Battle for a New Champion will open with a massive twist: The “Era Invitational.” This process will force all 40 competitors to face off as soon as they get to the house and will result in eight people leaving.
Will this be exciting? Most likely, but it’s also likely to be disappointing. Many fan favorites are going to get the chop before the season really begins.
We also know the invitational will span two episodes, meaning we’ll get a decent amount of footage from the early boots. However, two episodes are just a fraction of the season (assuming it’s 19 episodes like the four previous seasons).
From one perspective, this could be viewed as an overcorrection. Many fans were upset due to the lack of eliminations on Battle for a New Champion. At one point, we went four episodes without a single contender going home.
On the other side, this also seems to be a more cutthroat and satisfying twist in the long run. It’s going to set the season up to be a tough game, and it’ll be high-stakes from the start. It’s not going to be like the Purge at the beginning of Dirty Thirty where people could fight their way back into the house. This time, if you lose, you’re gone.
We do have 40 people on this season, so we’re going to have to lose people much faster than we have in the past few seasons. And from the looks of it, production did listen to fan feedback. Even if we lose eight big names during the invitational, I’m happy that production decided to implement a twist that isn’t designed to make the game random. Instead, it sets the president that this season will be tough, and many people are going to lose before we get our two winners.
Stop Being Polite 