Is the Battle for a New Champions Final Surprisingly Good?

After a slow, long season, we’ve finally reached the final of Battle for a New Champion. It’s only halfway done, so what’s happened so far?

A lot, actually, and the pace of the race has picked up compared to other seasons’ finals.

The episode started a bit slower, with the cast celebrating the end of the season and reminiscing about their time in Croatia. The cast even got letters from their families — a nice personal touch that feels different for The Challenge. At least, the viewers haven’t seen it on past seasons.

Then, we got to the final, and I had my doubts at first. The “control” stage seemed unnecessary, especially because the prize pot was already so low, but this challenge only took up a small portion of the episode. However, it felt like an important inclusion because it led to an elimination.

This demonstrates why this final is somewhat more engaging than other recent ones. The goal has been to funnel down the number of contenders in the race until they crown a winner. It also doesn’t hurt that Corey eliminated Jay, the “villain” of the season.

Then, we got to the chaos phase, which did feel a bit chaotic because the partners rotated. In essence, this became Berna roulette, because no one wanted to be paired with her during a stage where she’d struggle.

The chaos portion isn’t without its faults, and many people feel it’s unfair that there’s always at least one female/female team — and it was unfair. But, as a viewer the chaos stage was entertaining to watch. And, this stage wasn’t entirely centered around running and it actually felt like the checkpoints impacted the outcome of the game.

The winner of “chaos,” Emanuel, got immunity from the next elimination and the ability to send one person in. While this isn’t the best reward, it’s much, much more significant than the minor headstarts Challengers have received during prior finals.

I’m not going to act like this is the best final in the world; it’s not. But it’s much more engaging than the 100-hour Ride or Dies finals, and each stage has a purpose. It also feels like production is intentionally trying to test a variety of skills rather than hours of running with a few puzzles, and this has created a nice variety, so far.