Was the Battle for a New Champions Final Fair for the Girls?

Emanuel is officially a Challenge champion, and despite being the fan-favorite to win, Nurys took second place.

Much like other seasons with one winner, the question remains: Was this final fair to the females? And the short answer is… no.

The final began with the Control stage, and it felt like most of the girls fell in the middle of the pact. Jay and Emanuel were easily the fastest runners with their ropes, but Corey was the caboose, especially because he dropped a rope. But, there was never a possibility that a woman would carry the nine ropes from the golden chest.

Luckily for the women, the loss resulted in Corey becoming the Control elimination nominee, and he wanted to face Jay because if he were to lose the final, he’d rather see a woman win.

Beyond this, the women were usually struggling when compared to the men. During the Chaos stage, a male won every checkpoint aside from the final one, but a female/female team finished in last place in all five stages.

This was particularly apparent during the trivia and chest-carrying stage. Emanuel and Corey could handle the weight, but Nurys and Colleen struggled. They could answer the trivia, but these competitions were not designed for people with their frames.

Here’s the thing: You can tell production knows that there are inequities in the final. That’s why we got odd mind teasers for the Conquest and Chaos eliminations. In the case of a coed matchup, the woman had a fighting chance at outperforming a man. By contrast, we saw physical eliminations in the Spies, Lies and Allies and Ride or Dies finals because the sexes were balanced.

During the Conquest stage, the checkpoints were portrayed as the equalizers. There weren’t any stations that truly favored men, but the final edit didn’t put a big emphasis on the run or swim. We know Emanuel won the first leg of the Conquest stage, but the length final run wasn’t really shown. Those stations could only disadvantage the women and benefit the men.

Theoretically, a woman could have outperformed the men, but just look at the War of the Worlds final — even the best woman, who was a phenomenal athlete, came in fourth overall.

The Challenge is not a show that knows how to balance coed finals. They will either favor the men (like this season or War of the Worlds 1) or will separate the majority of the final based on sex, then reduce the last stage to one equalizer (like All Stars 1 or Vendettas).

To be clear, this is not an effort to discredit Emanuel — he did the best he could and he didn’t design the final. But, it’s no surprise that a male dominated this competition. The sad thing is, this season’s final was the closest to balanced we’ve ever seen — and it still missed the mark. In the future, I’d rather see two people receive $125,000 than one person get a bigger prize.