After 19 long weeks, the winners of Battle of the Eras were crowned. Fans expected that one male and one female would become champions, and that happened — for the men. On the women’s side, the karma points led to a tie. For the first time in Challenge history, there were two first place winners and no second place finisher.
Few people will argue with Jenny’s victory. She primarily won because she had the highest score from the checkpoints. On the other hand, Rachel’s good fortune skyrocketed her from third place to first.
This is an unprecedented outcome, because a tie has never happened on the show. Most viewers would have expected a tiebreaker to be implemented to determine a winner. But we didn’t get that, we got twinners instead.
There’s a lot to be said about the karma point twist. Mostly, it will be criticized for turning the game into a popularity contest. Regardless, this twist has been a factor since the start of the show because the Era Invitational losers assigned karma points. How the twist impacted the finalists wasn’t clearly explained until the very end.
As a viewer, we didn’t know the implications of the karma point until episode 19, which makes the scoring system seem like an afterthought.
Throughout the history of The Challenge, finals have always been scored differently. At first, they were straight races, but once the overnight portion was introduced they changed. On seasons like War of the Worlds, the winner was determined by a cumulative time, but the point-based system had been used on All Stars 1 and 3.
If this final was based on a cumulative time (assuming there was no time manipulation) it would be very unlikely that the karma points would result in a tie, but the point-based system made a tie much more likely. Also, this tie only happened because the karma points were worth the value of two checkpoints.
Rachel’s placement has production’s thumbprint all over it because the cast had no idea that they were being judged by the eliminated players. This isn’t like Survivor or Big Brother where “jury management” is a viable strategy. Instead, finalists were told about the karma points at the eleventh hour, had no control over its implementation, and were just forced to accept it.
In Rachel’s case, it’s a good thing, and she’s lucky to be standing next to her friend Jenny who’s happy to share the winnings. Michele, on the other hand, fell from second to third and lost $50,000 due to the twist.
Likely, Rachel’s victory will always have an asterisk next to it, and it appears the karma points twist is very unpopular among viewers. It should also be concerning for future Challengers, but at least they didn’t make season 40’s outcome totally random. Jordan dominated the final, and this was rewarded. He was the sole male winner, demonstrating if you are undeniably the best, a twist can’t even take away your victory.
Stop Being Polite 