The Cult of Cara: Are They Playing a Good Game?

This week Georgia complained about the “Cult of Cara” targeting her friends in the game. While this group really isn’t a “cult,” it is a clear alliance. We seldom see alliances so clearly defined on The Challenge, but Cara’s alliance is pretty transparent.

On Team USA we have: Cara Maria, Paulie, Kam, Ashley, and Ninja.

One Team UK we have: Joss, Rogan, Kayleigh and Dee. Esther was a number, but she’s gone now.

Let’s be clear here, this alliance is strong and they’ve made some good moves. As soon as Wes was targeted, they shifted gears toward Laurel and Bananas. Right now, the opposing alliance has lost two strong people and without Bananas ties with people are Leroy and Zach are loose.

Even if you don’t like these people, you have to admit, they’re making some pretty good plays. This week, however, exposed some cracks in the alliance. It’s clear that this alliance is a hierarchy with Paulie and Cara at the top. When Dee wouldn’t preserve Esther in the game (who volunteered to go into elimination), the alliance attached Dee and claimed she was creating a target. Clearly some members are more expendable than others.

Regardless, I think this alliance will go far. At least core members like Cara & Paulie and Joss & Rogan. This alliance is very reminiscent of an early Big Brother alliance. Rally up people who seem strong and gather as many votes as possible. Then, dominate the votes and strong-arm enemies into elimination. We saw this happen to Kyle this week and Bear last week.

Like these large Big Brother alliances, once the number of enemies dwindles the alliance will start to turn on themselves. I believe we are getting to that point. People are going to want to preserve themselves and their best friend rather than all nine people in the cult. If Team UK really wanted they could have decided not to vote Esther in and scarified someone like Georgia or Jenny. Instead, they wanted to rid the team of Esther so UK stood a chance at winning.

It’s actually an interesting dynamic and Cara Maria did a good job of securing her spot at the top of the totem pole. Now we will just have to see how long she lasts there.