The Curious Case of the Gen 2 Males

Battle of the Eras — the “Super Bowl” of The Challenge — has reunited many of the best competitors we’ve ever seen. Arguably, Era 2 (seasons 11-20) was the most important period for establishing The Challenge as the reality TV mainstay it is today.

Yet if we look at the Era 2 team, the male competitors seem to be underwhelming.

Of course, we have Bananas, but the other four seem like odd picks. Following Free Agents Brandon’s last appearance on the flagship show, it seemed like the show had forgotten about Derek, Ryan, Nehemiah, and Brandon. But suddenly, they’re valuable enough to be cast on Season 40.

So what’s going on here?

Well, in my eyes, two of the competitors definitely deserve to be on the team. Johnny Bananas is an obvious pick because he’s done the most Challenge seasons and has the most Challenge wins. Then, we have Nehemiah. He won The Gauntlet 3, but he really redeemed himself on All Stars 1-3. If you watched those seasons (especially All Stars 2), it’s clear that he learned from the school of Wes and has refined the way he plays the game. Not only is he a strong competitor, but he’s likely to showcase that cunning gameplay since Wes declined to appear on Battle of the Eras.

That leaves three other males: Derek, Ryan, and Brandon. All three of them have competed on All Stars seasons and have shown an ability to play the game. However, on a superstar season like Battle of the Eras, you really don’t need to cast three people based on their potential. Maybe one of these three should have been on the season, and I’d argue Derek deserves the spot because he was a finalist on All Stars 4.

But let’s face the facts: Era 2 was defined by Kenny and Evan, and those two aren’t coming back to the show. In a world without controversies, production probably would have wanted to assemble an Era 2 team with Bananas, Evan, Kenny, Nehemiah, and Wes. With those two Fresh Meat males out of the equation, the number of male debuts during Era 2 is pretty low. Still, there are other more-established players that should have been considered like Tyler, MJ, Dunbar, or a wild card like CJ.

But, to figure out the mystery of the Gen 2 males, we need to look at the females. Emily, Cara Maria, Laurel, and Kellyanne are great competitors, and Aviv is a wild card with serious potential. Likely, production saw how strong the Gen 2 girls were. So, they had to balance the team by casting males who aren’t top-tier.

Ultimately, production had to try to make the cast competitive. So, they had to balance teams to match the potential of the Gen 1 team. Because they wanted such elite females on the Gen 2 team, they had to cast some mid-tier males so Gen 2 would’t steamroll the competition.