, too.

The “Burn Out” battle that then took place was as lopsided as one might expect, with a seven-season victor versus a second-time player. The two had to run around the arena and tap light poles to turn them into their team colors, and Bananas managed to change every single one to orange before the time ran out.

Cedric’s consolation prize, though, was some very kind words from T.J., who called him one of the nicest people ever. Cedric, who previously finished third in his first outing on The Challenge, said of the experience, “Every season you do, you get better, and you can take some more stuff away. So I definitely learned in my last season, even rolling into this season, that sometimes the narrative of a situation matters more than the reality of the situation, and that’s the biggest thing to combat in The Challenge.”

After that, T.J. announced one more twist: The captains would be choosing their replacements, with everyone still in the game getting a turn before any repeats. For Team Grey, Chris and Sydney swapped in Keanu and Adrienne; for Team Orange, Justin and Michele brought in C.T. and Tori; and for Team Blue, Anna Leigh and Nelson’s spots went to Cara Maria and Josh.

And we’re off!

(By the way, in the post-premiere look-ahead at the rest of the season, we get a glimpse of the infamous “Backpack” elimination game that was immortalized between C.T. and Bananas in the first “Cutthroat”-themed season coming back into play sometime this season. Of that, Bananas said, “So thrilled to see it. I just hope that whoever is in this [that] they eliminate the person in less than 3/10 of a second, that way, we can no longer talk about me being in that position in that elimination. I knew the second T.J. said the word ‘Cutthroat’ [it was coming]. I’m not fully convinced that they didn’t name the season ‘Cutthroat’ just so they can have another excuse to play that clip on repeat. I’m pretty sure the amount of episode time that’s going to be dedicated to that clip this season is kind of like the amount of time that MTV dedicates to playing Ridiculousness on a regular basis…. Just buckle up because you’re going to see a lot of times, and I can’t wait.”)

The Challenge, Wednesdays, Paramount+