It’s the off-season for The Challenge, and the show’s official podcast has rewound time to cover Free Agents. While there are dozens of seasons that could have been covered, this is the first one that was given a rewatch by the podcast’s hosts.
So, why this one?
Well, let’s start with the obvious: Aneesa and Devyn are hosts. Other Official Challenge Podcast hosts may have been busy at the time (Da’Vonne just filmed a show for Amazon Freevee and Tori did The Challenge: USA 2 and might have more coming down the pipeline). So, if Devyn is involved, she only participated in two prior seasons, and Free Agents was the only one with Aneesa.
But, this assumes that they couldn’t bring in a new host. And let’s be honest, there are plenty of Challengers eager to pick up a hosting gig. However, Free Agents was a fairly obvious choice.
Firstly, it’s on Paramount+ (like most seasons) and it’s a season that fans tend to like. It has a lot of big names on it, and it’s definitely a competition-driven season. It’s also devoid of messy drama. Sure, Nany and Camila have a fight and Cara Maria and Laurel argue, but there’s nothing that’s too jaw-dropping here. Unlike other seasons, there are no incidents that would make it questionable to discuss in 2023.
Some viewers would argue this makes Free Agents one of the best seasons ever, if not the best. And I think this is true for a certain type of viewer. People who mostly watch The Challenge for the competition will enjoy this season because it was an individual game. The draw was an interesting twist, and it made it nearly impossible to throw challenges.
For other viewers, this season can be a bit boring. The female winner was a bit obvious from the start (though Laurel did have an impressive performance by winning four eliminations) and there wasn’t any important drama. If you completely removed Free Agents from Challenge history, the social aspect of the show would be almost unchanged.
While production might feel comfortable discussing Free Agents nine years later, it could also be a boring season to revisit. The fact that it was a chill environment means that there probably isn’t a lot of dirt to uncover. If there was serious drama, it would have been in the show — it wasn’t filmed in the modern era when the best fights were left on the cutting room floor.
Still, it’s fun to dive into the Challenge vault, and I wouldn’t mind if the Official Podcast rewatched a different season during a future off-season.
Stop Being Polite 
It had a really good cast but I hate when they call challenges individual when majority of the dailies were pairs or teams. I would love if they did a entire challenge where all the dailies were individual so people can’t blame anyone but themselves.